George Lawrence used aerial kites to photograph San Francisco after the devastating 1906 earthquake. His photographs appeared in newspapers around the world and generated more than $15,000 for the photographer.

Below is a high resolution GigaPixel scan from the original 4 foot wide photograph. Well, technically it’s only a measly 11,709 x 4,716 resolution - translating to only .55 gigapixels, but we’ll let it slide since this is for posterity’s sake and all that.

For those of you who are unaware, San Francisco experienced a devastating earthquake in 1906 which started fires that burned uncontrollably and essentially destroyed the entire city.
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Last week I was in San Francisco for just one day for a meeting, but I did have time to drive over to Fort Point and take a panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge with my GigaPan.

Now, I’m not really pleased with this Gigapan because I used the wrong camera to take the photo. I was using a Panasonic TZ3, which is a fine little point and shoot digicam, but it lacks some basic manual controls such as manual focus, and a few others, which caused this panorama to not work so well. In addition, I had some of the adjustments off a bit.

Still, having said all that, the image is decently cool. And if you’ve never had the opportunity to see the Golden Gate Bridge in person this is a good way to check it out.
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Wow, folks this is exciting news! Months ago I registered with the Global Connection Project (a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, Google, and National Geographic) for possible inclusion in their GigaPan beta program - a piece of robotic photography equipment that takes GigaPixel panoramic photos using standard digital camera equipment. Well, I just got notification that my application was accepted and I’ll be one of the first people on the planet to get my hands on one of these babies! Yee-haw!

Here is a little description of the GigaPan straight from the Web site:

GigaPan consists of three technological developments: a robotic camera mount for capturing very high-resolution (gigapixel and up) panoramic images using a standard digital camera; custom software for constructing very high-resolution gigapixel panoramas; and, a new type of website for exploring, sharing and commenting on gigapixel panoramas and the detail our users will discover within them. The GigaPan website allows hosting and sharing all kinds of panoramas, and so the robotic GigaPan mount is recommended but is certainly not required to be part of this community.

What the heck does all this mean? Well, imagine looking at a digital photo and wanting to zoom in for more detail. You probably know that a 10 megapixel photo will give you pretty good resolution. Now just imagine 100 times greater resolution than that! No, wait! Don’t just imagine it - try it out yourself with the sample below! It reminds me of Harrison Ford’s character in the movie Blade Runner…
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