Shanghai, one of the most populous cities in the world, has never been pictured in such enormous detail. Let the world experience this fast growing city and understand China is always my dream. Through my telephoto lens, I wish you, the viewer, can blend into the daily life in Shanghai and enjoy your virtual visit.

Before being introduced to Gigapan, I used manual panorama head (Manfrotto 303SPH) and fisheye lens to take spherical panorama and build virtual tours for my clients. In late 2009, I learned about the Dresden 26 Gigapixel image (www.dresden-26-gigapixels.com/dresden26GP ) created by the world renowned German photographer, Holger Schulze. It was then the world largest image. This compelling image absolutely fascinated me. Until today, I still think the Dresden image is one of the most important milestones in man’s pursuing of the world largest photograph. A few months later, a new world record was released; it further intrigued me, I decided to give it a try myself.

In March 2010, the first batch of Gigapan EPIC Pro was still on pre-order. Without any hesitation, I boldly placed a pre-order and received this precisely engineered yet inexpensive device in early April. Other necessary equipments were also ordered, by mid-April, all the hardware was ready.

To build the world largest image is not a trivial project; there are many challenges and barriers. To name a few, the density of the camera’s image sensor must be high; the optics must have long focal length yet still light enough to be maneuvered by a robotic panorama head; large amount of images must be transferred directly onto a laptop; the devices must be powered for extended hours; the photo location must have large amount of details to avoid empty pixels such as sky, water surface; the weather must be calm so that the camera is less likely to vibrate due to wind; the light condition must be consistent throughout shooting… I know this is an extremely difficult undertaking, but it is worth the effort.

My first attempt was on April 22nd, 2010, the day was partly sunny. I planned to take an image set of 9,000 pictures, but had to stop because of the change of weather condition. I ended up with a set of only 1,500 images. Spring in Shanghai is often cloudy or rainy; I have to wait for the perfect weather. The second time window appeared on April 29th, 2010. That day, I was able to complete a set of 9,000 images; however, I spent too much time to setup the equipment and didn’t start shooting until 10:30am. When I was done with the image set, it was almost dark. The image set suffered significant lighting change and only the first 6,000+ images could be used. Back in April 2010, once stitched, even 6,000 images should set a world record; however, I saw the possibility of acquiring even larger image set. Finally, the third time window appeared on May 25th, 2010. Learned from the previous experience, I started very early and got everything ready by 8:00am. The shooting started at 8:30am, with an average of 2.4 seconds per image, I took 12,000 images and finished shooting before dusk. Bingo, now I have the raw data.

Acquiring the images was just the first step towards the goal, to stitch it, post-process it and display it were a long way to go. Since this was a side project, I didn’t have much time to work on it. As months went by, I watched people setting new world records almost every month throughout 2010. This year is gigapixel image year. I never imagined such fierce competition. Finally, my image was completely stitched on Sept 20th, 2010. The raw stitch was a 1.24 TB image file. I wrote several tools for post-processing and finally generated the result image of 1,089,248,410,452 bytes (1.09 TB). The 1/1000 thumbnail of the un-cropped raw stitch is also on Gigapan at www.gigapan.org/gigapans/61595/ .

Post-processing and uploading took me another three months, now it is finally open to public. This is not the end of my panorama journey, it is a new start, challenging the limit is an infinite process. New records will appear in the future, it is only a matter of time.

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Statistics:

Image dimension: 887276 (w) x 306908 (h)

Date taken: May 25, 2010

Shooting time: 8:30 am – 4:30 pm

Date stitched: Sept 20, 2010

Date open to public: Dec 20, 2010

Raw image size: 1.24 TB

Raw cropped image size: 1.09 TB

Total pixels: 272.31 G

Horizontal viewing angle: 175 degree

Vertical viewing angle: 65 degree (+5 degree to -60 degree)

Total shots: 12,000 (150 columns and 80 rows)

Lens: Canon 400mm F5.6 and 2X tele-converter

Camera: Canon 7D (18M pixels per image)

Estimated overlap: 28% (set to 25%)

Average time per image: 2.4s

Estimated optical pixels: 112G pixels

Projection: spherical

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Related images

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This is the man cave (office) where I stitched this image. www.gigapan.org/gigapans/68015/

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My other Gigapan images ordered by size

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66287/ (Artist Point – Yellow Stone National Park – 110G pixels)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/59267/ (Park Avenue – Arches National Park – 77G pixels)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/57941/ (My Backyard – Round Lake, IL – 43G pixels)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/58980/ (Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint – Arches National Park – 15G pixels)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/59095/ (Balanced Rock – Arches National Park – 9G pixels)

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My favorite images taken in China

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66837/ (Guilin)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66909/ (Guilin)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/67296/ (Lujiazui’s night – Shanghai)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66841/ (Liu Garden – Suzhou)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66834/ (Zhuo Zheng Garden – Suzhou)

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Acknowledgement

Due to the enormous size of this panorama image, uploading onto Gigapan is also a non-trivial task. I received great help from the Gigapan team, especially Paul Heckbert, Vanessa Constanti, and Randy Sargent.

Gigapixel photography is expensive and time consuming, without the un-conditioned support from my family, this wouldn’t be possible.

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More Information

For more details about the creation of this image as well as my panorama related research, please visit www.shanghai-272-gigapixels.com / . In addition, I will post the updates on twitter twitter.com/alf168 , for those who are interested in my panorama journey; you are welcome to follow me.

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Disclaimer

The creation of this panorama is intended to explore the limit of photo equipment, computer hardware, network resource and various other contributing factors that limit the size of a panorama image. This is by no means a perfect image; there are many aspects to be improved.

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中文简介

上海是全世界人口最多的城市之一，之前没有任何一张照片以如此多的细节来描绘这个城市。这是一张关于上海的“清明上河图”。我拍摄此图的目的是让世界来感受这个快速发展的城市，让世界来更多地了解中国。通过我的超长焦镜头，我希望您作为一个访客，能够融入到上海的都市生活中，来体验一个普通上海人的一天。 我作为一名久居海外的华人，仅以此图献给我的故乡-上海。

在接触Gigapan之前，我使用Manfrotto 303SPH手动云台和鱼眼镜头来拍摄球形全景并且为我的客户制作虚拟旅游图。2009年末，一个偶然的机会，当我在浏览网站时，我看到了由德国著名摄影师Holger Schulze拍摄的26G像素的德莱斯顿（Dresden）全景 (www.dresden-26-gigapixels.com/dresden26GP)。 当时这是世界上最大的图片。这幅震撼人心的图片让我很久不能平静下来。直到现在，尽管很多摄影师已经突破了26G像素的图片，我仍然认为这是具有里程碑意义的重要图片之一。 几个月后，又有新的世界纪录问世。 自此，我决定，我要为中国也做一幅这样的图片，希望能为中国人争一口气，在国际竞争中占一席之地。

2010年3月， Gigapan EPIC Pro云台还没有正式上市，在没有看到和试用过这个设备的时候，我毫不犹豫地预定了一台。四月上旬，第一批EPIC Pro上市了，我得到了其中的一台。这是一部非常精密的摄影设备，我爱不释手。在四月中旬我回上海出差之前，全部设备都准备就绪了。

想要创造新的世界纪录并不是一件容易的事情，有很多的限制因素。这包括，相机必须有最高的像素密度；所使用的镜头必须是在云台承载范围内焦距最长的；图片必须直接存储到计算机上；拍摄现场必须有办法为设备长时间供电；拍摄场景必须有丰富的画面，要避免大量天空或水面的空白像素；天气必须平静，这样才不会有风带来的震动；光线条件必须在整个拍摄过程中保持稳定… 尽管有很多的困难，我觉得这是值得去挑战的事情。

在2010年4月22日，我进行了第一次尝试，计划拍摄9000张，但是由于天气的变化，一共只拍摄了1500张图片，这次尝试失败了。上海四五月份的天气多阴雨或多云，在4月29日，我终于等到了一个大晴天，当天，我拍摄了9000张图片。然而，因为在设备安装上花了太多的时间，我直到10:30分才开始拍摄，全部图片在黄昏才拍摄完毕，只有前6000张图片的光线比较恒定，之后的3000张几乎无法使用。在当时，即便如此，6000张图片拼接完成之后，也足以成为一个新的世界纪录了。但是我觉得还有机会在一天内拍更多图片，我在5月25日又找到了一个机会。这天，我很早就开始了，上午8点全部准备就绪，8:30分开拍，平均2.4秒一张图片，我拍摄了12000张，并且在下午4:30分结束。自此，拍摄大功告成。

可以说，拍摄还只是万里长征的第一步，拼接、后期处理、和显示还有很多困难。由于是一个附属项目，我的时间投入很有限，所以进展很慢。而与此同时，2010年，超大图 的世界纪录在不断地被打破，几乎每个月都有新的记录诞生，我只好望洋兴叹。好在我的图片还足够多，但是时不待我。我完全没有想象到竞争会如此激烈。9月20日，图片终于拼完了。未经后处理的图片是一个1.24 TB的文件。我写了一些工具软件进行后期处理，最终图片为1.09 TB。未经后处理的图片的 1/1000缩略图的网址是http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/61595/ 。

图片后处理和上传又花去了我三个月的时间，现在终于问世了。这不是我全景摄影的终点，只是一个新的起点。挑战极限是无止境的，我相信，这个领域中，新的记录还会不断涌现，只是个时间的问题。

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统计数据:

图片尺寸: 887276 (w) x 306908 (h)

拍摄日期: 2010年5月25日

拍摄时间: 上午8:30 – 下午4:30

拼接完成日期: 2010年9月20日

正式发布日期: 2010年12月20日

未经后处理的图片文件尺寸: 1.24 TB

剪裁后的图片文件尺寸: 1.09 TB

总像素量: 272.31 G

水平拍摄角度: 175度

垂直拍摄角度: 65度 (+5 度到 -60度)

全部图片数: 12000张 (150 列， 80行)

镜头: 佳能400mm F5.6超长焦镜头和 2X长焦增倍镜

相机: 佳能 7D (18M 像素)

重叠量: 28% (设置为25%)

每幅图片平均拍摄时间: 2.4秒

光学像素量: 112G像素

投影方式: 球形

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相关图片

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这是我拼图时所使用的办公室的图片： www.gigapan.org/gigapans/68015/

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我的其他超大图片

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66287/ (美国黄石国家公园 – 110G 像素)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/59267/ (Park Avenue – Arches National Park – 77G像素)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/57941/ (我的后院 – Round Lake, IL – 43G 像素)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/58980/ (Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint – Arches National Park – 15G 像素)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/59095/ (Balanced Rock – Arches National Park – 9G 像素)

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我在中国拍摄的比较满意的图片

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66837/ (中国桂林- 两江四湖)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66909/ (中国桂林-世外桃源)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/67296/ (上海外滩远眺陆家嘴)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66841/ (苏州留园)

www.gigapan.org/gigapans/66834/ (苏州拙政园)

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感谢

由于图片尺寸极大，上传至Gigapan网站并非易事，感谢 Gigapan团队给予的巨大帮助，尤其是Paul Heckbert, Vanessa Constanti, 和 Randy Sargent。

超大图摄影即昂贵又需要大量时间投入，并且也是一个巨大的科技挑战。没有家庭的后盾，这是一件几乎不能实现的事情。在此感谢我的家庭给予我的巨大支持。

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更多信息

更多关于制作这幅图片的信息和我在全景摄影方面的研究成果，我会逐渐在我的网站上发布 ( www.shanghai-272-gigapixels.com / ) 。 我会把更新信息发布在twitter上( twitter.com/alf168 ) ， 欢迎加入我的twitter群。

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声明

拍摄与制作此图是在于探索现有摄影器材，计算机软硬件及网络环境等诸多因素在超大幅面图片制作上的极限。这幅图片仍有许多需要改进的地方，与完美图片尚有相当的距离。