Slashdot Mirror
26 Gigapixel Photo Sets New World Record
FrenchSilk writes "The largest gigapixel photograph ever created with a DSLR camera was made by A.F.B. Media GmbH in Dresden, Germany. 1655 images, each 21.6 megapixels in size, were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 400 mm lens over a period of 176 minutes. The images were stitched on a 16 processor system with 48GB of main memory, taking 94 hours to create the final result. The interactive view can be found here."
If you can't take it all in at once, what's the big deal? Wouldn't Google earth have the largest 'photo' since it has an interactive view of the entire globe stitched together?
I get a "security error" when I try to view the actual picture from that website...anyone have another link?
in 3...2..1
If we're gonna stitch photos together, i think Google Earth is probably by far "higher-resolution" than this.
Show me a SINGLE image sensor that can do 26GP and i'll be impressed!
Sigs are for the weak.
It would be an impressive achievement to note the largest picture taken at one time with a camera. However, stitching together 1655 photos together doesn't exactly seem to be as interesting as a feat. If that qualifies as a record, then just how many photos does the a global satellite view like Google Maps have in "total resolution"?
bah, megapixels mean nothing...
what about signal to noise ratio, dynamic range, plenoptic capabilities, etc.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
...and 20 minutes later, the world's largest lolcat was created. ("i can haz gigapixelz?")
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
It looks 'shopped. You can tell by the pixels and I have seen quite a few 'shops in my day.
Yes, but does it run Linux?
Legacy Project, they converted an old hanger into a pinhole camera.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
It didn't fit on my screen, can you send me the 1600x1200 wallpaper?
AFB Media Exec: Hey IT guy, can our server handle the load if I post a 26 gigapixel image to slashdot?
IT Guy: Of course it can, we run BSD, which as you know, is not....
If you zoom in a bit, there is a women in that photo who is naked, all except a red and white striped bikini top.
I swear to god if this is a VLCsnap.png I am going to be really mad.
I can only see the thumbnail from the article, but it doesn't look like a good Where's Waldo type picture. Giant photographs are no fun until you can spend an hour trying to find the woman in the shower that one guy says he found when you zoom in enough to count the pixels.
This has been done and its going to be "done" many times before.
What amazed me was that Google translate did a REALLY good job of traslating that article. Its not perfect, but you can read it and understand fairly clearly.
Some related knowledge: The largest Image sensor (that I've heard of) is part of the "Large Synoptic Survey Telescope" in Chile and it weighs in at 3200 Megapixels
http://www.megapixelmyth.com/?p=127
Shameless plug: check out my blog at megapixelmyth.com
To blog is sublime
to load that image!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
Ditto that. I read the first few sentences without a problem, until I hit the part where they talk about pixels (picture elements). I couldn't figure out why the grammar and parentheses were that screwed up.... until I accidentally moused over a sentence with a Google pop-up asking me to improve the sentence. Only then did I realized I was looking the Google Translate page of the actual German page.
Hot damn. Automated language translation has come a long way.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
their web server does not have 16 processors.
I agree. And since they couldn't take it all at once, but needed almost a three-hour span, the shadows are all over the place.
If you can't take it all in at once, what's the big deal?
Finally a photo that works like photos do on CSI when it comes to zoom!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
(you insensitive clods.)
Their they're doing there hair.
Here! Here! I third the shenanigans call. More like a cry.. The real question is who can 'stitch' the fastest...
This has been done and its going to be "done" many times before.
What amazed me was that Google translate did a REALLY good job of traslating that article. Its not perfect, but you can read it and understand fairly clearly.
Posting on /. about how something's "been done before" has been done before.
What amazed me was that Slashdot spellcheck did a REALLY good job of spellchecking that post. It's not perfect, but you can read and understand it fairly easily.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Sadly the server for viewing is a 486 with an AT1500-BT 10mbit coax connection.
It is a pity they picked afternoon to shoot this photo. As a result the most beautiful part of the city, historic center, is in a deep shadow. With so much work put into this, one would think image aesthetics would be also be a consideration besides just technological accomplishment.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Haha, I came frist. That's my 19th frist psot. Yes... I do keep track. XD
couldn't get all of Jlo's butt!
I couldn't find one person in a compromising position or act.
Forget about the whose-a-ma-wuchit umpty-ump gigapixel technology...I want to know about the partial-cloaking field device implemented on the car in the parking lot!
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
...unless you want to get slammed in the face with a gigapixel of goatce.
They messed up the stitching... that of someone invented a camouflage car.
and the original, and the big one really doesn't look any sharper on my laptop screen.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Was anyone able to mirror the image before the server went down? ;)
This functionality and resolution is easy to get and can be obtained from a normal single photo, not 1655. All you need is a standard "enhancement" filter found on any movie of TV show worth its salt. You zoom in, everything is blurry, enhance, it gets clear again and repeat ad nauseum, or at least until the scientists in your audience are nauseated.
What are the chances that a web server serving up a 26GByte picture would be slashdotted?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hey! I found Waldo!
Stitching many images to form one big picture is challenging in many ways: First you need the camera and lens to capture enough detail. With a 400mm lens, it took a 21MP camera to get that much data. If you've ever tried to shoot a crisp 21MP picture at 400mm, you know that even just one of these 1655 photos is an achievement. Then you need the hardware to shoot these pictures in quick succession: The photoshoot took them three hours. During that time, the sun moves, shadows move, the color of the sky changes. The faster you can shoot the pictures, the better the result will be. The banding in the picture is a result of "only" shooting one picture every six seconds. You can't shoot to flash memory cards either, because they're going to be full all the time and you don't have the time to change them, so you need a camera which can shoot directly to a computer. Then you have lots of images on your hard disk and you need to stitch and blend them. Off-the-shelf panorama software is optimized for small numbers of pictures, so you have a couple of problems to solve on that front too.
That said, personally I think that that resolution is too much. Due to the way these images are created, they don't work at all for even moderately dynamic views, they're always full of artifacts from the light change, they usually look quite dull when zoomed out and the interesting bits are lost in a vast desert of pointless detail.
OK, so it's really only 16 cm, but I stroked it 1655 times today.
They already rejected the idea because they couldn't figure out a way to make the voice quality on the camera any shittier than on the phones.
I agree, that worked like gangbusters and didn't read as particularly awkward. That's quite an accomplishment.
Brett
The Stitch job is pretty good.
But the girl riding her bike on the bridge has gained a twin, and a couple cars in the parking lot seem to have lost their rear ends.
Serial imaging leads to anomalies. Simultaneous imaging would be more impressive. I'm not as concerned that there are multiple sensors involved as I am that the same sensor was used serially and with enough of an interval that a person could plod along on a bike for 200 feet.
Still its pretty impressive.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Due to the way these images are created, they don't work at all for even moderately dynamic views, they're always full of artifacts from the light change, they usually look quite dull when zoomed out and the interesting bits are lost in a vast desert of pointless detail.
Pointless detail?
Detail was precisely the point of the image.
Further, simply because you have no immediate use for this detail does not mean its pointless and certainly not a desert. Its all still there when you zoom back in.
The detail on the facade of a building does not cease to exist just because you get in your car and drive a mile away.
This is an attempt to record that. To have the naked eye view and the telescopic view in one set of images.
The practical applications of this seem rich, if we can just get past our little self centered world view that suggests just because you can not experience every level of detail simultaneously, that, therefore none of it is warranted.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/photo/imviaduct.htm
Large-resolution image taken with an 8x10 camear. A large format film camera (100+ year-old technology) can squeak out very high resolutions. Arguments abound as to the megapixel equivalent of film, but if a 35mm camera is about 20 megapixels then by my calculations a 8x10 camera is about one regular old fashioned gigapixel of resolution.
If you zoom into the picture randomly, you are likely to end up with a view that contains nothing of interest even though it is sharp to the pixel. That is pointless detail. The world around us is not equally interesting at all scales and what is interesting is usually better portrayed up close. Very long lenses are mostly voyeuristic, not artistic.
On the contrary. I found something of interest just about anywhere I zoomed in. Odd to see so many American flags in a German city. The rotting roofs of abandoned buildings. The man taking a leak under the bridge, the high percentage of missing hub caps, the bomber of replicated people appearing multiple times, (proving the shots were taken from left to right), the time difference on the clocks.
Who appointed you the arbiture of what is art?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The raw stitch of this: http://www.sergebrunier.com/gallerie/pleinciel/index-eng.html was 145 Gb. They even did a huge print of it.
Lovely stuff. ...and, their site actually works!
Look what I found in there :)
http://i48.tinypic.com/160onzd.jpg
AnnotatedSnark
Hurray for all the number plates: MEI U552 silver station wagon for one
do i need a vt100 or a vt102 to see this gigathing?
If you look at the parking lot zoom in on the row that has the half car ( the one that is puliing out ) the red car that is parked in the second spot from the end ( beside the red mini van ) you will see a baby in the back seat if you go full zoom
Like the same two bladers getting pictured 5 times:
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/3808/stopmotion.png
Seems like the computer messed up something when processing the hotel. (just click the 'hotel' icon in the carousel). You can see the same guy in the same position in 2 windows plus the hotel sign is messed up too. Other than that, it's a good job.
Bo.
If you look at the hills on the left side, the big white buildings are the Infineon fabs, and the now bankrupt Qimonda fab. Also, you can almost tell which part of Dresden was destroyed from the WWII bombings by the types of buildings that are there now. The apartment box-like buildings were built during the communist times after the war.
There's dust on the sensor - you can see it in shots of the sky. It gives you an idea of how large each individual image is, as the sensor dust spots are visible at regular intervals.