Click to Enlarge
Pano / 48 images / stitched with Kolor AutoPan Giga / 50mm f2.8 lens /
Apr 032013
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.
* * *
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.
* * *
Apr 022013
Click for Larger Image
30 images / giga pano / needs some cleaning up – ghosts with moving people / will probably also take a crack at it in b&w / and did several different setups this morning which I want to look at first… lots of work still necessary – but gives an idea… too big to work on in NIK, so I cut the size of the file in half…
I expect to take my 6 GB of RAM memory and upgrade it to 16 MG which I think is the most that this Mac can handle (quad-core, not eight core). Anyway – damned tricky to do with all the moving cars, trucks and people.
Apr 012013
Click to Enlarge Image
The garage owner was nice enough to let me do a Giga Pano before the rush began. 36 Stitched Images / 50mm f1.4 (f8) / Silver Effex for B&W. I promised to do a print for them. They were curious, trying to figure out what the heck I was doing moving the camera from click to click and counting silently to myself. I refocused each time I moved the camera (at least when needed) so that everything is – in focus – as the camera went around.
Apr 012013
So NIK / Google sent me a link to download the full suite – and after loading it – there were no problems. Not only that – but as JPH said – no questions about my KEY NUMBERS, plus instead of only working just in Lightroom – it works very well in Photoshop as well. I’m about to write back to Google / NIK and tell them that all is well and to thank them.
I don’t understand what happened to the Key Numbers (I was so used to them) or why they simplified things so that the same program worked with Photoshop and Lightroom.
Anyway – now I’m going to start checking into getting more RAM for my Mac Pro.
Mac OS X, Version 10.6.8
Processor: 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, Memory: 6 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 (let’s see what they story is – and esp. how hard is it to change memory chips.)
Apr 012013
Walkway in Formal Gardens of Central Park (Giga Pano).
Lens: Canon 50mm f1.4 (f8), 66 images stitched with Kolor Auto Pan Giga, Conversion to black and white (NIK Silver Effex), Tweaking – Photoshop Masking. Pixel Size: 29,000 x 20,000 pixels. File actually too large to work on with NIK, so I brought it down to about half that size for post-processing. I’ll probably be upgrading the amount of RAM in my MAC Pro from 8 GB of ram to at least 16 GB. Investigation necessary – how difficult is it to swap RAM; and what’s the most that the Mac Pro
I’ve had a bunch of names for it – but it does remind me of the Simon and Garfunkel song.
Time, time, time, see what’s become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Apr 012013
I am beginning to build up a substantial number of huge panos. I think that the next thing I’m going to do is experiment with the virtual tour of the image. It’s not something that I’m crazy about, but one of the main characteristics of these Giga Pano’s is the amount of crisp details which are absolutely impossible to show on the web unless I make a gallery of 100% detail shots.
For example, you’re looking at an image composed of 36 full size images from the T4i. This shot, without any interpolation, is about 10,000 pixels (height) by 22,000 pixels. It could easily be doubled or tripled by using a good interpolation program like ProZoom. There are about ten people, each one perfectly resolved just stepping onto the stairs from the park’s loop.
Working on files of this size does present a problem though. My MacPro has been great for the last few years for anything I had to deal with, but when you find yourself working on files that are a TB large… you find that one of the first things you do is pull them down from 16-bit to 8-bit. And for the first time you run into error messages saying that a Tiff file has a sie limit, and you’ve hit. Again – not a killer since you just work in Photoshop file format, but when you get an error message that a program doesn’t have enough memory to do the job and will have to quit… you begin to wonder if’s getting time to upgrade your hardware.
Right now I have four internal drives ranging from 2 TBs to 4 TBs.
I’m running Mac OS X, ver. 10.6.8
Processor 2.66, GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Memory (RAM) 6 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 (is that fast?) Can I / Should I replace the memory with larger memory chips?
I think a lot will depend on whether these large files is something I’m going to stick with or not.
Click to Enlarge Image
Mar 312013
Click to Enlarge – Seltzer Bottles in Window
Lens: 20mm f2.8, Camera: Canon T4i, Images Stitched (9)
Mar 312013
Click to Enlarge
Giga Pano (36 images stitched together)
Canon T4i, 50mm Lens
Approx. 6 feet long @ 300 dpi
Mar 312013
18 images / 50mm / Canon T4i
Mar 312013
60 images stitched together. 50mm lens. It’s really a first draft since I still don’t have Viveza which is my real go-to fixer-upper working. Still it gives an idea of what can be done with a bit of inexpensive hardware and some experimentation.
Castle – Central Park (Pano)
Mar 302013
Before I post this image which I did with hdr and Giga Pano – I just want to voice one complaint. I’ve been using and loving NIK software since at least 2010, and today when I went to work with Viveza — it tells me that my trial version has expired.
Now I have the receipt with the code and proof that I spent about $300 on the whole NIK suite.
But of course Google decided to buy NIK a while back, and the various links to NIK support have been replaced by Google, and they stink. I can’t even find the online store where I bought the NIK software, and frankly – the entire system of ordering and downloading – or upgrading doesn’t work like it used to.
You used to be able to just login, and you’d see the name you ordered it with and the keys for all your products, and I was never in a position where I couldn’t get a NIK product working. Maybe I’d have to download one again, replace the old version etc. but there was always a way to get the thing working. Now I have to wait to get to Google support on Monday. And I don’t know about you but Google support has always been a bear to get through to.
On the other hand, they’ve lowered the price from $300 to $179 for the entire suite.
Anyway – just wanted to get that off my chest – and say that the only ones that have done well when they took over some software that I’d been using for a while has been Adobe.
Well, I had a cold all week and didn’t feel like doing much but I finally got some energy back today and started wandering around with the Giga Pan equipment. I’ve been using it to do large panoramas of stores and approaching the owners with shots on my tablet and I’ve had one nice sale already. After all, who wouldn’t want a giant poster of their establishment? When I tell them that these are in the range of 20 feet long – if they want it that long – their eyes light up.
Okay – in the meantime – I did this Giga Pano (that’s what I’m starting to call these things) of a nearby apartment building that’s always fascinated me because of the brightly painted white doors. And then spent a lot of time shooting scaffolding. Still processing that.
Just a note for those who’ve been following this Giga Pano thing — you don’t need to do this wide angle look. Use a longer lens, say a 50mm on a cropped sensor, and you can accomplish the same shot without the curvature. I just happened to be lazy today, and it’s easier to shoot with the 20mm, plus for store fronts, you don’t have that much room to back up.
Stay tuned.
