December 29, 2007

San Francisco in Ruins

Awesome (and sorta scary) image.

Click here to learn more about how this fascinating shot was made.

Posted by thedude at 2:58 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2007

Oakland Weather

This is odd weather for September 19th. We might get rained on tonight. Unfortunately, what I had hoped for - a huge thunderhead lit by the setting sun - didn't quite materialize. At least not from this vantage point. Oh well, the pano quite accurately captures what it looked like.

Look closely. How many vehicles do you see on the freeway moving left-to-right? I see one bus and three cars.

Looks like Cindy got it right! (Excluding the almost invisible cars on the far left of the panorama that Antonio just pointed out to me.) Here's why "four cars and one bus" is the answer I was looking for. You see the same three cars three times in the composite!

Posted by thedude at 8:43 PM | Comments (9)

August 29, 2007

Kuala Lumpur Panorama

I just stumbled on this very cool panoramic image of Kuala Lumpur. Wow - there's a whole 'nuther world out there. 20374 pixels wide. Cool.

Posted by thedude at 9:46 PM | Comments (2)

July 22, 2007

Beautiful Bass Lake

Occasionally thedude finds beauty in things that are not exploding or spewing flames! This weekend's trip to Bass Lake found us sipping cool beers on the deck at Ducey's while enjoying this splendid view.

Posted by thedude at 3:55 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2007

Big Display Owners Rejoice

Until today, I thought that I was the only blogger on the entire Internet with a site designed for viewing at 1920 x 1200 pixels. Well, it turns out there's another dude out there whose photo gallery features pages designed specifically for the well-endowed display. As if this isn't coincidence enough, this other dude also loves panoramic photography! Coincidence? Hmmm...

Posted by thedude at 7:35 PM | Comments (1)

February 4, 2007

Queen Mary II Arrives in San Francisco

We had everything worked out. We'd start with margaritas and a spicy bloody Mary at Sam's in Tiburon. After a brunch of crab cakes Benedict and a fresh-shucked oyster and bacon omelet, we'd drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and park at the north end to avoid the huge crowds coming to see the big boat sail under the pretty bridge.

On the way, a terrific idea came to me. I thought I'd position myself on the Golden Gate Bridge directly above the path of the huge ship, with my camera's intervalometer set to take a shot every 10 seconds. Then I'd mount the camera to my monopod, hang the whole thing off the side of the bridge and shoot straight down. Here's the good part - I planned to stitch the resulting images together to create a perfect panorama of the Queen Mary II from directly above. Wow! Would that be cool or what? Of course, my plan turned out to be too good to be true.

First of all, once on the bridge, a rumor circulated that the bridge would be closed directly above the ship. (This was evidently true.) Second, my monopod did not extend far enough to get a clear shot straight down. Finally, my calculations never considered the huge shadow cast by the bridge. So - we moved on to Plan B.

We hiked the full length of the bridge and searched for a spot in the headlands on the west side of the bridge where I though the light would be best. We walked along the coast for a while, and eventually realized that we would not get the view I imagined until we were near Baker Beach. Since this was just too far away, we settled on the location Kelly had suggested from the very beginning - the south side of the bridge above Fort Point. I'm pretty sure this was one of the best spots because some dude with an 8x10 view camera set up his big rig directly below and in front of us - territory off-limits to normal people with smaller cameras. (I'd assume the guy was an employee of the cruise line or something.) Too bad it was a 4 mile round trip from our car to this spot. The long walk proved to be worth it though, because the weather and the view were splendid. And the ship? Well, it was really, really huge.

Anyway, the Queen Mary II - on a fully-booked 80 day around-the-world tour will be in the bay area for 24 hours, where it's well-heeled passengers are expected to spend 1.2 million bucks shopping. (The cost for this round-the-world excursion ranges from $36,000 to $180,000 per person.) I don't suppose many of them will make it to my beloved Oakland. Pity.

Posted by thedude at 9:10 PM | Comments (3)

January 28, 2007

A View of the Third Floor at Affymetrix, Emeryville

I'm very impressed with the results produced by the latest version of PhotoVista. I forgot to level the camera for this panorama, and the results are still nearly perfect.

There are still a few steps involved to get this kind of quality.

1. Shoot 8 RAW images using a Nikkor 14mm lens with the camera in portrait orientation on a Kaidan Panoramic head.
2. Open the 8 RAW images in PhotoShop, apply color-correction, dust spot when necessary.
3. Apply the amazing PTLens filter to each image to correct for minor distortion introduced by the wide-angle lens.
4. Save the images as high-quality JPEG's. (I could choose non-lossy compression at this point, but I know the image will be greatly reduced in size for the web, so a little compression is OK here.)
5. Open the eight corrected images in PhotoVista and create a 360 degree panorama. (This is now the easiest part!)
6. Save the resulting panorama as a high-quality JPEG.
7. Open the panorama in PhotoShop and apply color-correction, spotting, sharpening, etc. as needed.
8. Reduce the size of the 18,000 pixel-wide panorama to something that will work on the web. This is done in steps - reducing the size 90% or so several times, sometimes applying a little sharpening along the way until reaching the desired size - in this case 5,000 pixels wide.
9. Create a custom VR page using the .ivr file created by PhotoVista.
10. Maybe even make a highly compressed version of the original file at its native size for those who have bandwidth to spare.
11. Make an entry on the blog!

Posted by thedude at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2007

Two Places at Once?

thedude proves it's possible.

I should mention that I used the latest version of PhotoVista to stitch this together. The original 17,860 pixel-wide version is the best "automatic" stitch I've ever produced - at least in terms of stitch accuracy. The new version's automatic lens detection is a real time-saver. This means that for most panoramas, it's probably not worth the effort of using the more flexible and possibly more accurate PanoTools.

If you'd like to see this scene in it's proper perspective, click here. Be patient. It could take a second or two to download.

Posted by thedude at 9:12 PM | Comments (3)

August 1, 2006

Grand Tetons Panorama

I saw numerous examples of images like these in galleries throughout Jackson. (The cabin in the scenes below is the most photographed structure in the park.) Many were shot with a large format camera and exhibited breathtaking sharpness and supernatural colors.

One thing that these images have in common - yes, even those shot by thedude - is that none of them would look quite this good without serious manipulations in PhotoShop. (Shhh... They'll never notice.)

Posted by thedude at 9:32 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2006

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Our best friends Chris and Ben have a very cool cabin just a few yards outside the Grand Teton National Park. This shot was taken from the deck shortly after sunrise on Friday morning. We stared at this view for three days and barely noticed the structures in the foreground - our eyes were fixed on the mountains. The photo simply can not do justice to the scale of this place.

The cabin actually consists of three structures. One has a kitchen, outfitted with totally chic turquoise appliances, and a small bedroom. The center structure is a beautiful large bedroom and bathroom, and the third is the spot where Chris' dad, Nathaniel Burt spent summers writing. Chris describes the cabin as "rustic", but we found it "fabulous".

I have much more to share from our trip to Wyoming, but it's getting late. Come back soon for more!

Posted by thedude at 10:16 PM | Comments (3)

July 5, 2006

Hotel David

thedude's first and last stop on any trip to Wisconsin is always the fabulous Hotel David. Proprietor Steve David makes sure the cozy Corley Suite is ready for thedude whenever he's in town. In addition to offering the most comfortable bed in town, Steve pours generously from his well-stocked wine cellar - always finding the perfect match for his exquisitely prepared meals. Hotel David is relaxing and loaded with charm and good taste. Five stars.

By the way, the image on the right is a composite of four shots stitched with Panorama Tools. I posted it at 3,000 pixels wide so you can get an idea of the incredible detail the original image contains.

Posted by thedude at 8:11 AM | Comments (3)

O'Hare International Airport

One of the first things you may encounter when traveling through Chicago's O'hare International Airport is the wacky walkway under the tarmac between the terminals and baggage claim. I'm usually too busy to stop and photograph this spot, but this time I was able to spare a few seconds to shoot two quick images with my D2X on a monopod. I used Panorama Tools to create this quick-and-dirty stitch.

Posted by thedude at 8:07 AM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2006

Pano Tools and PT Assembler

You know I love panoramic photography. I'm always looking for tools to help me improve my results. Some months ago I downloaded Pano Tools and Pano Tools Assembler, but never found the time to try them out - until today. After my first hour with Pano Tools, all I can say is, "W-W-W-WOW!"

There are many great things about Pano Tools. It does an amazing job at combining images seamlessly. It's relatively easy (albeit a bit geeky) to use. But best of all, it creates layered PhotoShop files. I know of no other pano program that gives you this much power and flexibility for 39 bucks!

The shot is a composite of four images I shot of the Greenlee Building, across the street from our loft. What makes it really special to me is that Pano Tools allows me to combine the images in such away that it looks as if it were shot with a view camera or an expensive shift lens. Notice how the building's lines are straight - they do not converge as the camera is pointed up. Well, that's part of the magic of Pano Tools. The other magical thing about this program is that by combining a series of 4 images in this way, I effectively quadruple the resolution of my camera! Click on the image to see it 3,000 pixels wide.

This is my first panorama with Pano Tools. I used my poorest quality lens and made quite a few mistakes on this image. I promise future panoramas will be even more amazing.

UPDATE: OK, here's my second Pano Tools image. This one consists of 6 images - two rows by three columns. This time I used a much sharper lens - my beloved Sigma 30 mm. The full-size composite image is more than 11,000 pixels wide, more than 400 megabytes in size. Click on the image to see it 3,000 pixels wide. Wow - this is fun!

For comparison, have a look at the same building shot from the same spot with my 12 mm lens. The only way I could get the entire building in a single shot from across the street was to use this very wide focal length. The resulting image has nowhere near the sharpness of the Pano Tools composite and is somewhat distorted. :)

This means that I can do high quality architectural photography of the sort normally reserved for large-format cameras in much less time using my digital camera and Pano Tools!

Posted by thedude at 2:52 PM | Comments (2)

May 30, 2006

Yet Another Huge Print

I finished the third in my series of large panoramic shots for my building. I have to say that I'm somewhat jealous. This print is my best - I wish it was on my floor! I guess it's true that practice makes perfect.

I'd like to thank the Fourth Street Lofts Homeowners Association for having faith in my work and for allowing me to experiment with these super-large prints. I hope it's just the beginning of something really huge. :)

Posted by thedude at 9:49 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Oakland's Magnificent Fox Theater

My recent visit to the Oakland Fox Theater was very interesting. I saw first hand what nearly 40 years of neglect will do to a building. The photos below look better than the building does "in person".

The shots below give a clue to the condition of the walls and the plaster pretty much throughout the entire building.

Below, you can get an idea of scale of the work that needs to be done on the ceiling which is larger than a football field. If you look closely at the upper left-hand corner of the image on the left below, you can just make out Andrew working in the corner.

Posted by thedude at 4:34 PM | Comments (5)

April 29, 2006

Oakland's Magnificent Paramount Theater

I booked a private tour today with the intention of shooting a couple of panoramas of the interior of this gorgeous theater. When I saw just how dark it is inside, I was a bit worried. However, I am anything but disappointed with the results. Even though every image was a time exposure of several seconds, the camera's noise reduction produced excellent results.

I haven't yet taken the time to generate panoramas from the camera RAW files - these were stitched together from JPEG's, so the quality is not what it could be. (Those blown-out highlights on the stage curtain for example.) I just could not wait to share the results! I'll update the images when I recreate them from the RAW files. UPDATE: The image below has been updated. This version was made from the RAW files.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that one or both of these will soon be printed nine or ten feet wide. Stay tuned for more! :)

Posted by thedude at 4:09 PM | Comments (3)

April 16, 2006

Printing Large - Again

I know I keep saying this, but it's truly amazing what you can do with a digital camera and an on-line digital printing service like Pictopia. A few years ago it would have cost thousands to do something like this. Today I can get a nine-foot-wide print for 250 bucks with a few mouse-clicks. Amazing!

Posted by thedude at 1:56 PM | Comments (3)

April 7, 2006

Another Nice Panorama by Grant

Even though this panorama was shot "with a tiny Canon SD500 on a crappy overcast day", Grant's image of the Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho works for me!

Posted by thedude at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

January 6, 2006

New Years Eve Panoramas

Thanks, Grant for sending these gorgeous panos.

Posted by thedude at 8:22 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Printing REALLY Large

The hallway panorama is in! It looks pretty impressive, if I must say so myself. A major improvement.

The nine foot wide print was made from a 10,000 pixel wide image consisting of four time exposures - approximately 30 seconds each - shot with a Nikon D2X. I used PhotoVista to do the stitching; Pictopia did the printing. Even though the final image contains just 108 pixels per inch, it looks great. Plenty of detail - no pixelization. It's incredible what you can do with digital technology these days!

Posted by thedude at 10:17 PM | Comments (2)

November 13, 2005

Oakland Skyline Panorama

I took this panorama last night from the rooftop. While I was setting up to take the shot, three or four motorcycle cops swooped in and closed the freeway! You can see their red and blue strobe lights in the foreground.

Some of my neighbors and I like this image so much that we're going to print it ten feet wide and hang it in the second floor lobby. :)

Posted by thedude at 11:02 AM | Comments (2)