Wolfenbarg said:
Mr.Tea said:
I'm... Unimpressed. It's not really a technological advancement of any kind and the actual photo leaves a lot to be desired. The software they used is what I could be impressed by... All this took was time. The time to take a bunch of pictures from a fixed position and stitch them all together. The result could have been breathtaking, but instead it's just a number of pixels because they wanted to break some kind or record.
Not a technological advancement? You know, a lot of the long range pictures you see of deep space that are absolutely breathtaking? They use the exact same technique as this to piece images together. Before digital photography, it was impossible, now it's such common practice that they can do it of a cityscape. That's pretty huge.
That's exactly what I'm saying: The software, the technique, that's impressive. But it's not new. Not from today. Not from this month. Not even from this year. And certainly not with this particular picture, which is what I said. And my other point: the cityscape in question is boring as hell and the website is cheesy-cheap-bad-touristy-shittacular.
I've never tried it myself, but I could do it if I wanted to. All that's required is a solidly fixed position, and a tripod head with independent tilt and swivel with degree markings as well as lenses with overlapping focal lengths so that they can all be covered. You start and the longest focal length you want at the edge (both vertically and horizontally) of what you want your final picture to be and you take a picture. You then zoom out one millimeter while making absolutely sure nothing has moved (hence the solidly fixed tripod position) and take another picture. Rinse and repeat for every millimeter of focal length that lens has until it's completely zoomed out. Switch lenses if your longest-reaching one (such as a 70-200mm or a 100-400mm) doesn't zoom out enough. As I said, it's focal length range needs to overlap so you don't miss a step. Let's take the 70-200mm example; you'd switch it out for a 24-70mm, start at 70mm and repeat until you reach 24mm. If you want wider, you could then switch it out for, say a 16-35mm and work backwards from ~24 until you reach 16. Congratulations, you now have all the data you need for the vertical and horizontal edge of your final picture. Now you put the longest lens back on and frame like you very first shot and using the degree markings on your tripod head, you move horizontally just enough to still see the edge of your previous picture (like you'd do a simple panorama shot) and do the whole zooming out process again. and you repeat everything again until you have a full row of your final picture. Repeat again for every row of you final picture and BAM. You now have a couple thousand pictures that could make a better picture (provided you chose a better location and a better time of day) than that one.
Leading me back to my original point; That process is just time-consuming and simply requires care and minutiae to ensure your shots line up well.
The part that
does impress me is how it all gets stitched together to form one mostly seamless monster of a picture.
So the the making of the picture: Awesome, but not new.
The actual picture linked here: Boring shit.
