Robot tripod can take impressive panaromas

Monday, August 18th, 2008...8:04 pm

Robot tripod can take impressive panaromas

Gigapan is a robotic tripod that was shown at SIGGRAPH Graphic conference that has an amazing capacity to take large panoramas at a touch of a button.

Gigapan can take very high resolution pictures that are crystal clear in details. Check out this snowscape from Colorado above, taken by Jason Buchheim. Zoom in and you will appreciate how much detail GigaPan can capture. The image contains 1.91 gigapixels stitched together from 19 separate snapshots. A gigapixel is 1 billion pixels.

Producing a GigaPan image is easy. The user clamps their camera to the tripod. After a bit of calibration they simply point it at the top left and lower right hand corner of the panorama they want to photograph and the tripod does the rest, taking a series of snaps that can then be stitched together to create the panorama. The tripod is as low tech as it sounds - it even has a robotic arm to mechanically operate the shutter.

The largest panorama is 6Gigapixel taken by botanist in Hawaii. check out the details of the image below.

Due to high demand, there is already a 2-3months waiting list. If you can wait till the end of the year, you can take those spy shots in the beach with Robotic Gigapan for US$400. [READ] [Via]