Posted 05.10.2010 at 12:59 pm
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The 45-gigapixel Dubai Image
The largest photo of the world appropriately includes the tallest building in the world.
GigaPan
Remember when 5 megapixels was hi-res? Today photographer Gerald Donovan takes resolution to astounding new heights, announcing the composition of a 45-gigapixel panoramic landscape of Dubai that, if printed, would be the size of nearly 1,200 billboards.
The shot was captured over more than three hours using a Canon 7D mounted to a robotic GigaPan camera mount that uses imaging technology similar to that found on NASA's Mars rovers. The sweeping shot is actually 4,250 individual shots cobbled together seamlessly with Autopano stitching software.
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Technology, Clay Dillow, cameras, Canon 7D, composite photo, gigapan, high resolution images, Photography, world recordWhich raises the question: Did we find the limit? The last record-holding digital panorama came in at 26 gigapixels, so the Dubai image is a significant advance. Given the fact that the image is composite, it's really not a matter of camera hardware; the robotic mount and the camera could, theoretically, snap more than 4,250 individual shots of a landscape. So it's really a matter of software and the processing power needed to stitch together the larger images. Which means that if the tools to make a larger digital pic don't exist yet, they certainly will at some point.
And what good is a record if it's never broken? In the meantime, check out an interactive version of the image on GigaPan's site. If you think the image above looks like any other panorama, zoom in. And zoom in some more. If this is the closest you ever get to Dubai, it's still really, really close.
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Would love to know the file size of the image.
@Linfosoma, really? i dont even....
Well it is a 45 gigapixel image, which means there are 45x10^9 pixels in the image (approximately). Assuming the photo is in 32 bit colour, each pixel requires 32 bits of storage. That works out to 32x45x10^9 bits. Converting to gigabytes (using divisions of 1024) it ends up being almost a 168 GB file. That's a big picture, but i was expecting larger lol
This is a gigapixel image and not a gigapixel photo. It's stitched together. I guess i'm being picky. an example of what im talking about is for example you lock down a tripod and snap a picture of the same thing with a 3mp and 14mp camera. the 14mp camera has a better quality because of the density of the pixels. same space + more pixels = better quality. am I making sense?
Very nice. My camera phone is has a 2 mega pixel quality. That's a big difference in zoom in quality.
i cant even load the fucking WEBSITE!!! let alone the dam image
If you looked on the gigapan website, it tells you all the images took up 27.5GB, & I assume the final image was less than that after being exported. Compression for images is pretty good whilst maintaining quality. Work out the expected size of an image from your camera and compare it to what it actually is, pretty impressive.
That zoom is amazing.
i contest the largest mp pic. for one as mentioned it is shitloads of pics stiched together, for two i saw an article (will look later and post address) of a retired engineer who designed and built a 100 mp (maybe more but i don't want to get stupid)pic. the camera was about the size of a 19" tv but hey, and he took one pic from across the grand canyon for the most part wide angle, and when they cropped the photo and enlarged you could almost read the guys ball cap.
that is the largest megapixel picture.
I guess a new record has been set by a panorama photo of Budapest with 70 gigapixels...look it up