Check out this project:
If you are reading this text on a 1280×1024 computer monitor, a one-gigapixel Gigapxl? image would be 35 of your screens wide and 22 screens tall. A four-gigapixel image is twice as wide and twice as high?that is, 70 screens wide and 44 screens tall. When printed at the highest resolution discernable by the human eye, these images range from 5×10 feet up to 10×20 feet in size. Compared to leading 6-megapixel digital cameras, a Gigapxl? image has between 160 and 666 times the number of pixels. It also resolves an independent color triplet at each pixel unlike Bayer-pattern digital cameras. These images are big and sharp beyond anything you are likely to have seen in your life.
Sez Alex at After School Snack,
A photo of the Bixby Bridge allows one to zoom in on the face of a person sitting on the bridge, too small to see in the full photograph.
I really like the zooms on the shuttle launch.