The largest seamless photograph made in a single exposure was made using a Southern California jet hangar transformed into a giant camera. The most recent claim to the largest image stitched together was by the Canadian Museum of Civilization.[1]
On 3 August 2015, the longest photographic negative was measured 79.37 m (260.4 ft) wide. This negative was created by Esteban Pastorino Díaz (Spain) by driving 32.8 km (20.4 mi) on the 2nd Ring Road (Beijing). Esteban Pastorino Díaz also holds the previous record, a negative measured 39.54 m (129.7 ft) wide. He used a custom-built panoramic slit camera on 13 June 2010. The negative is a panorama of major streets in Buenos Aires, Argentina, captured by the slit camera while mounted on the roof of a moving car.[2]
Largest seamless example
Orthorectified negative (bottom) and positive (top) representations of The Great Picture, partially obscured by two people.
Claimed by: The Legacy Project; (Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada)
Photograph of: control tower and runways at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Orange County, California
Dimensions: 32 feet (9.8 m) high × 111 feet (34 m) wide (9.75h × 33.83w meters). Aspect ratio is 3.47:1.
On July 12, 2006, six photographers (Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada) unveiled what is currently the world's largest camera and photograph.[3]
The 3,552-square-foot (330.0 m2) photograph was made to mark the end of 165 years of film/chemistry-based photography and the start of the age of digital photography. It was taken using a decommissioned Marine Corps jet hangar (Building #115 at El Toro) transformed into the world's largest camera to make the world's largest picture. The hangar-turned-camera recorded a panoramic image of what was on the other side of the door using the centuries-old principle of "camera obscura" or pinhole camera. An image of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station appeared upside down and flipped left to right on film after being projected through the tiny hole in the hangar's metal door. The "film" is a 32 feet (9.8 m) by 111 feet (34 m) piece of white fabric covered in 20 gallons (75.71 liters) of light-sensitive emulsion as the "negative".
After exposing the fabric for 35 minutes the image was developed by 80 volunteers using a giant custom-made tray of vinyl pool liner. Development employed 600 gallons (2271 liters) of black-and-white developer solution and 1,200 gallons (4542 liters) of fixer pumped into the tray by ten high volume pumps. Print washing used fire hoses connected to two fire hydrants.[4]
Largest example assembled from multiple pieces
Name of project/picture: Unknown (Grand Hall diorama background)
Photographers: Rob d'Estrube assisted by Dirk Heydemann of Destrube Photography of Victoria, B.C., Canada
The scene was originally produced on 6x6 cm transparency film shot with a Hasselblad 80mm lens in many overlapping sections. 80 rolls of film were used over several sites with this scene being finally chosen. The site is the estuary of Nasparti Bay at the base of the Brooks Peninsula on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Shot[clarification needed] in 1987 or 1988 to be ready for the opening of the museum in 1989. The installation is actually two scrims of identical size, one behind the other in mirror image to give the viewers a 3-dimensional experience while walking beside the diorama.
Within the Canadian Museum of History, one wall of the massive Grand Hall is composed of a scrim covered by a photo of a forest. The photo is about 100 by 15 m (328 by 49 ft).[1]
The following are the digital photographs that have held the record for being the largest in terms of pixel count, beginning with the largest in chronological order (note: large digital images out of chronological order or lacking milestone significance are moved to acknowledgment section).
Most instantes are digital image mosaics obtained via image stitching for interactive visualization (VR photos).
Kuala Lumpur 846 gigapixels (2014)
Photograph of: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Year: photographed in 2014; published 2015
Achieved by: Tan Sri Dato' Sri Paduka Dr Lim Kok Wing and Limkokwing University of Creative Technology International
Photographed by: The Team at Centre for Content Creation Sdn Bhd
Pixels: 846,071,539,488
The final image was the result of combining over 31,000 individual images in a panorama.[5]
Paris 26 Gigapixels is an interactive image showing a view of the French capital and its famous monuments, from the Eiffel Tower to the Pantheon. It was shot from the Church of Saint-Sulpice by photographer Arnaud Frich using a CLAUSS RODEON VR Head HD panoramic head and 2 Canon 5D Mark II DSLR cameras with 300mm f4.0 lenses and two 2x tele converter (equivalent 600mm f8.0). The 2346 images of the project were then assembled using Kolor Autopano Giga software. The website was created using several technologies: Kolor Autopano Tour, KRpano and Microsoft Research's HDview.[15]
Year: shooting: October 2009 / public availability: December 2009
This image, when published in December 2009, was the largest fully spherical panoramic photo in the world. It is 192,000 pixels wide and 96,000 pixels tall. When printed, it is 16 meters (53 feet) long at regular photographic quality (300dpi). It was shot in early October 2009 from the top of the Zizkov TV Tower in Prague, Czech Republic in collaboration with Prague 3 town hall. Canon 5D MKII digital SLR camera and a 200mm lens were used. Hundreds of shots were shot over a few hours; these shots were then stitched together on a computer over the following few weeks.[16]
Largest season image in the world - Ilmenau (Germany) 18 Gigapixel (2009)
Name of project/picture: Largest season photo in the world
This is the first gigapixel image of any Indian city and this is the first and largest digital interactive image in India. This image is a panorama of 1456 individual shots stitched together.
Shot with Canon 550D and Canon 400mm 5.6 lens and robotic panoramic head. Anyone can access the website and experience an interactive tour of Udaipur.
The 16.1 Gigapixel size was reached by HAL9000 Srl. The project "The Last Supper" was claimed to be the largest digital panoramic photo. It is a stitched photograph created merging 1677 shots from a single point into one photograph, each shot 12.2 Megapixel in size. Captured with a Nikon D2s Camera on a customized CLAUSS RODEON VR Head panoramic head.
The 13 Gigapixel size was reached by Gerard Maynard. The 2045 images were taken with a Nikon D2X with 300 mm lens mounted on a modified Peace River Studios PixOrb. The stitching and exporting was done automatically by Autopano Pro.
The 8.6 Gigapixel size was reached by HAL9000 Srl. The project Parete Gaudenziana was claimed to be the largest digital panoramic photo. It is a stitched photograph created by merging 1145 shots from a single point into one photograph, each shot 12.2 Megapixel big.[17]
The 7.74 Gigapixel size was reached by Peter Miko. The 798 images were taken with a Canon EOS-1D X Mark II and Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Lens + Canon Extender EF 1.4x III.
The previous record belonged to Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. One of these attempts was by Dutch company TNO. The project dubbed "Gigapix" was claimed to be the largest digital panoramic photo, although it is a stitched photograph by merging hundreds of small sections into one photograph. The photograph is 78,797 by 31,565 pixels large. It was taken on a Nikon D1X camera.[18][19][20]
The previous record belonged to Max Lyons of Gigapixel Images. He had at one stage claimed to have created the largest photo. It consisted of 196 images that were stitched together. Since then this claim has been surpassed by that of the TNO attempt. TNO's Gigapix is 2.5 times larger.[21]
Portrait of a Coral Reef (1999)
Name of project/picture: Portrait of a Coral Reef
Claimed by: Jim Hellemn
Photograph of: Bloody Bay Wall Coral Reef in Cayman Islands
Dimensions: 76,934px (W) × 23,010px (H)
Size: 4.95GB
Pixels: 1,770,251,340
Year: 1999
The previous record may have belonged to Jim Hellemn of Blue Ocean Art. In 1999, Hellemn created a 1.77 gigapixel underwater photocomposite image, which was designed to facilitate life-size reproduction of a 20 ft high by 70 ft wide section of Bloody Bay Wall, a vertical coral reef wall in the Cayman Islands. The image consisted of over 300 images that were manually stitched together from 4000ppi drum scans of Fuji Provia 100 transparency film. To make the image, a grid of 280 frames was photographed with 30% overlap to accurately cover the reef wall with full-spectrum light revealing the natural color and detail of the reef. Additional frames of marine life carefully photographed in the same grid composited in place to complete the scene. The on-site photography, requiring 23 dives and over 12 hours underwater to complete, was accomplished over a ten-day period by Jim Hellemn, with assistants Larry Hellemn and Peter Neubauer, using a neutrally-buoyant camera platform Hellemn designed specifically for the project. The post production of the image was completed in six months using multiple Macintosh G4 computers at Photographix in Poway, California, a digital graphics company owned by Hellemn.
A zoomable version of the image was made available to the public in 2000 using the ER Mapper's ECW (file format) and Image Web Server software on a site operated by Fugro-Pelagos, allowing visitors to explore the life-size image. The project and the techniques used by Hellemn inspired researchers at Miami University to use similar methods to produce wide-coverage video mosaics to study coral reefs.[22] The image was published in the October 2001 issue of National Geographic Magazine, "Portrait of a Coral Reef".
Large print of conventional sized photograph
Sea Containers House decorated for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.
^Tim Barribeau (February 22, 2013). "London Photo Sets Record For Gigapixel Panorama | Popular Photography". Popphoto.com. Retrieved February 25, 2013. [...] a 320-gigapixel panorama of London has just gone live. Shot by 360 Cities, the image was taken up BT Tower at the end of the 2012 London Olympic Games. Comprised of more than 48,000 images, stitched together over the course of months, it's the largest of its kind.
^Iddo Genuth (February 20, 2013). "World Record For Panoramic Photo - 320 GigaPixel". Thefutureofthings.com. Retrieved February 25, 2013. [...] made out of no less than 48,640 images. All picture [sic] making the panorama were taken over a period of 3 days, [...]
^Haque, Aizaz (February 20, 2013). "BT Tower Breaks World Record With A 320-Gigapixel Photo". Ubergizmo. Retrieved February 25, 2013. [...] came from four Canon EOS 7D cameras. Lenses used to capture the images were EF 400mm f/2.8 IS II USM lenses and Extender EF 2x III teleconverters operated by Rodeon VR Head ST robotic panorama heads.
^ abcde"Shanghai Skyline - Stitched From 12,000 Pictures". GigaPans. Retrieved February 5, 2013. The shooting started at 8:30am, with an average of 2.4 seconds per image, I took 12,000 images and finished shooting before dusk.
^"Making of" (part 1, part 2, part 3). Paris 26 Gigapixels. March 11, 2010. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
^Martin, Jeffrey (December 18, 2009). "Prague 18 Gigapixels – How was it made?". 360Cities – Panoramic Photography Blog.
^"Sea Containers House". Artel Scaffolding Ltd. February 2013. Retrieved 19 May 2023. ... Initially, we had 8 weeks to complete the North elevation scaffold to provide the scaffold to hang the almost 2-tonne banner showing the picture of the Royal Family. This was required to be erected in time for the Royal Jubilee Procession and with the eyes of the world being on the River Thames in June 2012, this date was not negotiable ...