New ways of looking at the world with the GigaPan project
Photos via Jaymi Heimbuch and Nanogigapan
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GigaPan is, simply put, a brilliant photography project.
GigaPan was created as part of the Global Connection Project, which "aims to help us meet our neighbors across the globe, and learn about our planet itself." Specifically, it's a way of taking hundreds of photos of a scene and stitching them together into one massive digital photo, allowing viewers to zoom around or way in to a scene and become interactive with it. Think of it like Google Earth, only you and your neighbors are taking the photos, rather than a satellite.
To take a GigaPan image, a camera is attached to a robotic mount, which allows it to capture very high resolution panoramic images by moving just a fraction of an inch at a time as it takes photos. Custom software stitches the photos together into one image, and it is put on the GigaPixel website where it can be explored by anyone.
Now, GigaPan is going micro-scale, with the creators looking at how the project can aid scientific research by using the GigaPan idea with microscopes.
In the works is a device that can be attached to a laboratory microscope that will precisely move the X, Y and Z axis knobs - the camera is attached to the top, snapping photos each time the axis are adjusted. The primary benefit of this photo project is correcting for the depth of field issue - that's when you look at something very close up and only a portion of it is in focus. In photography, this can make for some beautifully artistic photos, but in science, it can be problematic. The nano version of the GigaPan project takes photos that focus on each part of the object, then "stacks" the photos to create one image that has the entire object in focus. This way, scientists can look at something like an insect and see the whole thing in focus at once and get a leg up on studying the object.
At Maker Faire, the GigaPan team was busy photographing a butterfly with this method:
The robotic portion of the device that is in the works allows the photographers to work far more quickly, taking photos of bugs in minutes, rather than hours. Once stitched together, you have something that looks like this:
The images have a wide range of uses, including opening up an object being studied to more scientists. Rather than taking a photo of something specific a scientist is working on, he or she can use a GigaPan rig to photograph the whole thing, highlighting what they're looking at yet still allowing peers to see the bigger picture.
This is being used for studying colony collapse disorder. A GigaPan rig takes photos of an entire frame from a bee hive, or an entire bee, in high resolution detail. Scientists studying CCD anywhere in the world can use the image to compare, contrast and look for clues to what is causing colony collapse. This is just one example of the infinite number of projects where something like GigaPan can help in science.
GigaPan is working on making the photos even more interactive, so that people can leave notes or add information to the image, similar to what can be done in Flickr.
If you're interested in taking part in the project and adding images to the GigaPan website, you can sign up to be a member and start uploading images. Help make the whole world accessible!
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