New York ? When photographer Clifford Ross first saw Colorado’s Mt. Sopris, he was so taken with the beauty of the mammoth formation that he jumped on the roof of his brother-in-law’s car — denting it — to photograph the landscape.

But Ross found that his 35 mm photos didn’t get anyone else excited. They simply didn’t capture enough detail to convey the majesty of the white-capped mountain surrounded by grassy fields.

So he decided to make a camera that could create an image as awe-inspiring as the vista before him. The result was R1, a 110-pound, 6-foot film camera that produces what experts say are some of the highest-resolution landscape photographs ever made.

“Mountain I,” a 5-by-10-foot color photograph captured by that camera, is on display through July 30 at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York.

Ross, 51, wanted to share a near-replica of reality, without any of the blurring visible in most large prints. “You can choose to go up to the picture and experience it intimately with a sense of unbroken reality,” he says.

Details of the mountain’s snowcapped peak — 7 miles from the camera — are in sharp focus, as are individual blades of grass only 100 feet away. When sections of the image are magnified nearly four times, other details are clearly visible: the shingles on a barn 4,000 feet from the camera, a red bird in the grass 150 feet away.

A lower-resolution image captured on everyday 35 mm film would break down when displayed at the size of “Mountain I.” Viewers would see a fuzzy, fractured image — and Ross’ miniature red bird would likely not be visible at all.

“You have to ask the question, ‘What’s the point of painting a scene like this when you can reproduce it with no loss of resolution?'” says Conor Foy, a 36-year-old painter. “The resolution of this seems to be more than anything I’ve seen before.”

Benjamin Donaldson, a large-format photography teacher at the International Center of Photography, calls Ross’ camera an unusual example of art driving science rather than the other way around.

Similarly large images have been created before by seaming numerous photos together, and other photographers have used film even larger than Ross’ to capture high-resolution images. One black-and-white photographer, Douglas Busch, built a camera that uses custom-made film larger than 3 feet-by-5 feet.

But Ross, an admitted perfectionist, found existing large-film cameras unsuitable.

The R1 is similar to the accordion-style view cameras used in the 19th century. It is built around the body of a World War II-era camera. Mirrors, vacuum pumps and a microscope help focus the image precisely.

But when Ross’ 9-inch-by-18-inch negatives are digitally scanned, the result is decidedly high-tech. Each image yields a 2.6-gigabyte file — huge for a single image.

Kodak Chief Technology Officer James Stoffel says Ross’ file is more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers.

Much of the camera’s precision focusing is achieved with what Ross calls “meat and potatoes” innovations.

A vacuum pump ensures that the film is flat to within one-thousandth of an inch, and a dual-mirror device keeps the film parallel to the lens. Sand bags strapped to the camera and tripod prevent the machine from shifting, and a reinforced aluminum cradle maintains the parts of the camera in perfect alignment.

Because the camera uses film meant for aerial shots, its negatives must be chemically treated to reduce their unusually high degree of contrast. That leaves sharp details but muddy colors.

So after digitally scanning the negative, Ross and his assistants must manipulate the image using Adobe Systems Inc.’s Photoshop software to return the mountain’s colors to their initial vibrancy. Though the method might raise questions about accuracy and purity, Ross tries to avoid making any significant changes and works from memory to restore the scene.

The process is so lengthy that Ross can produce only five to eight images a year. Three years passed between Ross’ first snapshot sketches and the display of “Mountain I.”