Interview-style YouTube video (Robert Scoble) touring SmugMug offices and discussing giant photographic prints. Scoble interviews Don McCaskill (founder/CEO of SmugMug) and photographer Markham Baldi about creating and printing multi-gigapixel panoramas (examples: San Francisco panorama and a 2.2-gigapixel Duomo image from Milano). Technical details include use of Canon 5D/5D Mark II bodies, a 300mm f/2.8 lens shot at f/8 and ISO 100, ~56 exposures stitched into ~2.2 gigapixels, large prints at 144 inches / 200 dpi, and printing services (bigposters.com; local San Francisco print shop for other prints). The video also shows a SmugMug user group event and mentions community forums (DigitalGrin/dgrin.com).
Questions this video answers
Don McCaskill
2.2 gigapixels
Canon 5D Mark II (mirror up)
300mm f/2.8 lens, shot at f/8
ISO 100; 56 shots
So who are you?
Don McCaskill, the founder, CEO and chief geek at SmugMug.
Yeah. And what is this big photo that goes all the way around?
It's the panorama my father shot of San Francisco. I think it's his 13th attempt. He was up shivering in the cold on angel island many a night to get this shot. And he had some of the world's most incredible photographers coaching him on all kinds of things that nobody ever thought of before, like the thermals across the bay affecting the photography and stuff. It's just. It's really, really epic.
So tell me how he made how many images made this? Because this is a multi gigapixel camera.
Something like 2 gigapixels. It was taken with 5D, I think with a 300 millimeter lens. So I'm guessing like 100 images or something like that.
My friend Bill Storage is doing these same things. And yeah, you have to use a 300 millimeter just to get the really sharp.
Yeah, he tried with a 300, a 400, and a 600. And so we have different versions and stuff, but this one turned out to be the best in terms of color. And I mean, the sky is epic.
And look at how sharp it is. That goes all the way in. When you manually focus here. That's about as close as I can get. But you can see there is individual opposite detail. It's really crazy how good the detail is here.
Yeah.
So what kind of head. What kind of head did he use on his tripod to do this?
Oh, man. So he had to find a heavy duty, like really heavy, none of this carbon fiber tripod stuff because it had to really reduce vibration because you had to have the lens open for a significant amount of time, seconds, to compensate for all the thermal stuff going on. I mean, it was crazy.
How long did this image take to make?
We should go ask him about hours.
Okay. And how did you print this? Because this is cool printing.
Yeah, it is.
So how many panels who printed something like this? If you have a good.
We should ask him for the name of the shop. But it's here in San Francisco. They do most of our large printing. So you can see this Transamerica Pyramid here. I think this is probably from one of the shots with the 600 millimeter lens, so it's even higher resolution.
Well, let's go out there real fast and you can show me some of the other large art you have around.
Yeah.
Don't you love these new 5Ds?
Yeah, they're fabulous.
It's like I'm using a 24 millimeter lens so it doesn't shake too much.
In terms of like 5D.
Oh, wait, wait. What's going on out here.
In terms of 5Ds to employee density? SmugMug probably has the best in the world. We probably have 30 or 45Ds for like 50 employees. It's crazy. And we all got them like the day they came out too.
So what's going on? First tell me what's going on out here. Who are all these people?
So this is SmugMug user group, Smug as we call it. And everybody's here to sort of see these giant prints which we finally got printed and mounted on the walls. Talk about some of our new features a little bit. And we even have a Hollywood camera crew here.
Yeah, with a nice.
With a red. They spent the weekend at my house and up in San Francisco and stuff. They've been filming us for some promotional work we're doing, which has been really cool. And they'll be getting footage of this.
Let's go over by the large picture. You can tell me more about this one.
So the person to tell you about these is the person who took them. Hey, Markham, Where's Baldi? Oh, there he is. I do a poor job describing these, but the man who actually took.
Hey, what's up? Hey, how are you doing?
Good.
So you took these?
I did, yeah. That was. So this is 200 dots per inch at 144 inch print size.
And you can walk right up to this?
Yeah. You can take a magnifying glass and see all the delicate details of every little statue there. And we tried to make it that way because pro photographers come in here and they come with their bifocals on and they want to see every little thing about it. So it wasn't just about the number of pixels. It's 2.2 gigapixel image. It was about the fineness of the optics, how still the mount was the ASA of the camera. So I used a 5D Mark II like you're holding there, mirror up 100 ISO. I used 300 millimeter f 8. It's set at f 8 where it's. It's at its sharpest.
Was that a 300? What lens were you using?
300Mm f 2.8.
F 28. Yeah, that's a pretty sharp lens.
It's a very sharp lens and it matches well with my camera. It happens to have a really good. They vary lens to lens. Even if it's 300 millimeter F 2.8 doesn't tell you how sharp that particular build was. And mine happens to be really sharp. And then I used Live View to focus because the prism is not accurate enough. So I'd use Live View and zoom in, get the focus just perfect. Only do it for a second because that chip gets noisy when it heats up. And then I would fire away 56 shots. I had to adjust these each individually because the light was changing as I was shooting them. So when I opened them from RAW to tif, I'd have to adjust the exposure and all that kind of stuff so that they would stitch together to be this. But I think the most amazing thing is if you go to this cathedral, it's so gorgeous and it's so clean because there's no vehicular traffic.
Where is this again?
This is in Milano.
Milano.
And it's the Duomo Cathedral. It's just breathtakingly gorgeous. But if you're one of those people down at the bottom, you can only see the lower row, these people. You can only see the artwork around here. And it's beautiful and it takes your breath away. But you can't see any of these individual statues. And they're just so gorgeous. And unlike other European cathedrals, they're clean. There's no diesel fuel around them. And so how do you see them? I couldn't see them. If you take the roof tour, you can't see them. There's no way except the original artists.
Who could see it.
And it was built in 1562. So I decided to correct that. And I stood on a statue across the way. I hope that was legal. The pigeons were on it and I was taking better care of of it than the pigeons were. And I looked official. So I think everybody just gave me space and I didn't get arrested. And so I shot this fairly up high so I didn't get too much distortion. And now people who come here can see what they could never see by going to Milano with 144 inch print.
How did you print these? Who printed them for you?
So I printed them@bigposters.com they're pretty good. Their maximum size is 72 inches that they can print with a frame behind them.
We better let you go for the.
So I stitched six of them together.
Where can we learn more about what your doing here?
Talk to me.
Just you. You don't blog about what you're doing here.
Digital Grin, our message forum.
Digital Grin.
Yeah, we got dgrin.com and then you.
Can come to the YouTube group.
Like all these people. We had thousands of people participate in that thread. We got advice from hundreds of photographers. That's how this technique was developed. It wasn't me, it was 100 photographers weighed in on how to get the best mount and the lowest noise. You should do a guest blog post.
On my blog about how these came about, because they are pretty epic.
Very cool. Well, thank you so much. And let's have the user group.
