You can now capture humungous pictures on a reasonably-sized digital camera. And when I say, humungous, I mean full-on billboard-sized humungous, because Phase One has now launched a digital camera with a whooping 39-Megapixel sensor. The P45 is the first of its kind, and takes advantage of Phase One’s P-series digital camera back and secure storage system (3S) technology, the latter of which addresses the worries of writing onto damaged memory cards.

Sure, the average pro-sumer will probably never find the need for a 39-megapixel camera, but it’s safe to say that Phase One is not marketing their latest creation to that crowd. Aimed more at professional and commercial photographers, the P45 has a 35 frames-per-minute capture rate, and a write speed onto your (necessarily high storage capacity) compact flash card of up to 20 MB/second. That might sound pretty impressive, until you take into consideration that the average file size coming out of this thing is 117MB, meaning it will take at least 6 seconds for it to record your snapshot.

Henrik Håkonsson, CEO of Phase One said, “Photographers using the P45 will achieve exceptional image quality never before possible in professional photography. They will also spend less time in post-production and can focus more on their craft and creativity.” That and making use of the new 4 gig or bigger CF cards on the market these days. I would opt-in for a tethered solution, at 6 seconds per shot you might as well be carrying around a laptop.