Last year, Bentley unveiled its first gigapixel image. Dubbed "one of the world's most extraordinary car photographs", it used Nasa-derived technology to take one of the world's most detailed pictures – of a Bentley Mulsanne on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Today, Bentley has revealed to The National that it has created its second gigapixel image, and this time around, it was taken in Dubai.
Being unveiled globally on Thursday, March 23, the image is of a Bentley Flying Spur W12 S parked in the Dubai Marina. Zoom out and you’ll get a detailed panoramic view of the city’s towering skyscrapers, including the iconic twisting Cayan Tower, the water, Sheikh Zayed Road and Jumeirah Lakes Towers in the backdrop. So detailed is the image that it even captures the curvature of the Earth. Zoom in and you’ll get close enough to see the distinctive B on the badge bonnet of the Flying Spur.
Bentley suspended a camera 264 metres above Cayan Tower – one of Dubai’s tallest buildings – to capture what is one of the most detailed landscape images to have ever been shot. Created last May, the innovative technology that was used had to withstand temperatures of 40 degrees, as well as 25kph winds.
An incredible 57.7 billion pixels were carefully stitched together to create a single image that also balanced light levels painstakingly across each pixel. The intricate process took 48 hours to create and consists of 1,825 frames.
Alongside the new gigapixel image, viewers are invited to explore the Flying Spur W12 S inside and out, with a 360-degree film narrated by John Paul Gregory, Bentley’s head of exterior design, who was in Dubai today to unveil the image and short film.
Take a look at the revolutionary image here.
sdenman@thenational.ae
