No, you won’t be able to take this photo with the Sweep Panorama scene mode on your digital camera or smart phone. Instead Rainforest Expeditions tour director Jeff Cremer visited Peru’s Machu Picchu back in November 2012 and used his Canon EOS 7D 18MP APS-C DSLR with a 100-400mm f/5.6 lens to take 1,920 photos of the famous site.
A Gigapan Epic Pro robotic arm ensured perfect alignment of the pictures. The shooting took 1 hr 44 min., taking into account security guards constantly asking to see his photo permits (because the camera looked professional) and waiting for tourists to clear the area in front of the camera.
Eric Hanson from Xrez Studios stitched the pictures together on a MacPro Hexacore 2.67Ghz with 32GB Ram and OCZ 960GB RevoDrive. Render time was 1.5 hrs. The total resolution of the final image is 297,500 x 87,500 pixels (15.9 gigapixels).
View the image and read an interview of Jeff Cremer at our Featured Site: gigapixelperu.com.
via travelandescape
Making of video