The 2.5 Gigapixel Picture

I know that face !
I've seen it in just about every forum on ATS!

I'll bet, if someone goes back through some old Clinton White House pics, you'll find that face in the background somewhere...

So this must be what it feels like sitting in the basement at Langley. Anyone want to do this for a living? They have openings as long as you are a Bush supporter.

Holy Crap! I think I just found weapons of mass destruction. Er nevermind, it was just a floating torso.

I did find a Chemical Weapons Manufacturing Plant.






The U.N. should be notified immediately. I call for sanctions.

[edit on 11-23-2004 by ShadowHasNoSource]

But why is it you cant zoom into an object five feet in front of it with the same clarity?

hahahahah verry nice i like the mcdonaldas rip.
personally i hate mcdonalads along with burger king

That picture has definitely been spliced. There is a store on a corner called Panjo, in the left-middle of the picture. Then to the left of that you can see a bicycle wheel just floating on the road and trunk on a car that is misaligned.

But, except for that, this picture gives me an idea for a new version of Where's Waldo!

The flash viewer used says that the software is avail in versions, and all you have to do is drag your photos into the folder and it assembles them for the viewer.

Anyone check out Keyhole.com? Google just aquired them. They are like Terra Server where you can zoom in on aerial photos. Not license plate close but close enough to recognise the neighborhood. Keyhole Light is available for a 7-day look. Some cities are far more detailed than others and they are fairly recent photos as well. You can measure distances and see different countries and even look up your house.

There was a thread about it, here is a link

www.abovetopsecret.com...

i think i am bein paranoid again but if we can get hold of pics like this and laugh and joke at them.what stops aganices looking at anything.big brother is getting closser any one agree

wow I am suprised of the 2,2 gigapixel camera! How big size is a camera like this? And how big spaze will a picture take on the harddrive?

Incredible... unless the clock is wrong this picture was taken at 5 minutes after 3. Found it on a clock tower. I'm off to play a game of where's waldo? Or in this case... where's the naked person. lol

on the REAL website about this picture it explains that it is infact made of around 600 different individual photos put together to give the effect of the 2.2GP one.
The camera used was a standard digital SLR

hehe like someone said before, instead of wheres waldo find the topless chick... lol and give me the directions :p

I don't think there is a naked chick lol. I don't see her anywheres. This really shows you the kind of people (guys) on ATS

Lol, cool. Hey, how come the cars at the center left side of the pic looks a lil bit stretched?Or maybe its just my imagination...

It looks like they get the same sort of mud we've been getting lately too (looking outside at the state of my car) ...

That link has clearly provided much entertainment all 'round.

heres the proper site for it
www.tpd.tno.nl...


The photo
To display the photo a Flash viewer SWF control is used which requires Macromedia Flash Player v6 (which is a free download). Please check your security restrictions, since some computers might block the installation/usage of third party software. If this happens, reduce your security restrictions temporarily.

Without a broadband connection or if there is a lot of traffic on the server, the online viewer might be a little slow. Such a large amount of data is involved that we had to make a trade-off between image quality and transmission speed. To keep the transmission speed reasonable, we used JPEG compression on the image data and accepted some loss of resolution at maximum zoom.

Use the toolbar buttons below the image to zoom in and out or move around. Click on the image to centre the region of interest and move the slider to change the zoom level.

The approach
The 2.5 gigapixel image is a composition of images rather than a single image. TNO developed a sophisticated approach to merge the many images - all 600 of them. The photos were taken automatically using a modern consumer camera and a powerful 400 mm lens. The camera was positioned automatically using a computer-controlled pan-tilt unit. Each of the 600 photos overlaps, an arrangement that ensured very accurate positioning and enabled us to stitch the images automatically into one giant image of 78,797 by 31,565 pixels. The most difficult tasks were processing these large images and comparing the overlapping images.

Long 'exposure time'
All 600 photos were taken over a period of 1 hour and 15 minutes. Taking a single photo and moving the camera to a new position took approximately seven seconds. Thanks to the long 'exposure time', some interesting artefacts are visible at the edges of the various photos. They include a parked car that seems to merge into a bus and a walking torso.

After the photographic session, considerable effort was required to calculate the final result. It took about 24 hours to compare the overlapping photos and optimise them. Stitching the photos into one image required the capacity of 5 high-end pcs for three full days.

The final result allows the viewer to zoom in on the city of Delft and its surroundings at a resolution never seen before.

Technical details
Below are some facts and figures about the gigapixel image:

Final image dimensions: 78.797 x 31.565 pixels
Number of pixels in final image: 2,487,227,305 (2.5 gigapixel)
Final image file format: 24-bit colour bitmap
Final image file size: 7.5 GBytes
Number of source images: 600
Number of pixels in source images: 3,537,408,000 (600 images * 3008*1960)
Lens focal length: 400 mm (equivalent to 600 mm on a 35 mm camera)
Aperture: F22, Shutter speed: 1/100, ISO: 125
Horizontal field of view of final image: 93 degrees
Time required to capture component images: 1 hour and 12 minutes
Time required to match overlapping images: 20 hours
Time required to optimise project: 4 hours
Time required to compose the image: 3 full days using 5 high-end pcs
Time required to blend seams / correct misalignments / finalise image: 2 days

Detailed approach
General strategy
One of the first steps was to decide how to take the photo. Given the 2.5 gigapixel target and the 6 megapixel resolution of many digital consumer cameras, it was apparent from the start that hundreds of photos would have to be taken and processed. From day one it was decided, therefore, that the only option was a fully automatic shooting procedure, i.e. moving the camera automatically using a motorised and computer-controlled pan-and-tilt unit.

Location
The location had to satisfy constraints like attractive view, sufficient height and easy accessibility. Since such natural locations are rare in the Netherlands, the Electrical Engineering department building on the Delft University of Technology campus was chosen. This building provides a clear field of view from a height of almost 100 m. No nearby buildings obstruct the view.



location of shooting

File formats
After some initial experiments it became clear that existing panorama stitching tools and file formats were not capable of handling multi-gigapixel images. A simple example is the TIF file format, which only supports files smaller than 4 GBytes due to the 32-bit offsets used in its tables. An uncompressed 2 gigapixel photo is at least 6 Gbytes (3 bytes per pixel) and therefore too big for the TIF file format. Together with the definition of a new, large-image file format, many existing software tools and scripts had to be rewritten.

Image storage during shooting
Taking hundreds of photos in RAW format (necessary for later processing) in a single run requires gigabytes of storage space in the camera. The option to change memory cards during shooting was rejected as this would lead to disturbances of the motion platform while swapping the cards. Another option was to use a single high-capacity memory card (8 GBytes cards are now available) but this requires FAT32 support from the camera). In the end, it was decided to use a high-speed FireWire link between camera and computer and store the photos on a laptop computer. Camera and lens The camera used was a Nikon D1x. It provides 6 megapixel resolution and a FireWire interface with remote-control capabilities. This digital SLR camera needed a long telephoto lens to provide enough detail in the final image and to prevent us ending up with an extremely wide field of view. The lens used was a Nikon AF VR Nikkor 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6D ED. As the digital SLR camera has a 1.5x magnification factor, this lens compares to a 600 mm lens on a 'normal' 35mm SLR camera. The lens comes with the option of vibration reduction technology but this technology was not used. During tests the vibration reduction did not improve image quality when the camera was mounted on a tripod.

Motion platform
The motion platform consisted of a pan-and-tilt head to rotate the camera around two axes (left-right, up-down), and a motion controller to control the motors on the pan-and-tilt head. A Dspace system was used to control the motors while the photo was being taken. While this system offers rapid development, it is voluminous, very expensive and requires additional computers. The dSpace system was replaced recently with a compact and much cheaper 2-axis motor controller from Galil.

Tools and equipment
Below is a complete list of the hardware and software tools and equipment used during the making of the 2.5 gigapixel photo.

Hardware components:

Camera: Nikon D1x
Lens: Nikon AF VR Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED
Tripod: Manfrotto 755B
Pan and tilt head: Camera Turret Company Digital PT20 head
Motors, gear-box, encoders and amplifiers: Maxon
Power supply: Traco Power TIS 150-124
Motion controller: dSpace modular hardware, later replaced by Galil DMC-1425
Computers: two standard laptops and various desktop computers
Software:

Remote camera control and image conversion: Nikon Capture
Motion control: dSpace Real-Time Interface together with MathWorks Matlab and MathWorks Simulink
Motion control: Galil DMCWIN API
Control point generation: Autopano
Panorama assembler: PTAssembler
Lens deformations: Panorama Tools 2.6.ML12
Speed improvement: Faster Pano12.dll
Blending: Enblend
Scripting: MathWorks Matlab
On-line viewer: Zoomify
Several integrating software modules for camera control, motion platform control and overall control developed by TNO.