It's not easy to encompass a clear vista of well over a million people in one image, but a new panoramic mount, called the GigaPan Epic, appears ready for the job.
Demonstrating the capabilities of the new motorized mount in spectacular fashion this January was photographer David Bergman, who created a monumental image of President Barack Obama's inaugural address. The panorama became an overnight sensation as one of the most viewed photos on the internet. In the first five days after the historic occasion, more than 2 million people in 186 countries viewed the image.
Though it looks like a typical one-shot panorama, the image was actually shot with a Canon G10 camera connected to a GigaPan Epic System, which enabled Bergman to make 220 separate exposures of the scene. The GigaPan software then took nearly seven hours to stitch the images together to create the illusion of a single image.
Bergman made four and a half sets of photos in about 15 minutes before the batteries died. For the final image, he selected all 157 frames from his fifth set and 63 frames from the fourth to complete the entire scene. The result is a file measuring 59,783 x 24,658 pixels, or 1,474 megapixels, almost two gigabytes in TIF format.
The final image produced such stunning clarity that viewers turned it into an international game of, Where's Waldo.‚ Visitors to gigapan.org can use navigational controls to zoom in and pan around the fine detail of the photo and identify many of the faces in the crowd, estimated total 1 million to 1.8 million attendees.
Prints of the photo may be purchased online at DavidBergman/Pictopia.com.