Gigapixel Cascade

On Memorial Day, I shot my first gigapixel image -- 1.1 gigapixels, to be precise (89,790 x 12,650). You may recognize the view: Mount Hood from Timberline, at the tail end of the ski season. With my telephoto-equipped camera mounted on a tripod, I shot overlapping strips from left to right; top to bottom. 182 frames later, I had the ingredients for a composite photograph composed of over a billion pixels. (Ignore the missing sky segments; apparently the stitching program could not figure out how to assemble featureless colored rectangles into a continuous blank sky. I may be able to figure out a remedy in the future.)

To properly see a gigapixel image, you need a high-res viewer like the Microsoft HD View plug-in for IE. The image sequence below demonstrates a zoom-in from a wide shot showing the Timberline Lodge, all the way in to a trio of snowshoers on the mountain slope:


















To see this as a full-window zoom-out sequence, click here.

If you have been to my office, the photographic angle for Mount Hood may look vaguely familiar. That's because you have seen it before, on my office wall. In the summer of 2005, I shot a 42-frame, 89.5 megapixel (17,358 x 5,158) composite of Mount Hood from the exact same location. Of course the snow was mostly gone, revealing colorful rocks underneath.



At the time, I was only using a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera. But IMHO, the composite results were fairly impressive.

To see it properly, you need a viewer. Fortunately, it's in a file format that can be displayed by gigapan.org -- a website dedicated to sharing large-pixel-count photos. To see the 2005 Summer Mount Hood shot in all its zoomable glory, click here.

Unfortunately, I can't yet upload the gigapixel-sized 2009 Spring Mount Hood shot to gigapan.org, since it's not in a file format they accept. I used AutoStitch for the 2005 shot, which outputs to JPEG format. However, the 2009 shot was way too big for AutoStitch -- it seems to run out of memory somewhere around the 150 megapixel range. I was able to achieve gigapixel compositing thanks to David, who pointed me to Microsoft's Research's ICE program (Image Composite Editor). It's free, and it works well for very large images (and small ones too)! Except for one thing. Once the pixel counts get very large, the number of supported file types drops down to only three: 1) TIF, 2) Microsoft's HD View, 3) Microsoft's Silverlight Deep Zoom. None of those are accepted by gigapan.org. So, I can only do the viewing locally on a computer unless I find a hosting service that accepts one of those formats. Or, a new automatic stitching program that outputs something else for large pixel counts.

But no matter what, I have officially joined the Gigapixel World! :-)

Stereo Cascades

On a recent business trip to Mobile, Alabama, I was treated to a series of vistas that begged to be rendered in more than two dimensions. On the way east, my plane passed near Mount Hood, with Mount Saint Helens, Mount Rainier, etc. in the north background. On the way west, we viewed the other side of Mount Hood, with Mount Washington, etc. in the south background.

Accordingly, I took a series of quadruplet shots -- four photos taken in quick succession, forming several 3D stereo pairs. (The four shots are needed since you don't know until later what stereo separation will look best.)

To see the results, click on the images above. The first set shows the scenes in regular, flat 2D. The second set, when viewed with red-blue 3D glasses, shows the mountains in full stereo depth.

Of course, all this is just academic if you can't actually see the photos because you don't have red-blue 3D glasses. I have some sourcing information at the end of his blog entry, if you need it.

You may recognize the fact that technically, these are hyperstereo photographs since the separation between shots is more than the normal eye separation. The plane traveled about 350 feet between each exposure. When combined into a stereo pair, this allows the viewer to perceive distance separation in a scene that normally looks flat since the subjects are so far away.

One of the 3D pictures was not taken on the Mobile trip. In fact, it wasn't taken as a stereo pair at all. On my birthday in 2005, I was on the way back from a Cairo business trip. My seat was mid-plane, and I wondered about the collective gasps proceeding from the front of the plane, moving toward the back. I glanced out my window, and suddenly it became clear. We were flying just to the west of Mount Saint Helens, and it was sporting a picturesque plume of steam. My first thought was, "What a great birthday present, to see this!"



My second thought, a nanosecond later, was to photograph the scene. Grabbing my old point-and-shoot digital camera, I shot a series of photos as fast as the little electrons would move through the circuitry. Which was not very fast, given the older generation of digital camera. So, I wasn't even thinking in terms of 3D pairs. But later, I wondered if I could salvage a stereo view from the outtakes. The result was this (click on the image for a larger view):



Although the stereo separation is a bit more than is normally comfortable, it's an interesting view to see the actual roundness of the crater rim, with the steam plume at the center point.

There is one more thing you might find interesting. As we flew past Mount Hood toward the west, I zoomed up on the top, with Mount Washington in the background (click on the images for bigger versions):





As the vista unfolded, I shot fifteen photos in fairly quick succession. Later, I used that sequence to create a 3D video of the flyby. (Internet Explorer users: You will probably find the YouTube window below to be cut off on the right. If so, go here instead, and click on "HD" on the bottom of the YouTube window.)



For what it's worth! :-)

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As promised, here is some sourcing information for 3D glasses. You can get two cardboard pairs for $1.00 here:

http://www.berezin.com/3d/

Specifically, the product to get (red-cyan) is:

http://www.berezin.com/shop/544C

With the shipping cost of $3.39, you might be tempted to get one of the fancier $6.95 ProView pairs, with rigid acrylic lenses -- but don't bother. My experience is that the fancy red lenses are not the right shade for computer screens. So, you're better off with the cheap cardboard variety. If you are in a hurry, rumor has it that some comic book stores sell red-blue glasses as well, but I have not verified that personally.