Hasta La Gadget!

We don’t see a lot of 360-degree panoramas, or at least they’re not as popular as traditional panoramas, but a group of photographers ended up shooting a 360-degree panorama of London, and broke the world record for the largest panoramic photograph in the process. The panorama was captured from the top of the BT Tower in London last year.

The panorama can be viewed on BT Tower’s website in all its glory. It was shot over the course of three days by three different people: Jeffrey Martin, Holger Schulze and Tom Mills, who all work for a panoramic photography company called 360Cities, where they — you guessed it — make 360-degree panoramas of cities around the world.

The panorama consists of 48,640 individual shots stitched together. The photos were taken with Canon EOS 7D cameras using EF 400mm f/2.8 IS II USM lenses, with Extender EF 2x III teleconverters. The cameras were operated by Rodeon VR Head ST robotic panorama heads in order to get the effect you see in the panorama shot. Processing all the photos together took around three months.

If the panorama was printed at normal resolution, it would be almost 322 feet long and over 75 feet high. That’s over the length of an American football field and about as tall as a two-story house. Previously, the world record for the largest panorama was 80 gigapixels, and that was also taken in London back in 2010.

[via The Next Web]

320-gigapixel panorama of London comprised of 48,640 shots is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sometimes you want to take a picture of a thing, but there are times when you just want everything. So far, your options for comprehensive photospheres involve taking a whole crapton of pictures, or throwing some kind of crazy ball or something. This upcoming camera from Ricoh makes it a hell of a lot easier. “One button” easy. More »

How was your week? We got to spend a couple of days trekking around the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh, PA to check out some of the latest projects from the school’s world renowned Robotics Institute — a trip that culminated with the bi-annual induction ceremony from the CMU-sponsored Robot Hall of Fame. Given all the craziness of the past seven days, you might have missed some of the awesomeness, but fear not, we’ve got it all for you here in one handy place — plus a couple of videos from the trip that we haven’t shown you yet. Join us after the break to catch up.

Continue reading Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute

Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

For a country that dominates the Latin American landscape, Brazil hasn’t had much of a presence in Google Street View outside of major cities like Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. A fresh update to Street View coverage has just gone live that fleshes out the the more far-flung corners of the map. It’s now possible to see what it’s like on the ground in much of the southern tip of the country as well as the northern coastline. Further north, Mexicans get their own treat: Google is now providing the panoramic views for ancient ruins such as Chichen Itza and Teotihuacan, just in case you’d rather not try to blend in with all the other tourists. The widened reach is undoubtedly no match for booking a flight and visiting in person, but it will save you the trouble of brushing up on your Portugese or ancient Mayan.

Filed under: Internet

Google Street View expands to cover swaths of Brazil and Mexican ruins, won’t substitute for a vacation originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Google Lat Long Blog  | Email this | Comments