With the power of Internet, you have a chance to learn at least a new thing everyday, or at least about one new thing. A forwarded email I received today included a link to a picture from Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony. Nothing extraordinary about that, but the extraordinary thing about this one is that you can zoom in and look at thousands of faces in close-up. I searched deeper and found that this was called “gigapan technology”. This had to be “the thing I learned” for today.
Look at the following picture. Do you think you can make out anybody’s face in that crowd? Now click on the picture. It will open in a new window, then you can zoom in and out, pan in all directions, and look at the faces of millions of people, up close. The zoom and pan works similar to what you can do with Google Maps or Google Earth. Use the mouse scroll, or the on-screen zoom buttons.
Panoramic picture stitching is not new. I have seen group pictures being stitched, but this is awesome. The above picture is made by stitching together 220 images and totals 56,646 X 27,788 or 1.57 gigapixels. It is done using a robotic camera mount called the Epic, and according to the gigapan website:
Simply attach your camera to it, then the Epic directs you through the steps to capture a gigapixel image. You set the upper left and lower right corners of your panorama, then the Epic works out how many photos your camera will need to take, hundreds or even thousands, and automatically organizes them into the correct rows and columns needed to capture you panorama. The robotic arm clicks away, capturing amazing detail in a short amount of time.
The camera mount costs $379 as of today. Not bad for the results it can get you. The gigapan.org website hosts the panoramic pictures people take and post. Some awesome pictures can be seen there. See the following from Kodak Center in LA on Oscar night two weeks back? I was able to locate the Slumdog Millionaire team in this crowd. Irrfan Khan, Danny Boyle, A.R. Rahman, Madhur Mittal. Try it and let me know if you found them by posting a comment .
Look at the following picture from the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. You can zoom into the intricacies of designs made on the walls.
According to this page on NASA’s website, it is the same technology that is used by Mars rovers to image the red planet.
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Tags: gigapan, obama, Oscar, panoramic, photo, Slumdog Millionaire
