New Zealand is so beautiful that it’s hard to get imagery that does it justice. But we found some we love – 250,000 km2 of gorgeous aerial photos from Land Information New Zealand, at high to ultra-high resolution. Some details popped out:
Harbourside Market is in a Wellington parking lot next to Te Papa, the national museum. At 10 cm (4 inch) resolution, you can see the different colors of individual bins of vegetables.
Surfers and sunbathers on the beach at Mount Maunganui, near Tauranga. At zoom level 20, this is not the sharpest imagery in the dataset, but it’s twice the resolution of anything available from a satellite.
It’s not always about resolution. Even zoomed out, the aerial imagery carries the colors and textures of the landscape. Here, sheep graze on the hills under one of the massive turbines of Te Apiti Wind Farm, near Manawatu Gorge.
… But sometimes it is about resolution. With 7.5 cm (3 inch) pixels, you can count the grooves of the containers on a cargo ship docked in Auckland. The blue square on the ship is the crew’s pool.
The New Zealand aerial photography is one of several new high-res datasets that’s going on our basemap. We’re always tracking down the best imagery from every available source. If you have any questions, we’re @mapbox on Twitter!