Cameras
Google has used three types of car-mounted cameras to take Street View photographs. Generations 1–3 were used to take photographs in the United States. The first generation was superseded and images were replaced with images taken with 2nd and 3rd generation cameras. Second generation cameras were used to take photographs in Australia. The shadows caused by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation cameras are occasionally viewable in images taken in mornings and evenings. The new 4th generation cameras will be used to completely replace all images taken with earlier generation cameras. 4th generation cameras take near-HD images and deliver much better quality than earlier cameras. Even though 4th generation cameras were in use as early as April 2008, Google used older cameras for many areas as late as October 2009 for Street View and as late as September 2010 for Museum View.
In October 2008, Google introduced the Street View Trike, a pedal tricycle with a 4th generation camera mounted to take images where cars cannot reach, including footpaths and dirt tracks. The 250-pound, 9-foot long tricycles are piloted by athletes. All Street View images taken now will be taken with the 4th generation Street View cameras.
In February 2010, Google introduced the Street View Snowmobile, a snowmobile with a 4th generation camera mounted to take images on the Whistler Blackcomb Ski Slopes in preparation for the winter olympics in Vancouver, Canada.
Google plans to use 4th generation cameras to re-shoot areas previously covered by earlier versions. Google uses the open-source cameras from Elphel for capturing Street View photos.
As of January 2013, most of the United States, much of Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, a couple areas in France and Italy, some very small areas in Canada and Mexico near the U.S. border, and a few museums around the world still have low resolution images. Everywhere else covered by Street View has either always had HD images or has had its low resolution images replaced by HD images.
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Street View Camera showcased on campus.
Read more about this topic: Google Street View
Famous quotes containing the word cameras:
“Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“While the music is performed, the cameras linger savagely over the faces of the audience. What a bottomless chasm of vacuity they reveal! Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures . . .”
—Paul Johnson (b. 1928)