How much is that camera by the window? "Snap, snap!"

In the world of digital cameras and photography, size does matter. Take a look at the different offerings from the major digicam players in the market right now and you will see the megapixel race in full swing. It used to be WOW if you had a 4 MP camera 4 years ago. Now, many prosumer and even some point and shoot digital compacts are reaching the 10, 10.1, 10.2 MP mark. Give it 5 more years and we could reach 20MP? You think? How about 160 Megapixels? Today.

Presenting you the Seitz 6x17 panorama camera. It creates a high resolution 6x17 digital image (160 million pixels) in one second, has ISO up to 10,000, a read-out speed of 300MB per second, and a shutter speed of 1/20,000th second!!!!! Now, am I crazy or will that probably add up to a 1Gb filesize! Not that Seitz is too worried about that. The 6x17 comes with a "state of the art computer system" which is really a Mac mini core that will store all your 160MP pictures among other things. Nope, ordinary CF media that the rest of us normal human beings use will not quite cut it. Muahahahaha. And speaking about size, this baby is one monster of a camera! Check out the picture! Now, if only it shot plasma rays out of it too... hmmm...

Well, if you are thinking of getting one for yourself at your friendly neighbourhood camera shop, make sure you bring extra change. This thing is going to cost you man. More accurately, 45,500 Swiss francs ($36,266) for the "mobile version" and 42,300 Swiss francs ($33,715) for the "studio version". Better start saving today. :)

Read more of the 6x17 at Engadget, and Seitz.