Want to see what 53-billion pixels looks like? Bentley constructs image as big as a football field

Earlier this week, Bentley shared a 53,000-megapixel image (that’s 53 billion pixels) of the Golden Gate Bridge (below). The photograph captures a wide perspective from almost half a mile (700 meters) from the car, but has enough resolution to not only zoom into the rose gold Mulsanne driving across the iconic landmark, but to see the individual stitching on the winged “B” logo on the passenger seat headrest. If you’ve ever tried to crop into an image taken with a consumer camera, you know you cannot get this level of detail. What’s amazing is that the cropped image is still high resolution,

If the image was printed out at full resolution, it would be as big as a football field. That’s about 4,425-times larger than a typical smartphone photo.

So how do you take a 53-billion-pixel image? The photo was created by stitching together 700 single images, similar to the way photographers would stitch three or four images together to create a large panorama.

Bentley didn’t say just what equipment was used, but from the photo, it looks like the photographer used a Nikon DSLR with a robotic camera mount to help determine where to shoot each individual photo for the 700 image merge – technology developed by NASA, according to Bentley.

Bentley

Why such a big photo? Kevin Rose, a Bentley board member for sales and marketing, says the idea for the image came in an effort to showcase the Mulsanne’s attention to detail. “We wanted to commission this shot to capture both the exquisite detailing of the Mulsanne and the epic scale of our brand’s ambitions. We believe the result is truly extraordinary,” he said in a release.