What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like
Hi, I'm the photographer who made this image.Thank you for all the attention :-) Let me try to answer some of your questions, in no particular order:1) Here is the original page: http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/ also here is a youtube screen capture showing a few highlights, if you are feeling lazy ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NboCijiLwmI2) it is not 600,000 megapixels. It is 600,000 pixels wide. If you are calculating it as a full sphere, then it's 180 gigapixels. But there is a black space on the bottom so we are calling it 150 gigapixels.3) Yes we have censored a few things in the image which might be embarrassing to those people involved. Most of those things would not be embarrassing in other cultures (I think) such as a woman hanging laundry, but Japan is "different". Per the request of journalists at Asahi Shimbun who published a story about it there, we covered up a few bits in the photo. Oh, and the guy sleeping on the ground? Well that's embarrassing anywhere. Poor fellow probably did not expect to be famous on the internet as he lay down on the bench to sleep, fell off the bench, and kept on sleeping. (Side note: apparently in Tokyo it is fully acceptable to sleep it off on the street or in a park - it is a safe place! Well, if you're male...)4) Yes you can use your geek powers to uncover the censored bits and there are already screenshots out there. Oh well. I did not actually see the whole image before publishing it. It is just so big :)5) Yes, I used a Canon 7D (best pixel density) and a 400mm L f/5.6 lens, because that lens is great, sharp, and fit in my carryon - can't check camera gear on the plane now, can we.6) I used a Clauss Rodeon gigapixel robot to control the camera. It is still a lot of work to set the speed and so on, don't think that this is a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. The robot is moving continuously, and the camera is focusing and shooting while moving. This is technologically amazing stuff, but it takes a lot of tweaking to get it to work. In this case I was not completely familiar with the equipment, and I made some mistakes. One section of the image was stitched together from two entire sets of images shot on two different days, in order to get a good alignment.7) panning mode: we use the "original QTVR style" of navigation, which also used in first-person games. This lets you hold the mouse button down and "glide around". I find this vastly preferable to the click-drag-click-drag-click-drag google style. On touch screens, the movement follows your finger which is more intuitive generally. I've seen a five year old navigate these panoramas on an ipad with no problem. On the PC with a mouse there is not really "one right way".8) Yes, I also made the "London 320 gigapixel" image, which is larger in terms of pixels, but this one is FAR more interesting in my opinion, and overall much better quality. If you're interested in seeing some of my other large images, check these:
Tokyo Roppongi Hills Mori Tower (shot the same week as this one here) http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori...
http://360cities.net/library Strahov Library interior, 40 gigapixels. 
http://360gigapixels.com/petrin-prague-photo Prague from petrin tower, 34 gigapixels
http://360cities.net/london London 80 gigapixelsIf anyone has any other questions, I'm here, and happy to answer them. I'll try to check back often for the next hours. Cheers!