While many photographers have probably stitched a handful of images together to create a big picture, this scientist took things to a whole other level by using 8,439 remarkable photographs. amazing.
Details are often an important factor when it comes to image quality, and this is especially true for documenting and storing important works of art. Robert Erdmannis a Senior Scientist at Rijksmuseum tried to capture the famous painting by Rembrandt Night clock at 717 gig megapixels and recently sat down to explain how he did it. Video presentation is from PyCon is the largest annual gathering for open source programming language users Python. This programming language was important to this particular imaging project because Erdmann used a variety of scripts to help him recreate every aspect of the painting digitally.
Use one Hasselblad H6D and an intricately decorated sleigh system, Erdmann was able to program his setup to meticulously move and capture every inch of the picture. These 100-megapixel images will then be stitched together to form the final image. The fully stitched image is 925,000 pixels wide and 775,000 pixels tall which is eye-catching and has a resolution of 5 microns. If you’re not already impressed with those huge numbers, the 5 micron resolution puts the pixels in Rembrandt’s digitized picture at a size smaller than the size of a human red blood cell.
While I appreciate that the level of detail in this project may be undesirable or unattainable for many photographers, I think it is important to see the processes involved in a something so complex because it can help inform and inspire future ways of working. For those curious about the detail of a 717 billion pixel image, Erdmann kindly uploaded the image. his website in a way that allows the viewer to explore every inch of the picture in minute detail and is well worth seeing.
