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Kolor technology strikes again & breaks the world record! Discover the 320-gigapixel panorama of London shot by Jeffrey Martin (BT Tower, 360cities)

Thursday 21 February 2013

Record-breaking 320-gigapixel panorama of London

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 final image, made up from nearly 48,000 individual photos stitched together with the help of Autopano Giga software from Kolor, shows a full 360 degree view of London in incredible detail. If printed at normal resolution, the photo would be 98 meters long (323 feet) and 23 meters high (77 feet) – almost as big as Buckingham Palace.

Record-breaking 320-gigapixel panorama of London

The 320 gigapixel panorama was photographed by Jeffrey Martin, Holger Schulze and Tom Mills (from expert panoramic photography firm 360Cities.net) and then subsequently created by Jeffrey Martin.

Photographers: Jeffrey Martin, Holger Schulze and Tom Mills

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

This screenshot taken from Autopano Giga software, represents only a quarter of the final image

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.

The image shows a full 360 degree view of London in incredible detail

Learn more about the London panorama

Download & try Autopano Giga 3

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7 Responses to “Kolor technology strikes again & breaks the world record! Discover the 320-gigapixel panorama of London shot by Jeffrey Martin (BT Tower, 360cities)”

  1. Marty Says:
    March 26th, 2013 at 2:56 pm

    Stunning work guys! super impressive. Why do all the skyscrapers and antennas have halos?

  2. Ryan Says:
    March 26th, 2013 at 9:22 am

    Holy smoke, I will want to know what dpi of your every picture and which computer you using? mine comp must explode if calculating this project!

  3. Rajko Says:
    March 25th, 2013 at 11:58 am

    Very well done work. Anyhow, I prefer that not 40% of the pixel were sky over London. You realy do not need 120 Gpix there :-)

    Best wishes

    Rajko

  4. Bryan Says:
    March 25th, 2013 at 10:58 am

    congrats guys! Whoha! Have you ever seen a printed panorama of yadegar asisi? i think it’s quiete bigger. however… grrrreat work!!! i’m lovin’ it!

  5. Jeffrey Martin Says:
    February 22nd, 2013 at 6:46 pm

    Hi Jason,

    Actually, Alfred Zhao’s image is only 114 gigapixels, the reported size of 272 gigapixels is untrue. If you check the statistics of his shoot, it will show that it is the same number of images as each of our 4 cameras shot.

    Our 4 cameras shot 4 separate panoramas, it is true, however, these 4 panoramas are joined together into a single panorama.

    cheers,
    Jeffrey

  6. Jason Says:
    February 22nd, 2013 at 2:36 am

    This is an amazing, superb accomplishment. The images are very high detail and the level of effort is astonishing!

    It is, however, actually 5 separate panoramas. There are four quadrants taken from each direction of the compass off the tower, but they are not all merged into a single image – the viewing software (krpano) is switching between five image pyramids and the edges of each pyramid do not properly line up as the cameras are in different vantage points.

    This really is not breaking the ‘world record’ any more than Google Maps map of the world is the largest image. Here is a forum post@ Gigapan in which I discuss this topic: http://www.gigapan.com/forums/117/topics/359

    I feel that Alfred Zhao is still the record holder for a single image stitch with this 92 Gigapixel image http://gigapan.com/gigapans/95290

    This BT London is 4 separate 80 Gigapixel images that happen to line up somewhat. Still absolutely amazing on the exportability factor, but not the world record.

  7. ian Says:
    February 21st, 2013 at 1:18 pm

    its superb

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