p.1 #1 · Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II break record!
An amazing image of London taken from the top of the BT Tower has set a new record for the world’s largest panoramic photo. The image shows a full 360 degree view of London in incredible detail. Four Canon EOS 7D cameras with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lenses and Extender EF 2x III teleconverters were used.
The 320 gigapixel image, taken by expert photography firm 360Cities, comprises more than 48,000 individual frames which have been collated into a single panorama by a powerful workstation. It is the first time that an image of this magnitude has ever been attempted, and it took several months to create due to the scale of the endeavour. If printed at normal photographic resolution, the BT Tower panorama would be 98 meters across and 24 meters tall, almost as big as Buckingham Palace.
Adorama just received refurbished Canon EOS 7D DSLRs for $979 with free shipping
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Project by numbers:
320 – the number of gigapixels in the photo
48,640 – the number of individual images shot
3 – the number of days it took to shoot all the individual photos
3 – the number of months over which the computer processed the final result
60,000 – times bigger than an iPhone 4 photo
98 – the number of meters long if printed in normal photographic resolution
24 – the number of meters high if printed in normal photographic resolution
29th – The floor at the BT Tower where the photos were taken
20 – number of miles distant to the viewable horizon
Technical photographic information, and how the photo was taken:
Working over a period of three chilly days in 2012, the 360Cities team spent hours on the 29th floor outdoor platform of the BT Tower working with four cameras to record the 48,640 images comprising the panorama.
Four Canon EOS 7D cameras with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lenses and Extender EF 2x III teleconverters were mounted on Clauss company Rodeon VR Head ST robotic panorama heads and positioned in four secure locations around the 29th floor platform.
The Clauss company robotic panorama heads are capable of 72,000 steps in a single 360 degree arc, and in this case were set to fire four frames a second.
Laptops monitored a live preview of the progress of the shoot, which was accomplished in the teeth of sub-freezing temperatures and occasional 50 mph winds high above London.
The 360Cities photography team of Jeffrey Martin, Tom Mills and Holger Schulze ensured that not a single individual frame from the more than 48,000 planned was missed.
The raw images were then processed over a multi-week period using Fujitsu Technology Solutions’ Celsius R920 workstation with 256GB of RAM and 16 cores at 3.1GHz, and Autopano Giga panorama stitching software from Kolor.
The resulting online interactive version of the photo is presented in multi-layered, tiled resolution that permits zooming in to view extreme details, and is composed of millions of individual image tiles.
p.1 #2 · Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II break record!
Fantastic!
Although I have to admit navigating makes me a bit dizzy. Also the current navigation is not intuitive. I wish I can actually drag the picture. When my pointer moves one way, I hope the picture to move in the same direction instead of the opposite.
p.1 #4 · Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II break record!
A good example of pushing technology to its limits. This being a gear forum, I wonder how the choice of equipment was made. Probably because that's what was own hand, I presume.
p.1 #5 · Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II break record!
That's absolutely awesome!
I can see the top floor of the Connaught Hall residence on Tavistock Square, where I lived in the late seventies. I can see the edge of the awning over the front door of the Marlborough Arms, the closest pub to my Engineering building at UCL - just across the street from what used to be Dillons Book Shop. I can see those buildings too.
p.1 #8 · Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II break record!
Doctorbird wrote:
A good example of pushing technology to its limits. This being a gear forum, I wonder how the choice of equipment was made. Probably because that's what was own hand, I presume.
Db
If the goal was to put as many pixels as possible on every foot of real estate, the choice of the 7D makes sense, but even more pixels could have been put on everything in the scene had a 600/4 or even an 800/5.6 been used.
p.1 #11 · Canon EOS 7D with EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II break record!
Why use a 400 f2.8 without a teleconverter? I've done these with a 400 f5.6 just fine...you want to really up the anty use a 600mm or 800mm lens, just going with higher megapixel cameras is a cop out.
Wish I had a 400 f2.8 II, though. 