Maker Faire 2010

Small World Explorations had an exhibit at maker faire (May 22nd-23rd) in San Mateo CA. We explained our project as well as gigapans to hundreds of people over the course of the weekend and were greeted with a lot of enthusiasm by the maker community.

Maker Faire 2010

Getting Ready to Print

Using the Gigapan gives you the freedom to select the
aspect ratio, or shape, of you your pictures.

Since you specify the top left and bottom right of your
images you can make them short and wide, tall and narrow,
or anywhere in between.

This freedom is great until it collides with the physical
world with standard size monitors and paper.

Large format printers get paper (or canvas or vinyl) on rolls,
so the fixed factor is the width.

To calculate the length you need to print a Gigapan
on a certain width paper:

Length of Paper = height of paper * gigapan width/gigapan height

Example:

I have a 91084 x 17246 Gigapan and I want to print it on 44"
wide paper. So what is the length.

length = 44" * 91084 / 17246 = 232.4" = 19 feet.
232.4" x 44" = 10,225.6 square inches = 71 square feet

There are different rates, but I've been quoted $10 per square foot
to print. That would be $710, so I probably won't be printing that
GigaPan at that size until printing costs come down!

More focus stacking fun.

Focus stacking is fun. Here is a 32 image stack of a slice of a crystal/geode which Spencer bought at the California Academy of Sciences last year.



I've also been getting interested in fabrics, and textiles. So here is a small stack, 6 images, of a tweed weave tie dyed fabric.