The NBC website has published a 3 billion pixel composite photo of the London 2012 Olympic stadium taken during the awesome evening opening ceremony last Friday. The Gigapan image is stitches 425 individual photos in a grid pattern of 25 rows and 17 columns, or 82,000 by 37,500 pixels. The photographer behind this feat is David Bergman.

Apparently the shots were taken during a one hour period while the opening ceremony show took place. This information puzzles me because one would expect to see some colour shifts and tell-tale ghosting where images overlap. My conclusion is that the image has been edited to the finest details in order to eliminate any imperfections as I can't find anything obvious!

If you were there on the evening, lucky you, you may even be able to locate yourself; the detail is that clear. You can see the image and some others on the NBC site here:

[URL="http://www.nbcolympics.com/gigapans/opening-ceremony.html"]http://www.nbcolympics.com/gigapans/opening-ceremony.html[/URL]

Interestingly, the panorama of the aquatic centre does have a big glitch in the stitching!

Anyway - I must thank Sony UK's Paul Genge for first posting a link to the opening ceremony shot on Facebook.