Robot tripod takes impressive panoramas

function FlashProxy() {} FlashProxy.callJS = function() {} At the SIGGRAPH graphics conference in Los Angeles I got the chance to look at GigaPan , a robotic tripod (pictured below) that lets photographers produce impressively large panoramas at the touch of a button. Check out the snowscape from Colorado above, taken by Jason Buchheim . Zoom in and you will appreciate how much detail GigaPan can capture. The image contains 1.91 gigapixels stitched together from 19 separate snapshots. A gigapixel is 1 billion pixels. Producing a GigaPan image is easy. The user clamps their camera to the tripod. After a bit of calibration they simply point it at the top left and lower right hand corner of the panorama they want to photograph and the tripod does the rest, taking a series of snaps that can then be stitched together to create the panorama. The tripod is as low tech as it sounds - it even has a robotic arm to mechanically operate the shutter. The la...