Italian photographer Filippo Blengini embarked on a mission to take a panoramic photograph of Mount Blanc, Earth's 11th tallest mountain. After 70,000 individual photographs, 46 terabytes consumed, and 2 months of editing and processing later, the photo taken by Blengini and his team of five is currently the largest photograph in the world. Check out this video for a brief overview of how they did it.
Blengini's 365-gigapixel photo of Mount Blanc beat out the previous record holder by 45 gigapixels. The previous record holder was a panoramic photo of the London skyline taken back in 2013.
Full panoramic photo taken by Filippo and his team.
They used a Canon 70D with a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 II IS attached to a Canon Extender 2X III on a special robotic mount. In the end, they had captured 70,000 photographs in every direction while shooting for 35 hours. The total of which ended as 46 terabytes and 2 months of post-processing. The resulting photos is massive. If printed out, this panoramic photo would be larger than a soccer field.
Technically, there is one photo that is larger than this. It was taken by NASA of the moon last year. At 681 gigapixels, it is actually much larger. However, because this is the "largest photo in the world," and the moon is in space, it does not qualify.
This infographic breaks down the project
Over on the project's website they have an interactive full-resolution version of the photo that is absolutely jaw dropping. We encourage you to check that out as well.
[via The Telegraph, In2White, and 500px]
"Mount Blanc, Earth's 11th tallest mountain."
Mount Blanc is not even close to being the 11th tallest mountain. It's only 15,781' (4,810 m).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_mountains
Depends on how you measure tall. It's the 11th most prominent. Meaning: "tallest" from base to summit. Some mountains are 15k/ft but look short because the base is at 12kft.
It's no 11 by prominence (measured from the base) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peaks_by_prominence
Ah, prominence is something completely different than "tallest" or "highest." Thanks for the clarification!
Not sure what the point is. Breaking a record?
Excuse me. Yawn. Done.
Neat accomplishment, the amount of detail is incredible. It's also completely limited to being a digital interactive photograph though. The seems wouldn't hold up to even a 10 inch print, but that doesn't seem to be the point, and the challenges to creating a "pixel perfect" image this large are astronomical. It'd be pretty amazing to see a soccer field sized image in print though (probably pieced together in sections). Perhaps it would be displayed underneath a glass floor or above a glass ceiling lit from underneath. There's also the option to do it vertical with a few floors of ramps or stairs. You have to dream big right?
Hmm, I zoomed in all the way and the first thing I saw was an out of focus area right in the middle. Second thing was a really bad stitching almost next to it.
Then I zoomed out, "hmm"ed to myself and closed the window again...
so i'll ask the obvious question…….why ? is it now going to go into the worlds largest photo album ? nothing better to do for 2 months ? cool maybe, but overkill for sure.
My computer crashed upon opening this. It's kinda cool but I don't know what the practical purpose is for a super huge photograph.