That was fun, plus some panoramas

This is primarily a post about photographic panoramas with some, IMHO, cute examples. I have added several more comments etc to my page about Blogger being broken - which it obviously isn't right now.


The need for a panoramic photo system  came up in discussion of attempting to capture a group of 10 White-faced herons, spread over about 50 metres of swamp shoreline in a single frame.  I recalled doing this in the past (4 cameras back) but hadn't been able to find the function on my current camera (a Panasonic DMC FZ40).  So I called up the manual - a benefit of having it as a .pdf file rather than dead trees - and sure enough there was the facility.  This did mean I had to install the software that came with this camera rather than continuing to use that which I got 3 cameras back but that is not a problem.

So the next morning I took the camera on our morning exercise and took 5 images of the Tallaganda skyline, covering a field of view from about NE round to about SSE.  Here is the result.
The exposure changes a bit and a couple of stitch lines are visible but it is rather good.  This led me to look for any old panoramas I might have around.  I was particularly looking for on of the Manhattan skyline, which I took from somewhere in Brooklyn while on a long run, but failed to track that down (I did find one with that title but I'm pretty certain it is of Noo Joisey rather than Manhattan).  However here is one looking the other way, over Brooklyn and Queens , taken at night from the roof (37th floor) of Camp Butterfield (320 E46th St) .
I also found a shot of Table Mountain in Cape Town, Seth Efrica, which I took from the glass walled lift (elevator, for any readers from New Jersey or Manhattan) of the hotel in which we were staying.
One of the issues with the old software had been that one could only use photos taken for panoramic purposes with the specific model of camera.  It appeared that this system was a tad more generic and on finding a bunch of photos of the Financial District of NYC taken in 2006 from the Staten Island Ferry I decided to let the newer software take a crack at stitching them together.  Here is the result.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more