We’ve had about enough of the almost non-stop helicopter sounds outside our window. There are three or four in the air almost every evening that doesn’t include rain.

Click for a closer look at this 15,000 pixel-wide view from my rooftop. It’s not the sharpest image ever taken, but this is because the shots were handheld at high ISO with the lens wide open and manual (out of) focus. I sort of forgot that my 35mm lenses don’t perform as well wide open as the awesome lens on my X100T.

The last time I did this sort of thing, I used a tripod, lower ISO, smaller aperture and auto focus. The resulting image received more attention than any other in the history of thedude.com.

DISCLAIMER: Just as the moon was not really in that spot in my earlier panorama, there was actually just one helicopter with a searchlight in this one. I took about 5 shots of the police chopper in 2-second intervals thinking that I’d combine them all in the final pano, but this is what came out of AutoPano Pro on the first take, and I like it. Done. Well, that is until Kelly saw it and suggested this tighter crop. Yes, I like this one too!