gigapixel

How well do you know the landmarks of London? Get up close and personal with a stunning 320-gigapixel image of the city captured atop the BT Tower.

Snapped by panorama experts 360Cities, the epic photography endeavor required the use of four Canon 7D dSLR cameras outfitted with some heavy-duty equipment.

Each camera used an EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, Extender EF 2x III teleconverter, and a Rodeon VR Head ST robotic panorama head. After shooting 48,640 individual pictures over the course of three days (shortly after the 2012 Olympics), 360Cities spent the next several months assembling and stitching together the final gargantuan image.… Read more

When it comes to yesterday's inauguration, forget about high-def videos, transcripts, images from space, and all that jazz. The best glimpse of the ceremony resides in a gargantuan panorama that lets you zoom around the action that took place on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

The image, captured while Obama gave his inaugural speech, required 13 minutes of straight shooting using a dSLR and the Gigapan Epic Pro panorama-capturing device. To create the stunning mosaic, the Gigapan shot 305 high-resolution photographs of different areas in the scene, which were then stitched together to make the zoomable picture. … Read more

When Curiosity touched down on Mars earlier this month, we Earthlings experienced an out of this world multimedia experience showing off amazing angles of the Red Planet. A few days ago, NASA released perhaps the best Mars panorama yet, which simply blows away the rest, at least in terms of size. … Read more

Space: the final frontier. This is the voyage of two men--father and son--who traveled the globe to capture the night sky like never before.

The recently completed Photopic Sky Survey is one of the most ambitious true-color glamour shots of the universe ever created, detailing countless galaxies and hundreds of millions of stars within. Capturing the 5-gigapixel (5,000 megapixel) image was a painstaking effort for Nick Risinger, the creator of the project, who stitched together 37,440 exposures to create the final shot. The breathtaking panorama is also the result of some serious globe-trotting, as he set off on a "45,000 miles by air and 15,000 by land" journey with his retired father, visiting most of the western states in the U.S., as well as the Cape of South Africa.

With the navigational help of a computer to ensure accuracy, Risinger broke the sky down into 624 areas (each 12 degrees wide) and specifically captured each portion through 60 exposures. Four short, medium, and long shots with each camera were taken to help reduce noise, satellite trails, and other inaccuracies. Some serious hardware was used in the survey: … Read more

A newly published 80-gigapixel picture of London appears to have stolen the crown for the largest spherical panoramic photo in the world. Take that, measly 70-gigapixel image of Budapest, 45-gigapixel photo of Dubai, and 26-gigapixel pic of Paris.

Photographer Jeffrey Martin stitched together 7,886 individual images to create his London panorama, which he shot over three days this summer from the top of the Centre Point building at the crossroads of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. Zoom in and you can see landmarks like Big Ben and the National Museum--all without having to undergo a virtual strip search.

The gorgeous photo also reveals lots of amazingly detailed street-level shots of houses, office buildings, shops, and street and pedestrian traffic that offer a glimpse of daily life in London. The team that worked on London Gigapixel, as the photo is called, blurred out the faces of identifiable children--as well as one "naughty bit." … Read more

After Paris 26 Gigapixels was created, it only made sense that someone would one-up the City of Love. Dubai can now be viewed in a whopping 45 gigapixels, thanks to photographer Gerald Donovan.

With the help of a Canon 7D, Donovan took 4,250 photos. He used a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L zoom lens at 400mm. According to a blog he wrote last week describing his feat, it took Donovan about three-and-a-half hours to take a full panoramic view for Dubai 45 Gigapixels. Amazingly, he did the shots in 98-degree weather, which made "the camera and lens...… Read more

If you haven't been to Paris, I have the next best thing for you: Paris 26 Gigapixels.

According to the site, "Paris 26 Gigapixels is a stitching of 2,346 single photos showing a very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital." The site allows users to pan around the beautiful city of Paris to see important spots. Users can also zoom in on different sections to get more detail on particular buildings.

For those folks who want to find important Paris monuments quickly, the site also boasts a list of 20 places around the city. Upon … Read more

Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday announced a $300 robot designed to easily enable people to create super-high-resolution panoramic pictures--and a Web site to let anyone in the world dive into them.

The GigaPan robot, built by Charmed Labs, can accommodate most compact cameras and is designed to be relatively inexpensive, said Illah Nourbakhsh, a Carnegie Mellon associate professor of robotics. Images then are uploaded to the new GigaPan Web site. They also can be viewed through the Google Earth software.

The researchers' project aspirations extend well beyond just flipping through snapshots of foreign lands. "What if you could do … Read more