70-gigapixel panorama of Budapest becomes world's largest digital photograph

It's just been a few months since a 45-gigapixel panorama of Dubai claimed the title of world's largest digital photograph, but it's now already been well and truly ousted -- the new king in town is this 70-gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Budapest. As with other multi-gigapixel images, this one was no easy feat, and involved two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two solid days of post-processing that resulted in a single 200GB file -- not to mention a 15-meter-long printed copy of the photograph for good measure. Of course, what's most impressive is the photo itself. Hit up the source link below and start zooming in.

[Shalabi Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:02AM]

If you require flash to view a picture, you blew it.

[LSE Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:09AM]

@Shalabi
dunno man. downloading a 70 gigapixel jpeg would blow even more...

[Jacob1 Posted Jul 30th 2010 11:34AM]

@Shalabi If your computer or smartphone or tablet doesn't have Flash, you blew it.

[Bones3D Posted Jul 30th 2010 1:09PM]

God forbid anyone picks up the phone on that download... it's like 1993 all over again!

[jgpuff Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:04AM]

Yuck, it demands Silverlight. There's no way I'm installing that. Why couldn't they manage with Flash like the Gigapan one?

[juvenescence Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:05AM]

is there anyway to turn this into a wallpaper? i'd love to wrap this around the apartment

[CodyTech Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:13AM]

@jgpuff Because this one is bigger.

[Davidmon Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:17AM]

Great! 70 gigapixels of boring. What a crappy picture.

[hodedofome Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:17AM]

the clarity in this picture is absolutely incredible. i mean you just keep zooming in and the quality stays the same.

[notfred Posted Jul 30th 2010 11:03AM]

@hodedofome
Did you actually zoom all the way in? The quality doesn't remain the same. Use a mouse scroll wheel, I found it easier than the buttons on the UI.

[BerkleyBerkley2011 Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:36AM]

@jgpuff

Why? Is 10 seconds too long?

[geekthree Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:43AM]

@DefPoet Engadget has a dog eat dog posting system, as long as its setup the way it is, replying to the first post will continue..

[notfred Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:48AM]

Anybody else see the poorly photoshopped "Microsoft Sony Epson" sign? It's one building left of the slightly better "360 degree world" sign.

[JimmyBoy Posted Jul 30th 2010 11:17AM]

@jgpuff Whats wrong with silverlight or are you a MS hater

[petebob796 Posted Jul 30th 2010 11:20AM]

@jgpuff Why what's wrong with Silverlight?

[reamon Posted Jul 30th 2010 11:33AM]

Pretty cool. Wired just did a story on a panorama of Cincinnati taken in 1848--with an equivalent of 140 gigapixels. A clock in the daguerreotype plate measured just 1 millimeter across but under a microscope one can make out the clock hands to see the time. Glad to see we're catching up with tech from a century and a half back. :-)

[TheJason Posted Jul 30th 2010 12:05PM]

No way I'm installing that POS Silverlight garbage - thanks but no thanks! Having Flash on my computer is enough thank you...

[Scouse Pricey Posted Jul 30th 2010 12:11PM]

@Revolutionary
at coods x630 y378 80% zooms you can see people getting changed in their room!

[jiggpig Posted Jul 30th 2010 12:50PM]

So did they forget to compress it? At 70GP, an uncompressed image should take 210GB. If its 200GB then it hits a compression ratio of 1.05X. Even a lossless format like PNG should be able to beat that.

[thelolotov Posted Jul 30th 2010 1:47PM]

@DefPoet too*

[Kobaljov Posted Jul 30th 2010 1:55PM]

More or less interesting zoomed details from the picture:
http://galeria.index.hu/belfold/2010/07/28/erdekes_pillanatok_a_360world_70_gigapixeles_panoramakepen/?current_image_num=0&image_size=xl

[charlietheunicorn Posted Jul 30th 2010 3:18PM]

not gonna happen. Flash is to much for me as it is. Not going to install another crapware plugin just to see a damn picture.

[OrsonX Posted Jul 30th 2010 3:25PM]

Where are the people? Is Budapest a deserted ghost town?

A picture of a Brazillian beach resort would have been MUCH more interesting.

[SamStoleWhat Posted Jul 30th 2010 4:11PM]

@Revolutionary
actually i believe the previous record was held not by dubai but by rio de janeiro http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/54825/
still this is very impressive

[Yankee Posted Jul 30th 2010 4:45PM]

Is this really 70 gigapixels? After about a 30% zoom, further zooming produces no more detail. You can zoom in quite a bit but it really doesn't seem like it's 7,000 times the resolution of a 10 megapixel image.

[HKCally Posted Jul 30th 2010 5:18PM]

Are there any replicants hiding in there?

[accuscott Posted Jul 30th 2010 10:33PM]

The only way to really get how awe inspiring this image is would be to see it on a huge ultra high resolution video wall. With size and resolution that vastly surpasses standard 1080p displays it could be seen in all its glory. I've been blown away seeing much lower res images on such displays and can only imagine how incredible this one would look. The future looks bright indeed.

[peterbetos Posted Aug 1st 2010 1:20AM]

The photo is so detailed and so crisp and.. huh? is that a guy banging a hoochie I see on the forest? No one can escape big brother then..

[neatofx Posted Aug 1st 2010 2:11AM]

[URL=http://img693.imageshack.us/i/70gigapixelcloudappnet.png/][IMG]http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/8691/70gigapixelcloudappnet.png[/IMG][/URL]

Oh hai there

[Brian from Texas Posted Aug 1st 2010 10:56AM]

They should take these of every major city and send them to outer space so the aliens know where to target.

[TheNamedOne Posted Aug 2nd 2010 9:35AM]

Is that an iPhone in the Prague panorama ?!

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/457/praguewindow.jpg

[sapiens Posted Aug 3rd 2010 4:28AM]

Great picture