Example of movement in a pano that hasn’t been “fixed.” It can be though with Kolor APG and I will fix it in next version. The shot seems magical enough to be worth working on.
Apr 162013
Apr 142013
A few nights ago, on an assignment I managed to get this panorama (16 shots) of Columbus Circle just as it was about to pour down. That’s probably one of my favorite atmospherics – not the shot during the rain – but as the clouds are going gray and you feel the pressure dropping suddenly.
Shot with 20mm / 16 shots / full size @ 300 dpi would be about 45 x 60 inches
I haven’t reached the point of putting any of the panos up for sale, but I imagine they’ll have their own gallery, and there will be an entirely different choice of sizes. A shot like this, for example, you should be able to purchase from 16 x 20 to something giga like 45 x 60 or greater. These are non-interpolated sizes – and with just a 2x interpolation you are in the 10 foot long arena.
Apr 102013
I was out on an assignment tonight on the west side – not to shoot Columbus Circle but to try and get something decent from the Central Park South area at night, and after I had shot two panos for the client, it began to rain. I quickly turned and setup the camera for this Columbus Circle shot – which I think was 16 images with the 20mm. As you can see, in a way I’m returning to the format (4×5) and the idea of using the Kolor Auto Pan Giga software to help out with architectural defeat of converging lines and stuff like that.
I can shoot fast enough now, so that I can fire off about 16 shots in less than a minute using the 2-second timer (to prevent camera shake).
Tomorrow I’ll take a look at what I was sent out to try and capture. That was a bit more vague and I’m not sure if I got it or not – but I’ll often take these assignments if they’re in a part of town where I haven’t done much shooting.
Apr 092013
Apr 072013
And this is a typical look with the 20mm. Closer you are to an object, the greater the curvature. And as you may remember, I upgraded the RAM in the MacPro from 6 GB to 28 GB and voila – makes a huge difference in processing time. So all in all – to make the move cost me a 3 TB internal drive ($200), the Ninja Nodal Mechanism ($600), Kolor Auto Pano Giga software for stitching ($285) – all of these numbers – more or less. But basically about $1000. And a month of learning my way around. Now to compare it to buying say a medium format camera with a digital back – there are many pros and cons.
I’ll list some of the pros first. With the stitching mechanism, there really are no boundries as far as size goes. You can quickly find yourself writing TB sized files. Another difference is that you aren’t tied to any particular camera. When I get to it, I expect to use my Infrared Converted DSLR (as an example). I believe you can achieve many of the same effects as with a view camera – i.e. shifts and tilts – with the software. I also think that you have more control over the depth of field with longer lenses.
And of course – money-wise – there’s no comparison.
With digital backs, not only are the prices high, but you are buying a piece of digital equipment which means that it won’t be long before the better model comes out. The same is true with the camera you are using with the Ninja Nodal mechanism – but if anything the prices are coming down for full-frame cameras.
I’ll let you write the pros of the digital back since I have no experience with them other than reading about them.
Apr 072013
I shot this today. It was the Greek parade so the barricades are all over the place. That’s both good and bad. Good – the side street was blocked off so I could take my time and stand in the right position shooting 55 images for about a half hour.
Not so good – those barricades ruin the picture. Still – good practice in using the 50mm lens.
To give you an idea of the size of this thing – without any interpolation – it’s 90 inches long, @ 300 dpi. If I wanted to, with a bit of interpolation with PhotoZoom I could easily print it at 20 feet across @ 300 dpi.
You can’t really get any sense of the size with such descriptions, so I’ve included a 100% detail where you can read the writing on soda containers that can barely be seen in the web image. Actually the shot is cropped. It was too long for my taste.
Whether it should be in b&w or color – no idea. I did about six other setups today (nice Spring weather) that I want to work on first.
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- Click to Enlarge Detail
Apr 062013
I prefer this in black and white.
Apr 042013
26 Images / 50mm f1.4 lens / Kolor Auto Giga Pano
Besides the immense size of these Giga Panos, they offer one more thing: a different viewpoint than what can be achieved with a prime lens. By bending the lines, you can prevent converging lines and give the appearance that the camera is perpendicular to (in this case the bridge).
Apr 042013
I got down to Grand Central early – but not early enough. I setup the tripod on the main level – and had taken five shots when two cops came rolling up in their cop mobile.
No tripod use.
Not a flicker of emotion on either of their faces.
Can I just take two more shots, I asked.
No. Fold it up.
Okay.
Is there someplace I can get a permit to use the tripod.
Yeah. Down there. Over in the corner, there’s a small office. See that guy.
And I start to fold up the tripod and they roll off.
I walk down to the office where I get the same glare from the guy behind the counter. The glare of here comes another pain in the ass.
I was told I could get a permit here to shoot in Grand Central.
More glare. Than he says, we don’t have any forms around for that right now.
When do you expect to have those forms?
Hold on.
He goes back to another office. After a while returns.
We’ve got the forms but there’s nobody with the authority to sign them.
When will there be someone who can sign them?
I’d say about 7 or 7:thirty.
I glare back at him. Okay. Severn-thirty.
Yeah. Seven-thirty. I can’t say for sure, but he should be in by then.
I had already taken a few shots here and there where I didn’t think I was on any video cameras. So I close up the tripod and headed back home.
At home, I had enough to work on ’til about two o’clock. I’ll try again tomorrow, only not that early.
In New York, you spend about half your time getting around the cops to do your shooting.
Apr 042013
21 images / 20mm lens / Canon T4i / 40 inches high @ 300 dpi
Apr 032013
Click to Enlarge
Pano / 48 images / stitched with Kolor AutoPan Giga / 50mm f2.8 lens /
Apr 032013
Click to Enlarge Image
Pano: 48 images / 20mm f2.8 / canon t4i /
The main problem was having to move the tripod everytime a cop came around. They’re right about the law – no tripods in the subway. So I marked the spot with a piece of chalk, and came back four times to take this shot! As far as the colors go – it just seemed that pastel made it look a lot prettier than it actually was.
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And of course my processing was getting slower and slower so I called OWL (Other World Computing) and after a brief chat we decided that the best RAM upgrade for me would be to replace the three channels I had with 2 GB each to 8 GB each. I’m told that the switching isn’t that hard to do. Will get the memory tomorrow. Other advice was to keep the 2GB DIMMs in case anything went wrong. (Hope the extra memory makes a difference). I’ve run into either extremely slow processing with the APG stitcher, or NIK saying the files were too big to process, or a few other things along similar lines where PS just stopped cold in its tracks.
They are big files I’m working with. Lately I’ve been chopping them down in size to work on them. But at their full large size (even at 8-bits) per channel they’ve been inching towards 1 TB. And when I go up to a longer lens – forget about it. Way too many images for my MacPro to be happy.
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