thedude.com

thedude and Kelly joined about 1,000 others last night to show our respect for His Dudeness at the first San Francisco Lebowski Fest.

Yes, there were plenty of Jeff Lebowski and Karl Hungus look-alikes. Music was provided by the hilarious Meshugga Beach Party. Primal drum beats and sexual energy came by way of the fabulous Extra Action Marching Band.

We tried our best to get close to Jeff Dowd, to get a shot of thedude with thedude, but no luck. Perhaps we’d have been able to better focus if we hadn’t consumed those last two caucasions. “Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”

Yes, you’ve seen this location before on this web site. But not 30,000 pixels wide. The HDView plugin makes this previously unimaginable feat entirely possible. Be sure you have the HDView plugin installed, (Sorry, no Mac version yet) then check it out!

When I first used this plugin over at xRez, I was completely blown away. HDView is a must-have plugin! Get it now!

Then, click on this link to get a taste of what’s to come. Amazing!!! So much to be excited about!

It turns out it’s easy to embed a GigaPan Panorama on a web page. Hopefully, this will get more of you to check it out. Be sure to drag the the zoom slider on the left. Or, double-click on a region to zoom in on it. Looks like I have a white-balance problem in this panorama, but the amount of detail in is fairly awesome! Of course, you can always view a full-screen version as well.

This is really my first attempt with a decent camera attached to the GigaPan, so my results can only get better. Hope you’ll come back often for more!

Of course, after looking at the results xRes folks are getting I’m considering other options altogether…

It would be very cool if all of you got your very own Gravatar. Then, when you leave a comment on thedude.com or any other site that supports Gravatars, we’ll all get to see your smiling face! Or your cat’s face or your bird’s butt or anything else that says something about who you are. Here’s mine. Get yours!

The shots taken by the professional photographer were finally posted today. I hate to say it, but I’m not sure that he made the most of the terrific photo-op. In addition to some tighter shots, I would certainly have made at least a couple panoramic shots of the event and stitched them together. This would have allowed him to get higher resolution and better coverage of this unique event. The good news though, is that he got lots of shots of thedude gettin’ goofy in his little car! :)

The other thing that would have made these shots even better is if Kelly had been there, but she wasn’t feeling well this morning. :(

thedude and Steve out on a shoot on a clear day in October, 1983. I don’t remember where we got the 4 x 5 camera, but I know Steve got some great results with it. Got more scans, Steve?

When I shot this, I accidentally had the lens open to f1.4. The resulting haziness and shallow depth of focus looks pretty cool. I’m going to have to use this effect again!

I was lucky enough to have an amazing seat at today’s Giant’s game. I was in row one directly behind the batter at AT & T park. I think I was closer to the batter than the pitcher was! If you look closely in the very center of the shot, you’ll see a Plexiglas window. My seat was just to the left of it - next to the guy in the blue ball cap facing the camera. :)

Being that close meant that I was too close to the field to shoot a decent panorama. So, to get the shot above, I moved about half way back in the stands. And yes, the Giant’s beat the Marlins, 4-3.

My apologies to those of you who have seen pictures shot from the roof before, but this one is different.

What makes this first pano interesting is that I broke all the rules when I made it. I used a very modest camera, and shot in fully-automatic mode. I set the Gigapan rig on a ledge on the roof. The rig was not perfectly level, and had a tendency to wobble. Basically, I setup and shot the pano as quickly as possible to see what kind of results I’d get without trying too hard. Given that the rig used to produce this level of detail costs less than a single mid-range lens for my Nikon D3, I think you’ll agree that the results are pretty darn amazing.

Over the next few days, I hope to shoot more with the Gigapan head and a Canon G7. I’ll compare the results to those from my D3.