Gigapixel panoramas are the fashion nowadays.

Built using digital reconstruction techniques from dozens, or hundreds, of individual photographs, they allow us to present landscapes and other things with very high detail. You may actually zoom-in into the picture to reveal more and more detail.

A single camera that can capture 1 Gpxl of image data can not be ordered at your local retailer. Apart from some scientific cameras the only such camera that I know of was built by a physicist and is now part of a project to document the USA (Gigapxl project).

For the rest of us, to create large images, the only alternative is by stitching together numerous photographs taken with a normal mega-pixel camera. There are numerous programs that help on the stitching process (panorama.dk has lots of information on various products and many tutorials, Arnaud Frich also has a very good site on the technique as well as some outstandig photos), my favorite being AutoPano. The current record (as of March 2012) of this type of technique is a 227Gpxl image of Shanghai by Alfred Zhao. Other interesting Gigapanos are those made by the Italian company Halta Definizione (HAL9000), they have also produced several high resolution pictures of famous frescoes in Italy (examples are: the 16 Gpxl image of the "Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci, the 8.6Gpxl image of Gaudenzio Ferrari fresco "Vita di Cristi" in the Santa Maria della Grazie's Church in Varallo Sesia, Italy; and the 9.9Gpxl image of Andrea Pozzo's "La Gloria di Sant'Ignazio" (1685-1694) in Sant'Ignazio di Loyola's Church, Rome, Italy).

In this page I present my own attempts at creating some large panoramas. Most of the pictures here are experimental and work-in-progress, eventually some images will go into a proper gallery. For the technically minded I use a Canon EOS5D camera mounted on a Really Right Stuff panorama adapter mounted on a Manfrotto 058 TRIAUT tripod, the lens used is a Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM (1.4x extender on queue).

0 - A first attempt with a three way tripod head and my 180mm lens

Sé Nova church (~270Mpxl, 24 images) - 16 Mars 2007

1 - First Multi-Mpxl images of the city of Coimbra:

View from Santa Clara (~267Mpxl, 44 images) - 21 April 2007

View from the south bank of the Mondego river (~410Mpxl, 74 images) - 3 May 2007

2 - The first Gpxl picture in Coimbra:

Biblioteca Joanina, University of Coimbra (1.5Gpxl, 180 images) - 26 June 2007

3 - In my companion site (here) to the Joanina Library (Biblioteca Joanina) site you may find several gigapixel fotos of the interior of the Library, including the largest panorama in the city of Coimbra (I believe), from the ceiling of room 3 of the Library,