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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.
- Shoot 8 RAW images using a Nikkor 14mm lens with the camera in portrait orientation on a Kaidan Panoramic head.
- Open the 8 RAW images in PhotoShop, apply color-correction, dust spot when necessary.
- Apply the amazing PTLens filter to each image to correct for minor distortion introduced by the wide-angle lens.
- 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.)
- Open the eight corrected images in PhotoVista and create a 360 degree panorama. (This is now the easiest part!)
- Save the resulting panorama as a high-quality JPEG.
- Open the panorama in PhotoShop and apply color-correction, spotting, sharpening, etc. as needed.
- 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.
- Create a custom VR page using the .ivr file created by PhotoVista.
- Maybe even make a highly compressed version of the original file at its native size for those who have bandwidth to spare.
- 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)
January 13, 2007
All is Not for McNaught
If not for my Astronomically inclined pal Andrew, I might never have heard of Comet McNaught. Thankfully, he keeps me abreast of such things, and so tonight your intrepid photographer could be seen shivering in the 30-something degree temperatures at the top of Grizzly Peak in Berkeley attempting to photograph the brightest object in the night sky for the last 30 years - Comet McNaught. Unfortunately, the bright comet could only be seen against an equally bright sunset, so some might say the event was less than amazing, but not us. We enjoyed every second of our spectacular Bay Area sunset on this - the clearest night we've ever seen. See the Farallon Islands out beyond the Golden Gate Bridge? They are at least 35 miles away. What a spectacular day!
Oh, and if you look very closely, you can just see Comet McNaught in the shot above on the right.
Posted by thedude at 11:02 PM | Comments (6)
January 12, 2007
Your Basic Fire Opera
Have I mentioned how much I love living in the Bay Area? Where else I could find an event quite like The Crucible's red hot Romeo and Juliet Fire Ballet?
I'll be honest here - I am not likely to ever attend a "real" opera. This sort of music/theater springs from a level of consciousness I have never been able to attain. I know I'd be as confused as I would be at a Grateful Dead concert. I just don't get it.
Now, take your average opera and throw in a few sexy flame swallowers and a little molten metal, and suddenly it all makes sense! A spectacle created just for for thedude. Both Grant and myself gave the performance a thumbs up. Big fun!
This was one of the most difficult photo shoots I've ever done. I had a seat in the fourth row and could not move from my seat. The lighting alternated between almost total darkness to the blinding light of a small thermonuclear device. This is the first time I have ever shot with my camera set on ISO 1200. I wanted to portray motion, but get some sort of in-focus shots. I could not rely on auto-focus in the darkness, so I focused manually. To give myself some depth-of-focus, I shot on shutter priority most of the night - in the 1/10 to 1/30 of a second range. What a challenge!
Oh - and the famous Crucible fire truck was in action before the show. I shot a picture of a young man and handed him my card. Just in case you actually came to my site, here's the picture of the fireball you sent skyward.
Posted by thedude at 7:21 PM | Comments (3)
More than a Megadose
I think a gigadose is more like what I need. I have another bad head cold - my second in as many months. I can not remember ever having two colds in rapid succession. I'm blaming it on job stress. That plus I may have taken on a few too many projects.
I really have to learn how to say no.
Posted by thedude at 2:56 PM | Comments (1)
January 7, 2007
Fun (But Dangerous) New Neighbors
Today we discovered that we have not one, but TWO wineries within stumbling distance of our loft. Both JC Cellars and Dashe Cellars recently opened tasting rooms less than three blocks away. What a great addition to our neighborhood. This is the kind of urban development we can support!
Tasting is free, and the rich, delicious wines are served in beautiful Reidel "Ouverture" stemware. We took home a yummy Roussanne/Marsanne blend from JC Cellars and a couple fruity Zinfandels from Dashe. We especially liked the late-harvest Zin. Yum!
Photos by Grant and Sandy Goya
Posted by thedude at 3:15 PM | Comments (1)
January 6, 2007
My New Windows Wallpaper
If only this fortune could come true... Maybe if I display it prominently on my desktop at work my bosses will be brainwashed into giving me a promotion and a huge raise. I'll let you know how that goes. :)
Posted by thedude at 9:15 AM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2007
A Nice Site Gets Nicer
thedude was thrilled to discover tonight that the official San Francisco Carnaval web site has given their home page a tune up, and now features one of thedude's shots from carnaval 2006. They must really like the shot because they devoted so much screen real estate to it. Not even thedude.com features a photo as large as this one (624 x 597 pixels) on the home page! (Well, excluding the giant background image, that is. :)
Notice how the huge image dwarfs the corporate logos? Heh. Cool.
Posted by thedude at 6:17 PM | Comments (2)
