Paris 26 Gigapixels – Interactive Virtual Tour

After spending too much time looking at the Sevilla 111 Gigapixel image I decided to find out what other huge images of cities had been assembled. It’s an interesting race that’s going on to create the largest image and I keep on finding more as I wander through the internet. The latest largest image is a photograph of Shanghai at 272 Gigapixels that was shot before the Sevilla image but released after. How is that for marketing!!

Paris 26 Gigapixels Interactive Virtual Tour

One that caught my eye was a well done 26 Gigapixel image of Paris that was photographed in September of 2009 and finally put online in March 2010. It was shot by French photographer Arnaud Frich using a custom-made panoramic head and 2 Canon 5D Mark II DSLR cameras with 300mm f4.0 lenses and two 2x telephoto converters. The 2346 images of the project were assembled using Kolor Autopano Giga software. At the time these 26 gigapixels were the world record for image size! It should be noted that there are different records for image sizes and these huge images are comprised of thousands of images. As might be expected the technical challenges of these images is extreme, a great write-up is at the Paris 26 Gigapixels Blog.

Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower

The web site goes beyond many others in that it’s more of an educational tool with information available on many of the Paris landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre Museum and 18 others. Overall the camera vantage point is excellent for viewing Paris but I do wish that the Seine River could have been included. Maybe next time a photo from the top of the Eiffel Tower? It’s a paltry 26 gigapixels but the technical quality really makes up for this. How many pixels do we really need?