10 Jaw-Dropping Gigapixel Photos Of World City
Everyone loves fine photography. But high-resolution, gigapixel photos turn an image into an exploration. Here are some of the best.
Fine photography - truly fine photography, the kind you find hanging in galleries, and not adorning the average Web page, is art. Twenty years ago, it was a documentary, an indelible record of a snapshot in time.
With the emergence of digital photography, we can't absolutely be certain of the veracity of an image. But any doubts we might have, living in the age of Photoshop, can be alleviated with the possibilities that digital photography also offers. By that, of course, I mean gigapixel imagery.
At this point, save for the gigapixel-class camera that the government is developing, gigapixel imagery requires careful planning, an eye for detail, and a lot more work on the back end than you might imagine. Each "gigapixel" image is carefully composed of possibly thousands of smaller images. In the largest gigapixel images, however, these "small" images may be individual shots made up of 20-megpixel images. In many cases, special robotic mounts are used, carefully exposing shot after shot after moving a predefined period of arc. Later, all of the shots are "stitched" together by computer, which attempts to digitally match the edges of each image with its neighbor, producing a composite whose individual pieces blur into and are indistinguishable from each other. The process can take days.
The process is complicated by the fact that wind, weather, and the simple time it takes to compose the shot can alter the light. Photographers creating a multi-gigapixel image of Seville, Spain were horrified to discover that their shot - composed, as most are, high up in the sky - was being altered by the blowing of the wind.
Recently, British Telecom and partner 360Cities, which specializes in panoramic photos, shot 48,640 individual frames that were digitally collated into a single panorama. All told, the shot required 320 GB of data - the largest, most complex digital photo ever taken. But it might not be the best. We've found some, in fact, that we think are better. Click in the "Image" to explore each one.
1. Dubai (45 Gigapixels)
This shot, taken in 2010 during the great building boom in Dubai, UAE, shows the world's largest building, the Burj Khalifa, in the center of the frame. Zooming in, you can see everything from individual flamingos to individual golfers on the golf course. (Image)
2. Shanghai (272 Gigapixels)
This photo, by Rongkai Zhao, shows off the Shanghai skyline in stunning detail; zooming in, you can see individual pebbles on the ground on some of the streets, as well as peer into the windows of the buildings. This image set was taken from the roof of Chinese Academy of Science. In total, 12,000 shots created an image 887,276 pixels wide and 306,908 pixels high, with an overlap of about 28 percent. (Image)
3. London (320 Gigapixels)
In total, this staggering 320-gigapixel image is comprised of 48,640 individual shots, which have been connected and layered almost seamlessly to give the impression of a single, zoomable picture, Gizmag reports. It's now the world's largest picture. According to the photography team, if the image were printed at a normal photographic resolution, it would be 98 meters (321.5 feet) wide and 24 meters (79 feet) tall. (Image)
4. Mt. Everest (2 Gigapixels)
Filmmaker and climate-change campaigner David Breashears spent this spring taking around 400 images of Everest and its near neighbours from a vantage point above base camp through a 300mm lens, The Guardian reports. The idea was to document climate change via website, GlacierWorks. (Image)
5. Seville, Spain (111 Gigapixels)
Another world record for its time, the Sevilla 111 shot was composed in 2010 and consists of 9,720 total images, all stitched together. The team built their own robot to take the photos, and had to come up with some interesting techniques to prevent the wind from moving their camera just the tiny fractions of an inch that would destroy the shot, or at least its ability for the images to be stitched together. (Image)
6. Obama Inauguration (1.47 Gigapixels)
Another David Bergman photo. Bergman writes: "I made this Gigapan image from the north press platform during President Obama's inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on January 20, 2009. It's made up of 220 images and the final image size is 59,783-by-24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. There are a few known stitching errors in this image." (Image)
7. Budapest (70 Gigapixels)
In 2010, photographers created this stunning vista over Budapest. It required two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two days of post-processing to yield a 200GB file. At the time, it was the world's largest photograph. Note: you'll need to install Microsoft's Silverlight before you can view the image. (Image)
8. Yosemite's Half Dome (2.70 Gigapixels)
Grant Meyers took this gigapixel shot of Yosemite's Half Dome on Feb. 23, meaning that it's one of the most recent, highest-resolution shots of the park that's been archived on the Gigapan site. (Image)
9. Paris (26 Gigapixels)
On Sept. 8, 2009, this image was shot - again, at the time, the largest in the world. The image stitched together 2,346 single photos into a very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital (354,159-by-75,570 pixels). The cameras used wer 2 Canon 5D Mark II (21.1 MP) each with a 300 mm f4.0 with a teleconverter in order to get the 600mm/f8.0 exposure needed to beat the record, mounted on a custom-made panoramic head. (Image)
10. Vancouver Seaplane Terminal (3.23 Gigapixels)
The Burrard Seaplane terminal is something of a Vancouver icon, used by a number of local carrier services that offer flights to the West Cast and Gulf islands. During the construction of the Vancouver Convention Center, the terminal was moved to a temporary location for several years. Peter van North captured the image, and will also sell you a print, if you'd like. (Image)