Asia’s Largest Photo Is So High-Res, You Can Zoom In On People Having Lunch

Camera technology is continually evolving - the precision is increasing, while the digital components needed to capture the photos are shrinking.

Although there's still so much more to come with the cameras of the future, a company over in China has reached the pinnacle of high-resolution images by taking Asia's largest ever photo.

Jingkun Technology - or BigPixel - took the shot from atop the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, China, and it's so precise that you can quite literally zoom in on people's facial expressions.

Can you see the couple having lunch?

BigPixel

No? How about now...

BigPixel

Nothing? Get your glasses on and check out this one...

BigPixel

Absolutely incredible.

It's not surprise - after all, the image's resolution is a whopping 195 gigapixels i.e. one billion pixels. Damn that's sharp. You can check it out here.

Business Insider reported that the company reckons its photos are more than 2,000 times as precise as those captured by a regular camera, and that its 360-degree snapshot of Shanghai is the world's third biggest photo and Asia's largest full stop.

So far millions of people have had fun exploring the snap, which is actually made up of lots of photos taken over a few months and integrated using image-stitching technology.

While many are in awe at the technology's uncanny ability to create a panorama shot with such detail, some are understandably wary about what this could mean for future surveillance operations.

When the image first made the rounds on social media, one Facebook user amassed thousands of shares for a post that claimed it was 'captured captured by [a] Chinese Satellite with 24.9 billion pixels of quantum technology'.

A Twitter user also mistook the picture and tweeted that it has been shot by a satellite, before correcting her mistake and updating the post. As pointed out by Fossbytes, words like 'satellite' and 'Quantum technology' are rogue terms used for making the image go viral.

As we now know, this snapshot is not some leak from a Quantum Technology surveillance program - it is just a freakin' massive picture and it's pretty damn incredible.

Topics: camera, Technology, China

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Daisy is a UK-based freelance journalist with too many opinions. She loves everything film and music-related and has a track record writing for Little White Lies, BWRC, and Film Daily. Contact her at [email protected]