GigaPan was developed by Carnegie Melon University in partnership with Google, and NASA Ames Intelligent Systems Division's Robotics Group. You put your digital camera on top of the unit and then mount it all on top of a sturdy tripod.
According to Wikipedia, GigaPan is a robotic platform that attaches to a digital camera, and also some computer software. The robotic platform allows a user to take a photograph, then it will re-aim the camera automatically (robotically) with great precision, then the GigaPan system will automatically press the shutter on the camera in order to take another photograph, and then re-aim and take another and another. After taking many photos, the software stitches all the pictures together into one seamless image with incredibly high resolution.
It allows you to take super high resolution pictures from 50 Megapixels up to several hu
ndred or even a thousand megapixels. The only problem is that once you get above about 75 or 100 megapixels it takes your computer hours of processing to do one picture. The largest picture I have done so far is slightly larger than 2.0 gigapixels.My first successful composition is a picture of a painting by Hector Bernal. To see the 55 Megapixel version of this painting go to the following URL:
share.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=16627
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I have modified my GigaPan EPIC to work with the Nikon D40 DSLR. You can see one of the first 50 Megapixel plus pictures at: http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=16873