Gigapixel art by Ghigo Roli!
Italian photographer Ghigo Roli combines gigapixels with art. Ghigo has more than 30 years of experience in heritage photography and uses high-resolution panoramic photography to reveal the secrets of paintings, sculptures and architecture and show them in their true dimensions.
Discover how Ghigo presents his "gigapixel art":
image: Ghigo Roli - gigapixelart.it
Ghigo has shared some background information on his Gigapixel work with the VR Drive that could be inspiring for many of our customers. Enjoy reading!
"In November and December 2018 and February 2019, I photographed full-size gigapixel images of all 36 stained glass windows of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi in both the upper and lower churches.
The stained glass windows painted in the last decades of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century constitute the oldest and most important cycle of this type in Italy.
This photo campaign was commissioned by the Art History Institute in Florence and is made available to researchers. Despite their undeniable importance, many aspects of these stained glass windows still need to be explored (for example, regarding their style and the artist who made them). Gigapixel shooting allows for very detailed analysis that would otherwise not be possible. The entire photography campaign will also become part of the extensive photography library of the Holy Monastery of Assisi.
The windows are often in uncomfortable and elevated positions. This forced me to use a 12 meter high telescopic mast on which I mounted the VR drive head. So I had to control it remotely via WiFi. If I hadn't used this panoramic head, I wouldn't have been able to take photos with such resolution, as I was able to perform precise multi-row stitches thanks to the precision and maneuverability of the VR Drive.
image: Ghigo Roli - gigapixelart.it
The resulting gigapixel images reproduce the glass panes on a 1:1 scale at 300 dpi and have a file size of at least 8 gigabytes and a maximum of 14 GB for the largest window with four light points. A minimum of 180 to a maximum of 325 exposures were required to reproduce the complete images.
In addition, the recordings had to be doubled in all of the windows in the lower church because there were large metal chandeliers in the middle of the chapel that could not be moved. So I had to take two shots from slightly different angles and then merge them and use Photoshop to delete the chandeliers that partially covered the windows.
In this situation I used two computers: the first to control the VR drive head and the second to control the images and operate the camera.
Finally, at the end of production, I downloaded the raw files, performed an initial conversion and checked whether there were any errors. All of this required an average of one day of shooting for each window and at least another day of post-production and editing. In some cases I had to repeat the entire recording of a panel a second time.
I used the new Canon EOS R cameras which, as in this case, offer very good focus and excellent dynamic range even in low light conditions. Remote shots were reviewed using Canon's EOS utility.
Bild: Ghigo Roli - gigapixelart.it
Given the difficult and often changing lighting conditions, both in terms of exposure and color (they changed every time a cloud passed!), I opted for Live View and opted for "Quality mode" with manual single shot. After a quick check, I corrected the focus, exposure and color temperature if necessary and took pictures via the camera WiFi. Then I downloaded a low resolution JPG file to check for correct focus. I often had to record a second time and sometimes three times.
Due to the wide variability of shooting conditions, I chose the EF 100-400mm f / 4.5-5.6L IS II USM zoom, often together with the 1.4x multiplier.
I always worked between f/16 and f/22 to get enough depth of field to compensate for the tilt of most angle shots. Shutter speeds range from 1 second to 20 seconds and ISO sensitivity between 800 and 1600. Between two shots it was necessary to wait a few seconds for the camera to stabilize. Because these focal lengths were mounted on a 12-meter pole, a breath of air or the passage of a group of tourists could produce vibrations lasting over a minute, despite the robustness of the basilica! “
image: Ghigo Roli - gigapixelart.it
Thank you, Ghigo, for this detailed report - and all the best for your future Gigapixel projects!