Gerald Donovan (gddxb) a 44.88 gigapixeles dubaji panorámaképéről. Meglehetősen fapadosnak hangzik a drezdai német precizitás mellett)

This was only ever intended to be a technical test – I’m making no claims with regards photographic quality or artistic merit!

It was more about exploring the limits of both the hardware and software that is available out there.

(If you want to see other photographs I’ve taken of Dubai, that depending on your view may or may not have slightly more artistic qualities, please do check out my pages on Smugmug at http://gddxb.smugmug.com )

Air quality is not at its best at this time of year in Dubai (this was shot on the morning of 23rd April), and you have to work with what you’re given.

4,250 individual shots taken with a Canon 7D and the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L zoom at 400mm. Total shooting time circa 3 hours 30 minutes, in 37C heat (that’s the temperature in the shade – the camera and lens were almost too hot to touch at the end of this).

Gigapan EPIC Pro.

Autopano Giga software.

Gigapan uploader.

PC – i7-920, 12GB RAM, 2x 300GB Velociraptors (not RAID). On attempting to stitch this the first time, I was told I needed just over a terabyte of scratch space, so I had to go out and buy a 2TB disk and install that as well!

Power and storage:
Amazingly, both the battery in the Gigapan and the one in the 7D lasted out. I had spare camera batteries with me, so wasn’t really worried on that front, but I didn’t know what to expect from the Gigapan’s. My previous record from it was around 3,000 images (across two separate panoramas).

All 4,250 images (.jpg only) managed to fit on a single 32GB CF card, taking up 27.5 GB.

HUGE thanks to South Korean property developer Bando Construction and Engineering for making available the location to shoot this from – Ubora Towers in Business Bay, Dubai.

*edited the date taken field as it was showing the date the stitching was completed, and not the date the photos were taken.*

Megoszt