From the blog post, it looks like this could be done by anybody with a good SLR, lens, robot mount, and lots of time.

Also, let the "wtf am I looking at" hunt begin:

http://i.imgur.com/Ibmo5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Tjxfd.jpg

Actually, it's not that easy (to do well, at least).

18Gpix with a 9Mpix camera means 2000 exposures. Steady-state shooting rate for most digital cameras once the buffer is full is about 1 shot/s, so that means it would take at least half an hour. (And it's doubtful a robot mount could move that fast.)

During that time, the Sun will move significantly and unless you have a completely clear sky some clouds will likely move in front of the Sun. You'll never get a good stitch.

simple:

many professional cameras (20+ mpix) used by many photographers to take pictures of their appropriate sections

She's trying to tan and apparently really ambivalent about the height and weather?

A lot of "shock" photography is like that. I don't mean shock in the "shockumentary" sense but rather in the sense that you cannot easily reproduce the photograph without gear and access. HDRs are similar.

Sadly, shock photography does very well on the internets. Photos like this, while of value as reference and of some interest, are ultimately devoid of any artistic content and basically show off a process and a location, not a photographer's ability.

I take pictures to "show off locations", not to toot my own horn...

Besides, taking these are not trivial, so it does show some "ability". It's difficult to get the lighting consistent, for example. But maybe you only value artistic ability?

> Besides, taking these are not trivial, so it does show some "ability".

Technical ability. As in, the ability to operate devices to their specifications. There can be insights in this which have yet to be widely learned. For example, the recent rise in popularity of high speed cameras as a form of motion-still photography (http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2009/10/13/a-new-kind-of-photo...) is a good example.

But panoramas? While there have been a lot of advances in panorama stitching software, but as for technique, the only real recent change has been an increase in the use of the technique for gathering ultra-high res images (or ultra-shallow depth of field) for more conventional shots.

> But maybe you only value artistic ability?

To be honest? In this age of pushbutton HDR, cameras that can recover from 2 stop underexposures in post, and a digital darkroom that can completely change your photo infinitely... Artistic talent is one of the few techniques that cannot be bought, it has to be learned.

And this piece, while worthy of praise as a difficult shot is not of particular artistic value. To me, anyways.

The best part is that you don't have to look at the tower:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDi%C5%BEkov_Television_Tow...

A communist-era classic.

What? The TV tower is awesome. Especially the crawling baby sculptures..

absolutely amazing! shame I haven't seen it before

It's rather nice, especially lit up at night: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2204/1526227926_8e51b8090a.jp...

26 GigaPixel image http://www.dresden-26-gigapixels.com/dresden26GP

The additional details are pretty interesting also:

About: http://blog.360cities.net/the-largest-panorama-in-the-world/

How it was made: http://blog.360cities.net/prague-18-gigapixels-how-it-was-ma...

The buildings are of remarkably uniform height. My guess is either limitation of building material at the time of greatest construction, or zoning ("cannot be higher than the church").

Even the modern buildings are mostly low.

At the same time each building is different in style, something that many US cities lack.

In the center. Outside? Not so much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panelák :-)

Yes, I was rather startled by the housing-development-writ-large look of much of the view, as I'd only seen pictures of older Prague architecture before.

This could be a great tourism tool. "Hey check out our cool city and its architecture." Makes me want to visit Prague. Looks like a cool city.

There are a few other cities I would like to see this of.

Don't forget about google street view. It doesn't provide the nice bird's eye view that this does, but there is street level coverage of a good chunk of the city.

Yes, if you are in Europe, you should go and visit Prague.

very impressive! zero obfuscation though...

How long until technology gets to the point where this can all be done in real time, giving powers that be absolutely insane CCTV monitoring abilities?

This resolution isn’t coming in real time any time soon (i.e. within the next 10 or 15 years), until we have cameras based on a different optical principle than a flat sensor with a set of glass lenses in front of it: Using the sizes of sensors we can currently manufacture for any reasonable kind of price, we can take a picture of this resolution with each exposure having about a maximum of about a 20 degree field of view. And since current sensors are not all that far off of saturating the detail that lenses can resolve, the only way to improve this will be either to make larger sensors, use arrays of cameras (or turn the cameras around very quickly), or use some other kind of optical system. In not too long, I suppose we might be able to capture data continuously, as a video, and then use software (computationally expensive fancy math) to increase the resolution beyond that in any particular frame. But that's still not going to get us close to 18 gigapixel spherical panoramas.

Especially considering something like this takes lots of time just to take the stills. (For instance, on the Dresden panorama linked elsewhere on this page, if you look along the bridge on the left side, you can see two different appearances by the same woman cycling.) Real-time at this quality is a very long way away.

Is there a reason why the panorama isn't joined cleanly at the closest zoom level? (Northeast direction, facing Vysočany.) I don't know how hard is it to make, though.

I don't know, but it simply seems weird to see prague for this point. While my old office is almost across street from my home, it looks incredibly far on this photo.

Very interesting. Did you notice the dupicate guy?

Look on the left of the circular park in the middle of the round about. The guy with the knapsack is duplicated.

There are a ton of stitching errors. I imagine the algorithm chosen was optimized for time, not for accuracy.

Pretty incredible stuff. I'm glad they didn't have the treasure hunt clues up yet or I probably wouldn't have lost the better part of my morning looking at this.