Gigapan Goodness
For photo enthusiasts, you’ll want to see the post over at Infodisiac, where they talk about the Gigapan, a robotic device to precisely snap tiled photos with a simple consumer-grade digital camera. The resulting images can be stitched together to make massive, greater than 50 megapixel images. Inspired by the famous Obama inauguration photo using this technique, Wikipedian Richard Palmer describes how this could be great for creating photos in Wikimedia Commons. [ref]
Best of all, the Gigapan costs less than US$300 right now as a “beta” price. I’m tempted…
But I fear setting up this rig in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square or Forbidden City would get me carted away by security. It doesn’t look much different than digital surveying equipment or a military-grade precision guidance device.
January 25th, 2009 19:01
Andrew, Richard made the second picture but is not a wikipedian as far as I know.
Here is a gigapanned building (let’s make this a verb right now, it’s bound to happen anyway) you shouldn’t miss: Ginger and Fred
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=7677
Cheers, Erik Zachte
January 26th, 2009 07:57
Your post made me just realize my Infodisiac blog never mentions my name except on the Planet Wikimedia blog aggregator. Gonna fix that
February 6th, 2009 21:36
[...] home inspections remotely in their pajamas? I’m not holding my breath, but then again, at a $300 introductory price, I am tempted to take the gigapan for a spin [...]