Zoom in on any spot in this photo. Quite the camera. ( edit: after being enlightened, it’s NOT the camera but the SYSTEM)
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c
Mark
That amazing. It can be done with any point and shoot camera. The unit cost about as much as a mid/high end point and shoot camera.
Marco,
With a camera like that you could take a picture of Wyoming from your place. 
Me thinks that camera is a little out of my price range.
Larry 
—sagefisher—
Hey Larry,
Actually the “giga” part is available for a mere $350 or so and it works with YOUR camera.
Mark
PS: I’d have to stand on a ladder to compensate for the curvature of the earth between here and Wyoming.
COOOOL. I can see the wrinkles in the bunting. And the people standing by the railing above the bunting. Jim.
WHOA THERE FRIENDS. Before we go rushing off to spend our hard earned green backs on this widget let us first find out exactly how it works. I am not saying that these folks are being dishonest but I smell something in the air here.
I suspect that this little device does not deliver a true, physical gigapixel count performance. I do not see how they could get around the physical limitations in size of the camera’s CCD, focal length of lens and clarity of lens to deliver those types of images. All things being equal lens wise we still have the physical limitations of the camera’s CCD size in physical pixels.
That having been said as a high quality, stabilized mount with sophiscated software should make this unit worth the price tags. I will get back to you as soon as I learn more about this.
"WHOA THERE FRIENDS. Before we go rushing off to spend our hard earned green backs on this widget let us first find out exactly how it works. I am not saying that these folks are being dishonest but I smell something in the air here.
I suspect that this little device does not deliver a true, physical gigapixel count performance. I do not see how they could get around the physical limitations in size of the camera’s CCD, focal length of lens and clarity of lens to deliver those types of images. All things being equal lens wise we still have the physical limitations of the camera’s CCD size in physical pixels."
The size of you CCD doesn’t matter, all it does is take a crap load of pictures and pastes them all together. The more pictures you use the more pixels that are used. That photo may be a total of 40 or 50 pictures side by side and on top of one another, maybe more.
Hey Eric,
Ok, I’ll wait till you investigate. Anyway, the ladder in my garage is too short to compensate for the previously mentioned curvature.
Mark
That is what I suspected. Along my line of thought it is not using a single gigapixel ccd to capture the image or any part of the image. It stands to reason then that a lot of the quality of that photograph or any photograph will depend on the quality of the lens and optical zoom as well as it’s sophisticated software.
Ray has it. The final picture quality is still a function of the lens in your camera, focal length, and so on. All this system does is wave the camera around and then stick the images together.
I have similar photos on my computer at work. One meter resolution aerials of entire counties, and a link to an image server that wil give me a one meter resolution seamless image of the lower 48 states. Think Google Earth. With those, however, the time between adjacent frames is enough to have different lighting, clouds, and so on.
That is freaking unbelievable!!! Wow!
Hi Marco,
I know a B-52 Pilot. The maximum bombing altitude of the B-52 is so high that it must compensate for the curvature of the earth. Now if I could get you a ride in that big baby you should be able to dispense with the ladder!
Oh yes this little bugger is amazing! No argument there but I suspected just a little bit of salesmanship on the part of Gigapan too. There is that catchy phrase “Gig” as in gigabyte, gigapixels and so on.
It makes you wonder what the security agencies might have!
I don’t know but they did not quite retire all of these fancy camera housings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sr71_1.jpg
NASA is still “Experimenting” with at least one of them.
A great final product nevertheless. The edge distortion of the actual lense may be a limiting factor.
My fishing buddy who is more than an average photographer explained this all to me last week when I sent him this photo…unfortunately I deleted his reply and can’t find it but have asked him to resend it to me… when/if he does I’ll put it up.
BTW notice who in the supreme court is sleeping…yes, it has surveillance value:roll:.
Here’s what he said…
"This beautiful panoramic picture was made by stitching together 220 pictures of 12 megapixels each; the pictures are overlapped and thus cropped, so the average megapixels for each of them is 6.7.
His choice of equipment is interesting. The lens used was one of the sharpest in the world, a Nikon 200-400 mm zoom, which I recently purchased to the tune of $5,400 with telextender. The camera was a Canon of exactly the same size and quality as my Nikon D300. He had to have had the Nikon lens fitted with a Canon flange and contacts to use it on his Canon body, which is not an uncommon thing among pros. They get committed with a whole bag full of one brand lenses and cannot afford to just switch brands of camera body. They are stuck with the brand that matches their lenses, but Canon does not make a lens comparable to the 200-400 mm Nikon so many pros have it converted to fit the Canon body.
As for the Gigapan device, it is just a fancy tripod he clamped onto a railing from his viewing area. It moves the camera in increments side-to-side and vertically so that the pictures overlap correctly. This can be done with an ordinary tripod, but is very tedious for 220 pictures. I presume he used a continuous fire rate linked to the Gigapan, and it still takes quite a few seconds to photograph that many frames.
I checked the Gigapan Web site and do not see the exact model this photographer used. They showed one that fits only small point-and-shoot cameras, none of which would yield pictures of this quality. The Canon/Nikon combo used in this picture weighs over 9 lbs., so they had either a special one made for him or a model not shown."
Ducksterman you are one cool cat in my book! Thanks for the work.
I suspected some type of sales chicanery here.
I have no doubt that this is a wonderful tool but the use of that photo appears to have been misleading. What a shame.