Top 10 Largest Photographs in the World

By Alafoto November-4-2010

With the advent of latest hi-tech digital cameras, powerful lenses, ultra powered computers and advanced image processing technologies, now it’s possible for professional photographers to shoot pictures in great detail. By great detail, it means in Gigapixels!

Take a look at this picture:

What do you see? A so-and-so closeup shot of couple of climbing bolts pierced in the rock. Right?

Now take a look at this second picture:

The above picture is a 77 Gigapixels capture of Arches National Park – Park Avenue Trail Head and the first picture you saw (couple of climbing bolts) was a tiny part of, zoomed, sample snapshot of this gigantic picture. Can you believe it?

Welcome to Gigapixels photography!

A Gigapixel image is a digital image bitmap composed of one billion (10^9 > read: 10 to the power 9) pixels (picture elements), more than 1000 times the information captured by a 1 megapixel (MP) digital camera – 200 times better than my mobile phone’s 5 MP camera – or 83 times better than my Sony Cybershot’s 12 MP digital camera, for that matter. Recent developments have demonstrated the practicality of developing scanning cameras capable of creating a Gigapixel image in a single sweep of a scene.

The following are the Top 10 digital photographs (Gigapixels photographs) that have held the record for being the largest, beginning with the smallest

Important Note: The pictures presented below are the website captures (cropped pictures) of the stated Gigapixels photographs. You have to click the picture to go to the source link and enjoy the picture in full detail. To see these pictures / presentations, you are required to install Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight. You can use the navigation provided in the source site to zoom in / zoom out / move left, right / move up, down / spot the landmark / snapshot. More importantly, you can read all the technical aspects (such as cameras, lenses used, post-processing methods, difficulties involved etc.,) of making of these masterpieces out there.

On images: Left click to go to Website, Right click and choose “View Image” to see larger photo.

Before TOP 10 I would like to mention a Dresden with 26,031,250,000 Pixels and a bit smaller then Paris.

It took 172 minutes on a rooftop to shoot 1655 overlapping 21.6 megapixel images and 94 hours to stitch them together.

10. Paris – 26 Gigapixels:

Paris 26 Gigapixels is an interactive image showing a very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital and its famous monuments, from the Eiffel Tower to the Pantheon. It is a stitching of 2346 single photos. Dive in the image and visit Paris like never before!

9. Swiss Alps – 31 Gigapixels:

Created using 20 picture rows with totally over 2700 single pictures. Enjoy the beauty of Swiss Alps in one of the largest, mind-blowing 360° panoramic view ever!

8. Round Lake, Illinois – 43 Gigapixels:

(Largest image about someone’s back yard | Claimed by: Rongkai Zhao | Photograph of: Round Lake, Illinois | Pixels: 43,943,595,003 | Year: shooting: 2010)

Mr. Zhao claimed this gigapixels photograph as a trail run and fun project! Promised more to come. The total images are 4048 (92 x 44).

7. Dubai – 45 Gigapixels:

The largest photograph of the Dubai appropriately includes ‘Burj Khalifa’ – the tallest building in the world. If it is printed, would be the size of nearly 1,200 billboards. The sweeping shot is actually 4,250 individual shots cobbled together seamlessly with Autopano stitching software.

Robotic panorama devices are making the creation of gigantic photographs easier and easier. Donovan used a Gigapan EPIC Pro to create his image, along with a Canon 7D and 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L at 400mm. After 3.5 hours of shooting, he had 4,250 JPG images that took up 27.5 GB of his 32GB memory card. If the photograph were to be printed, it would result in a print the size of nearly 1,200 billboards.

6. Marburg – 47 Gigapixels:

(Marburg 47 Gigapixels | Claimed by: Peter Lauritis – Polk Systems | Photograph of: Marburg | Pixels: 47,676,298,005 | Year: shooting: 07.2010, public availability: 20.07.2010)

Photographed from the Spiegelslustturm in Marburg – with a height of 36 meters. The photo shows the university town “Marburg an der Lahn” from its most beautiful side. It was made of 5,000 separate photos with 12.3 Megapixel each.

5. Vienna – 50 Gigapixels:

The world’s largest capture of the glorious city Vienna (capital of the Republic of Austria) created from more than 3600 images.

4. Corcovado – 67 Gigapixels:

(Corcovado 67 Gigapixels | Claimed by: RioHK group | Photograph of: Rio de Janeiro | Pixels: 67,821,473,740 | Year: shooting: 08.07.2010, public availability: 22.07.2010)

Full-resolution stitch of this cool panorama taken at the top of the Corcovado mountain near the base of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This digital photograph consists of a total of 6223 pictures.

3. Budapest – 70 Gigapixels:

(70 Billion Pixels Budapest | Claimed by: 360systems Ltd. | Photograph of: Budapest | Pixels: 71,303,841,000 | Year: shooting: 2010)

High definition 360 degree spherical panorama view of Budapest city (capital of Hungary) from the Observation Tower of János Hill. The photo shot over four days and 20,000 test images later, the file was processed to create a single interactive photo. If the finished picture is ever printed, it would make a a poster 156 meters (511 feet) long and 31 meters (101 feet) tall. The amount of paper it would take would cover two apartment blocks at least 10 floors tall! (says Wired)

70 Billion Pixels Budapest is a 70-gigapixel panorama of Budapest created using a setup of two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters. Four days of shooting resulted in 20,000 images, and an additional two days of post-processing produced a single 200 GB file.

Here’s a photograph of the setup used:

2. Arches – 77 Gigapixels:

(Arches National Park – 77 Gigapixels | Claimed by: Rongkai Zhao | Photograph of: Arches National Park – Park Avenue Trail Head | Pixels: 77,966,309,790 | Year: shooting: Sept 6th, 2010, public availability: Sept 18th, 2010)

Astonishing photograph of Arches National Park – Park Avenue Trail Head in eastern Utah. The image set contains 76 columns and 39 rows.

And the World’s largest photograph is… Wait! It’s almost double the size of the previous photo!

1. Sugar Loaf – 152 Gigapixels:

(Sugar Loaf – 0.15 Terapix | Claimed by: RioHK group | Photograph of: Rio de Janeiro | Pixels: 152,407,683,304 | Year: shooting: 20.07.2010, public availability: 28.09.2010)

Unbelievably detailed panoramic View of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) from Sugarloaf Mountain. Created from 12238 pictures and RioHK used Autopano Giga for this masterpiece. What next? They are now planning to break their own record to create a 300+ Gigapixels monster photograph!

Any guesses as to how long it will be until the crown is passed on?

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UPDATE:

PetPixel announced one more biggest photo: 80 Gigapixel 360 Degree Panorama of London is Largest of Its Kind.

This is an 80-gigapixel panoramic photo, made from 7886 individual images. This panorama was shot from the top of the Centre Point building in central London, in the summer of 2010. We hope that the varied sights and energy of London have been captured here in a way never done before, so that you can experience one of the world’s great cities – wherever you may be right now.