Buttercup in Death Valley

[Buttercup]

This one unfortunately doesn't qualify for the Picture of the Month. But it sure might have been a contender for one of the other months. Click Image to see the full size image.

Compiled out of 14 images and processed with Autopano.
Size: 21293px x 2130px
Field Of View: 247.77° wide x 24.79° high.

The inspiration for this image is 65GT. After seeing his wonderful pano's at the International in Salem from some of his trips I was intrigued to try doing some panographic photography of my own. Leo and I own the same camera so we were able to discuss the process he used.

Fast forward to about a month ago and I find a site that discusses creating gigapixel photographs with a simple digital camera and some software to combine the images. Well I was hooked. The site can be seen at http://www.docbert.org/MP/. Imagine combining over 400 images into one image. Incredible to say the least!

So when we went to Death Valley for Thanksgiving I took the camera, a tripod and a laptop and started taking pictures - lots of them. I have a lot of work to do to process all of those images but the efforts will be worth it.

BTW, most of the pictures I took (and will compile into panographs and gigapixel images) will be used for the website I am developing for the Death Valley Natural History Association at http://www.dvnha.org. I have one "Zoomify" image posted there already but not linked to any pages yet. It is of the Harmony Borax works out of Furnace Creek. That can be seen at http://www.dvnha.org/zoomify/harmony/harmony.htm. This image I processed with Adobe Photoshop. The results were not that great so in a while I will replace that image with a better one. The idea is to let visitors to the site experience a little of Death Valley.

In 3 weeks we will be in France - Chartres to be exact and I will be taking tons of pictures, especially in the cathedral and in the town that I will also share.

[balrgn]

Originally Posted by Buttercup

This one unfortunately doesn't qualify for the Picture of the Month. But it sure might have been a contender for one of the other months. Click Image to see the full size image.

Compiled out of 14 images and processed with Autopano.
Size: 21293px x 2130px
Field Of View: 247.77° wide x 24.79° high.

The inspiration for this image is 65GT. After seeing his wonderful pano's at the International in Salem from some of his trips I was intrigued to try doing some panographic photography of my own. Leo and I own the same camera so we were able to discuss the process he used.

Fast forward to about a month ago and I find a site that discusses creating gigapixel photographs with a simple digital camera and some software to combine the images. Well I was hooked. The site can be seen at http://www.docbert.org/MP/. Imagine combining over 400 images into one image. Incredible to say the least!

So when we went to Death Valley for Thanksgiving I took the camera, a tripod and a laptop and started taking pictures - lots of them. I have a lot of work to do to process all of those images but the efforts will be worth it.

BTW, most of the pictures I took (and will compile into panographs and gigapixel images) will be used for the website I am developing for the Death Valley Natural History Association at http://www.dvnha.org. I have one "Zoomify" image posted there already but not linked to any pages yet. It is of the Harmony Borax works out of Furnace Creek. That can be seen at http://www.dvnha.org/zoomify/harmony/harmony.htm. This image I processed with Adobe Photoshop. The results were not that great so in a while I will replace that image with a better one. The idea is to let visitors to the site experience a little of Death Valley.

In 3 weeks we will be in France - Chartres to be exact and I will be taking tons of pictures, especially in the cathedral and in the town that I will also share.

Great pic! Man that looks like a great place to hang out and just do some camping!

[streamer23]

Great picture(s).I almost feel like I'm there.

[ArtStream]

Just spectacular!

Michael

[cammur]

Nice work. I wish my attempts looked so good, using Photoshop Elements. Must take lots of memory and processing (and patience!).

See http://www.photoprojects.net/index4.html for another person's experiments with Orthographic images, where each component photo is taken from a different spot.

Incredible pano shots and techniques also available from
http://www.dogsleap.com/panotools.cfm

[safari57]

Buttercup

Very impressive. Thanks for sharing this. I see a whole new area to play in for a while. This is great.

Barry

[Airstream25]

Tell our French AS friends you are coming. Maybe it will work out to meet.

Originally Posted by Buttercup

In 3 weeks we will be in France - Chartres to be exact and I will be taking tons of pictures, especially in the cathedral and in the town that I will also share.

[ESCAPE POD]

Thanks, Buttercup, for the preview. We're going to be in Death Valley for a few days, starting New Year's Day. This gives us something to look forward to, as we've never been there before.

-Jerry

[nilesrob]

Originally Posted by ESCAPE POD

Thanks, Buttercup, for the preview. We're going to be in Death Valley for a few days, starting New Year's Day. This gives us something to look forward to, as we've never been there before.

-Jerry

I'm still trying to cull out pictures from our few days in Death Valley. I've got it down to about 300! You will love it! There are a couple of threads on Death Valley, and Buttercup had steered us to several DV web sites prior to our trip. Invaluable.

Maybe this new toy with merging pictures will help me out! Or just compund my issues. Either way, it sounds like fun!

[wheel interested]

That's really neat to see so much in high resolution zoomed in. It is amazing that you stitched so many frames together seamlessly. Great job. If you could do panaramics or multiframes in the cathedral and Chartres that would be cool. Can't wait to see what you bring back. Have fun. Buttercup in Death Valley sounds like a favorite eposode.

[nilesrob]

Buttercup, great idea! I just loaded the "pano" program, because in my trip to Death Valley I had by design taken some pictures with the intent of a panorama. However, I thought I'd be taking a razor blade to some prints.

I created a panorama from Dante's View - although in retrospect I can see where I should have been standing for the better picture. I guess another trip to DV will be in order. I have yet to figure out how to attach the panorama.

I am technically dysfunctional, but I was able to create this panorama in very short order. Very cool.

[Buttercup]

Leo,

I was grinning alright - because the results looked so good. I tried the Photoshop thing and hated the results. After stitching frames together every one had blur lines, color mismatches and line mismatches.

I looked on the internet and found the AutoPanoPro software and downloaded the demo. I was blown away with the results. So I sprund the 99 euo price tag (which I will use as a business expense) and started stitching frames together. It is that easy and the results are beautiful.

I am now thinking of getting a telephoto lens for my Powershot G6 and really pushing into the gigapixel range.

If you are into photography and panographs, you NEED that software.

Sorry Leo that you pumped hours into photoshop to put your images together. if you had known about the software you would have saved yourself hours of time. But your images were the inspiration.

[wheel interested]

I'm playing with the demo and the first one was unbelievable. Picked 4 or 5 pictures and walked away for a cup of coffee when I came back it was there and blended! It does, it blows everything else out of the water. Now I am looking for pictures to load. If it works on them, I assume it will, I will be inspired to plunk down cash. Thanks Tim for turning us on to this program. And thanks Leo with your winning photography that inspired this. But Leo gotta move forward, change has to come, better ways to do things. 1P1S One pano one step.

[Buttercup]

1P1S - I love it. I did spend the bucks for the app because I know I can use it in production. pays for itself with the first shot that makes it into a travel planner or some other publication.

It is THAT GREAT. Can't wait to go to France and soot pano's in the cathedral.

Originally Posted by wheel interested

I'm playing with the demo and the first one was unbelievable. Picked 4 or 5 pictures and walked away for a cup of coffee when I came back it was there and blended! It does, it blows everything else out of the water. Now I am looking for pictures to load. If it works on them, I assume it will, I will be inspired to plunk down cash. Thanks Tim for turning us on to this program. And thanks Leo with your winning photography that inspired this. But Leo gotta move forward, change has to come, better ways to do things. 1P1S One pano one step.

[nilesrob]

I concur - unbelievable. I can see my approach and methods for taking pictures changing, and I can see my disk storage requirements increasing in exponential form.

[Buttercup]

Yea, that's why they invented external firewire hard drives!

Originally Posted by nilesrob

I concur - unbelievable. I can see my approach and methods for taking pictures changing, and I can see my disk storage requirements increasing in exponential form.