Really HD photography

I found this link on the internet. It allows the viewer to zoom right in on any one of about 60,000 individuals who attended last Wednesday's Celtic v's Barcelona game - with amazing clarity!! It made me wonder how close (or far away) we are to seeing a camera available to the mass market that offers this level of detail.

PS: for anyone still wondering how Celtic pulled off a 2-1 scoreline, it may have something to do with having 2 Victor Wanyama's on the pitch!! (he's the Kenyan guy with number 67 on his shirt!!)

That's relatively easy to do on a smaller scale. You just take a lot of images and stitch them together. Those kind of images, of which there are plenty, are done with a special motorized bit of kit costing around £800.00.

You could use say a DA*300mm lens and take a whole series of images in rows and columns, then stitch them together.

I suppose the fact that we have the same player appearing twice in this image it sort of implies a degree of stitching, but I'm guessing that the camera used for this is akin to those used by the likes of NASA and Oxford Scientific Films, Peter.

Impressive stuff, massive invasion of privacy though!

Not at all, it can be done with a DLR. Yes, even a Pentax.

All you need is one of these, a DSLR, and a decent telephoto lens. Images of static scenes are simpler of course.

Much more expensive options do exist, like the systems based on multiple cameras and a conical mirror arrangement to produce some of the 360 degree panos.

Public place? Anybody there was hardly expecting privacy.

Not a public place but a football stadium, so private property and back of the ticket most likely state something along the lines of...

By entering the venue you consent to being filmed, photographed for broadcast, publication etc etc etc...

I met a guy who does this kind of photography at Glastonbury a few years ago, he had a motorised tripod linked to a laptop. He simply imputed the area to be photographed and left the camera and tripod to do the rest.

This explains it a little bit better.

link.

It is "just" a panorama, but most people associate them with landscape photography. We had a demo by one of our club members a couple of years ago and I use the technique quite often. It may be even two shot or more, this one from last week was seven shots hand held.



Here is a link to five panos shot in less than an hour and they were HDR as well, all controlled by hand on a tripod.
link

John

Novoflex have a system where the camera is tilted at
45deg. They reckon it needs less shots. Here's a video
showing how to do a spherical panaorama in 2 mins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpveVZULjo&feature=related

and another...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UTHWizFgA&feature=related

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Shame they didn't show the result in the first video though.

They mention the lens at the end I think it was an 8mm fish-eye.

This seems to be the PDF Manual

link

and this is the head....

http://www.mainlinephoto.com.au/prod476.htm

Datasheet...

link



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Cheaper than the motorized option I linked to, but I don't understand the benefits of the 45 degree tilt. I thought that panos are best taken with the camera in portrait orientation.

Must be esier to stich the corners with a fisheye.

Correct.

It might actually break a few laws, in my country at least.

The picture in itself is not the problem. It is the integration with Fazebook that is the rule-breaker.
(It does not matter if they did like cabstar mentioned, something I am unsure if they even did.
The identification of people in that way is not right.)

If they remove the integration it is perfectly fine, and not even in any gray areas.


On topic:
Haven't GigaPan done this for a while now?
As others mentioned, this is just a stitching job, and like for astro-photography we can already get tripod mods for this.
I find it unlikely that we will ever see this possible without stitching though.

I cannot see the picture from the link but I assume it was taken within a football stadium?

By your logic no football crowd could possibly be used for broadcast or editorial purposes???

Do you live in France?

Photography is only an invasion of privacy if you are photographed on private property and you have not given permission to have your photo taken.

Nearly all venues whether entertainment or sport will have a policy in place that makes it a condition of entry that you give consent for your image to be taken via stills or video and used for various methods stated in the policy.