If you’ve ever wanted to be as close to Van Gogh’s eccentric brush strokes as possible or watch the thick paint almost drip from Monet’s classics, the Google Art Camera wants to help you in your quest. Meant for capturing gigapixel images, this contraption is claimed to bring out details that are not even visible to the naked eye.
The Google Art Camera is something developed by the company to make it easier for museums and other institutions to digitize the art and documents in their collection in the highest quality possible. Such cameras have been around from before but this new one is faster than any of those available out there.
It has been described by its makers as a robotic camera. To create its gigapixel images – pictures containing over one billion pixels – it has its robotic system steer the lens on all ends of a painting. In this process, it takes hundreds of high resolution close-ups and stitches them all together to create one single image.
In order to maintain focus it uses a technology that combines a laser and a sonar. Google says that this mechanism works like a bat as it uses high frequency sound to measure the distance to the artwork in order to get the accuracy right.
Click on this link if you wish to check out the capabilities of the Art Camera. Select any painting among those available and zoom in on it to gander at how accurately this shooter is able to reproduce the original work.
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Google will be sending a fleet of these cameras to visit museums from across the world for free.