Shout Cheese! Camera Is Accurate From 11 Miles

Camera giant Canon (Other OTC: CAJFF - news) has created a sensor so powerful that a camera using it can read the lettering on the side of a plane from 11 miles away.

The 250-megapixel sensor can be used to capture pictures, and super high-resolution video which is 30 times sharper than 4K.

This means that you could crop a video 125 times and still have full HD footage.

But don't expect the sensor to be coming to your compact camera anytime soon - Canon says it's better used in "specialised surveillance and crime prevention tools, ultra-high-resolution measuring instruments and other industrial equipment".

Canon has demonstrated a working camera prototype which uses the new sensor, which is smaller than a 35mm full-frame sensor.

Storing any footage shot on the camera could be the tricky part - around 1.25GB of storage would be needed every second at 30 frames per second.

The current megapixel count in consumer cameras is typically measured in the tens of megapixels rather than hundreds.

But higher numbers of megapixels does not necessarily lead to better pictures.

Other factors are key, such as the size and material of the main camera lens, the light sensor, the software that runs everything, and the image processing hardware.