Pixiq

The reason large-format film photographers were so committed to their 4X5 and 8X10 view cameras was that they wanted optimum detail and color fidelity in their final results. Many of these photographers have migrated to the smaller format high-pixel-count DSLRs or the incredibly expensive digital medium-format cameras and backs. It still isn’t the same. Now, with composite panoramas, we can consistently recreate the high-resolution images of large format. I used to do this with a complicated manual system involving rails and degree calculations. But the recently released Gigapan Epic Pro has given us a much easier and more reliable way to capture images with exceptional detail. This is like having an 8X10 digital view camera for around $900 and the equipment already in your camera bag.

The Gigapan Epic Pro (www.gigapansystems.com) is a computerized robot that will hold your DSLR and lens combination of up to 10 pounds and methodically takes a series of images that are stitched to make one high-resolution image. This is not unlike the first digital backs for large format where the back scanned the scene three times (red, green, and blue). There still is a time delay as the Gigapan robot either takes a series of images in rows or columns based on your directions.

The photographer first enters into the computer the angle of view of the camera/lens combination. This is determined by following a few simple prompts on the GigaPan’s display. With more prompts, the photographer sets the margins of the upper left corner and lower right corner of the image frame. The photographer gives the go-ahead and the GigaPan calculates the number of overlapped images and proceeds to take the necessary number of images. The photographer later stitches the images using Gigapan’s software and the final image is either uploaded to www.GigaPan.org for viewing or a large TIFF file is generated to be worked on in Photoshop and then printed.

The image shown here of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota was taken a few days ago using a Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 100-400mm “L” lens. Why this combination? The EOS 7D has an 18 megapixel sensor and a 1.6X crop factor. This crop factor uses the sharper center of the image produced by the 100-400mm lens with an effective focal length of 640mm. If the 7D’s sensor were full frame, it would be the equivalent of nearly 29MP. Keeping the ISO of the EOS 7D at 200 gives a very clean, noise free image. The 640mm lens gave me 88 images at 18MP to composite for the final result. This was cropped to give me a final 8-bit image that was 1.45GB in size with no magnification. That is a print at 240 dpi of 64 inches by 140 inches with the file at 100%.

Divide the file size by three and you have the effective megapixels of the camera setup used to accomplish the image file. For this image of Mt. Rushmore, that would be 473MP. For comparison, a 21MP Canon EOS 1D MK III or 5D MK II camera generates a 63MB file.

You might think you have to have a super computer to work on files this size, I did all the work on this Mount Rushmore image on the road with my MacBook Pro’s 8GB of RAM, without much delay in the processing. I’m sure it would be fine with only 4GB of RAM. When I get back to the studio I will optimize the file in Photoshop and print to a 60 inch Canon iPF 9000 printer.

To show that any camera lens combination can be used on the GigaPan Epic Pro, I’ve included another image taken the same day using a Canon EOS 1Ds MK II converted to infrared and using the 100-400mm lens at 400mm. This composite IR panorama took 99 images at 16 MP and produced a file of 720MB after cropping.

I’ll get more into the GigaPan Pro process in a future post where the capture and stitching will be discussed. All you large format film photographers that were worried that you’d be left behind in the digital age can now breathe a bit easier.