CogBlogged Tagged ‘gigapan’

I’m in Golden, Colorado for three days, doing work for a project needing photography of town and interviews with key city developers and citizens. It is a dynamic place full of active people, and the mountains around town provide more than nice rocks to look at; they do seem to be a key component of the life here. Many people have recommended the views from one of the mesas (to the east) or the mountains (to the west), so I decided it was time to dust off the Gigapan and see fi I can render some scenes that might be of value to the project. (plus it would get me some much needed exercise). So this morning I was hiking up the trail to South Table Mesa, which in the morning light did provide a stunning view of the entire town. I was also treated at the top to the [...]

I had a lot of fun with the GigaPan back in 2008 when I first was introduced to this device. It is a simple but elegant idea- a robot controller tat holds a camera and makes a series of images in a grid that can be combined in software to form a giant scene. A motor moves and pans the camera, and a mechanical arm clicks the shutter. I’d not done one in a while (my previous attempts are at http://gigapan.org/profiles/5381/). But I was inspired today to get out, and I aimed to hike up Strawberry Mountain, the peak I see from my back deck (behind the real Strawberry) cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was a steep scramble up there, and man I felt my out of shapeness. There are not too many places where the trees afforded a view, but I got a [...]

Last week I got an email from someone who works for Millenium House publishers asking for permission to use one of my Gigapan images from Iceland in a new atlas they are doing. The Earth Platinum Atlast is a big ass book – it measures 6 x 4.5 feet: Can you imagine the coffee table you need for that thing? Or the book shelves you will have to construct for it? And what other books can you put on the shelf? How do you read it in bed? All questions that passed through my mind. Anyhow, they image they asked to use is actually a panoramic GigaPan scene (made of 88 photos) shot on my last day of my Iceland trip in 2008, at Thingvellir, a place at the nexus of earth history (where the earth is forming new material and spreading towards both Europe and North America) and human [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I took a pit stop on the way to Monterey for NMC2009 to grab some GigaPan scenes near Fisherman’s Wharf. What a lovely clear sunny day it was. First was a shot from the beach catching a lot of the crazy cold water swimmers: Yes, I got myself in the image…. Next, I took the walkway that extends from the end of Van Ness Avenue that curves out into the water, offering two great views – one of the city Skyline: I have one more (still slowly rendering) looking the other way sweeping from the Golden Gate to Alcatraz. These ones are not big because it was really worth only 3 rows of images, and the sweeps are wide (about 180 degrees, so there is that warped distortion. Still, the scenes are rich with detail. I hope to do a few down here [...]

It’s been a while since I shot or even explored Gigapan, the amazing photo exploration tool that lets you see a wide range of zoom detail in a scene. I have not even captured a scene in a while (see my old ‘pans). But by sheer accidental link clicking from my RSS Reader (am I the last person on earth reading feeds while everyone else tweets their lunch?) I found on a neat site (see below) that you can now embed a gigagpan image.. So here goes one I took in November at the foot of the volcano Hekla: If you are interested in some applications of the gigapan I can think of few finer that the Geology ones by Ron Schott lots of structures and outcrops to study at many different scales. The thing that got me (linktribution to David Weinberger) here was a blog on Nano Gigapans, where [...]

My photographic and geek bents have been intrigued by learnig (and still learning) how to capture immersive high res GigaPan images, which is fun enough in its own right. This is a combination of a special camera control rig and software that takes a series of images with a standard compact digital camera that gives them essentially super resolution by stitching a large number of overlapping photos. I captured a few in Shanghai last week, and in one day in Hong Kong, got 3 more scenes: Top of Peak Tram Hong Kong Construction Site View from Pier 9 The effect of exploring the online ones (pan and zoom to incredible detail). There’s a wow factor, as I am getting feedback (and then there is Carl Berger who ran out and got his own). But I am hoping to see if people can think of some more edu-applicable ways of using [...]

Since I am just started playing with taking gigapan images, I was eager to experiment with the device on the trip here in Australia. I dont have fancy case for the thing- I am carting it around in the foam padded cardboard box it got sent to me. I am carrying it in my old backpack with a tripod strapped to the bag: I had a small break Tuesday and wandered down Swantson Street to capture an image of the impressive State Library of Victoria– which always fascniated me with the little bit of Twilight Zone sculpture in front – at least I think it is based on the Time Enough at Last episode with Burgess Meredith: So I tried first for a shot at the front of the library, but it was right into the sun, and I locked in a really poor exposure setting, and had to tweak [...]