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Author Topic: Largest Digital Pic in the world  (Read 8223 times)

Steve Kerman

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« on: November 16, 2004, 06:18:44 pm »

No, it is definitely not the biggest digital pic in the world.  It's not even close.

More than that I can't say.
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Madness

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« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2004, 05:02:26 am »

or a composite of the visible universe
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BJL

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« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2004, 10:57:50 am »

Quote
You'd think they'd pick something more interesting to photograph though wouldn't you?

I don't think that you could really refocus for every shot as you'd almost certainly have a problem stitching frames. Surely you could only do this via a fixed focus position (infinity or hyperfocal).
They actually acknowledge in their description that suitable subjects are hard to find in the Netherlands! Still, it is the classic "brick wall" resolution test, once you zoom way in.


About focus, I disagree for two reasons, but am not completely sure.

Mainly, depth of field. Think what would happen if you focused the 400mm, f/22 lens used here at one distance and then photographed various subjects at the wide range of distances occuring in this image: could you get them all in focus as sharp as seen here? For the D1X, using this DOF calculator
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
with its suggested circle of confusion of 20 microns, the hyperfocal distance is 354 metres, and focusing at that distance gives an in-focus region from 177 metres to infinity. Bear in mind that at the limits of this standard DOF, sharpness is below optimal, because the CoC of 20 microns is distinctly bigger than the actual resolution limit of the D1x's pixel size.

The nearest subjects seem to be less than 177 metres away, and it all looks sharp from there to "infinity", so there seems to be more DOF than a single common focal distance could achieve.


Also, they acknowledge some noticable patching glitches, and the focus changes on neighboring frames would generally be slight enough to fit within these imperfections.
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gryffyn

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« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2004, 10:01:42 am »

"Dutch research institute TNO (http://www.tno.nl/homepage.html ) has unveiled what it believes is the largest digital photograph ( http://www.tpd.tno.nl/smartsite966.html) in the world. The image contains 2.5 gigapixels or 7.5 gigabyte worth of data. It is composed of 600 single images shot by a computer-controlled pan-tilt unit in 7 second intervals. Afterwards, all photos where stiched together using the capacity of 5 high-end pc's in about 24 hours time."

Just an amusing tidbit...
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Graham Welland

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« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2004, 04:06:15 pm »

You'd think they'd pick something more interesting to photograph though wouldn't you?

I don't think that you could really refocus for every shot as you'd almost certainly have a problem stitching frames. Surely you could only do this via a fixed focus position (infinity or hyperfocal). I'm sure that there's a fair effort to ensure that the lens is corrected for each shot too otherwise I'm sure that would become a visible artifact.
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Graham

Tim Gray

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« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2004, 07:35:34 pm »

so when does your NDA expire (hypothetically speaking, of course)
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Edward

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« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2004, 08:31:51 pm »

I assume the military has a digital pic of the entire earth in high res from the satellite cameras. That has to be the biggest.  Just the earth sat pics you can get commercially are bigger than this image.
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francofit

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« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2004, 08:41:32 am »

Hello,
to my knowledge the "GIGAPXL PROJECT" is the most interesting endeavour in relation to public (non military classified) available project on ultra-high-definition landscape image capture.

- GIGAPXL PROJECT site

- GIGAPXL PROJECT Overview

See the awesome samples images   here.


It occurred to me to stumble into the "GIGAPXL" site only very recently-
after the first 2 minutes of reviewng images and project explanations I was left speechless...

Ciao
Franco
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Franco

Edward

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« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2004, 08:59:56 am »

What is so exciting about this one is that it is just a large format camera with a really good lens.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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« Reply #9 on: November 17, 2004, 10:31:16 am »

I think they were looking for a brick wall to photograph, but they couldn't find one big enough.    
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gwarrellow

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« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2004, 02:29:49 pm »

Give me Max Lyons' gigapixel image of Bryce Canyon any day

http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm

Not as big but done over a year ago.  Claimed to be the first to break the gigapixel barrier.  If you are interested in producing complex panoramas then his site is definitely worth exploring

Graham
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Ray

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« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2004, 06:54:46 pm »

I don't see any reason why focussing cannot be slightly adjusted when stitching several rows of images. It's really a matter of not overdoing it. Stitching just 2 rows with a significant adjustment of focussing could be very obvious. One would get a sort of wave effect.

One should bear in mind that the shorter edge and the corners of a full frame 35mm are often (well, always) less sharp than the centre, and the same applies to the cropped format DSLRs, but to a lesser extent.

However, I must confess, I haven't tried this approach yet  :D .
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BJL

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« Reply #12 on: November 16, 2004, 02:10:33 pm »

The link does not work for me due to the trailing parenthesis, so here it is again:
http://www.tpd.tno.nl/smartsite966.html

Cutting the number of frames down to something less that 600 might give a useful approach for some kinds of large format photography, so I am glad to see an attempt at automation of the taking of multiple frames with a tilt-pan head, as opposed to pursuing gigi-pixel or even 100MP+ sensors. For one thing, I cannot see any lens having the resolution to do it in one shot (here it would have to be a 400mm ultra-wide with vast image circle).

For another, I have serious doubts about depth of field: I assume that the camera was refocused for each of the 600 individual frames, but I wish they mentioned this explicitly.
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Steve Kerman

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« Reply #13 on: November 16, 2004, 07:45:07 pm »

Let's just say that the probability that you will ever in your lifetime see an image that was captured by this particular system is substantially smaller than the probability that you will win the lottery.
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drew

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« Reply #14 on: November 17, 2004, 09:19:47 am »

'exciting'? Who cares? What a totally boring photograph. You can tell it was taken by a nerd.
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BJL

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« Reply #15 on: November 19, 2004, 05:36:28 pm »

I was wrong about the focus: I emailed the site and got the folowing response.

"The focus of the camera was manually fixed on the hyper focal distance throughout the entire session.

Best,
Jurgen den Hartog"


So it appears that by keeping the nearest foreground objects a healthy distance from the camera [over 100 metres?], using a wide field of view [20mm equivlalent here?] and an aperture small enough [f/22] to be about at the point where diffraction limits the resolution, you can get almost uniform "2 giga-pixel" level of resolution.
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