Huge panorama of Mont Blanc is world's biggest ever photograph

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

It's one of the world's most famous mountains. And now it's the site of the world's biggest ever photograph.

Photographers have worked to stitch together a huge picture of Mont Blanc that is by far the most detailed image ever taken, allowing people to pick out individual climbers from thousands of meters away.

Users can zoom through the slick website to find out details for themselves. Or they can pick from some pre-selected ones, like a crane building a huge house on a mountainside or climbers captured mid-journey.

The team, led by Italian photographer Filippo Blengini, worked in -10 degrees-centigrade for 35 hours to take the picture, according to their website. During that time they were stuck 3500 metres up.

The photo was taken using a Canon 70D SLR camera, fitted with a long 400mm lens that was extended even further. That was attached to a Clauss robotic mount which meant that the camera could automatically move around as it took the photos.

Much of the gear was provided as part of tie-ups with the camera and storage companies that sponsored the project. that also included special technology for powering the setup using solar panels, and stitching the photo back together afterwards.

That stitching process took two months, using high-powered computers to assemble the thousands of pictures into one smooth image. If that picture were printed out at a normal resolution, it would be the same size as a football pitch.

The 365 gigapixel image is 45 gigapixels bigger than it's closest rival and previous record holder, a detailed image of London taken from the BT Tower in 2012. That panorama, taken to celebrate the London Olympics, is still available to explore.