Black and White 8

Hello Bangkok Call 17***

Panorama of the Sky Train at one of the stations. The title is taken from the billboard in the image left.

Lake Weissensee

A large panorama of gorgeous Lake Weissensee from June. We stay there almost every year for now 9 years. It's such a great place, the lake is the highest european lake you can swim in in summer. During the summer months the temperature can get to 24 C.

You also can do great hikes, I took the series of images for this panorama on the start of a walk. You see fresh mowed grass and small huts. On the shore you'll notice the white strips of sand and lime. It's that color which gives the lake its name (Weissensee = White Lake).

If you visit Austria then plan to stay at this area (or any other of our beautiful lakes :-)

Dachstein

Sorry for not posting in the last time, I'm too busy...

Last weekend we were hiking in the Dachstein mountain range. The weather was bright and sunny, a welcome change after a very cold and wet May. It's said it was the coldest May since beginning of weather recordings. So you can image how we enjoyed the sun and being out all day.

Because of the bad weather there is still lots of snow in the mountains as you can see in the picture. The snow reached down to 1800m altitude, which is just where we walked that day. As we passed the track to the hut you can see in the middle back of the image, we had to cross some avalanches. The snow was fresh and clean, an indicator that the avalanches occured just recently.

And that's why we don't understand that the hiking trails was opened. Usually the authorities very quickly close trails in the Alps as soon as the danger of avalanches rises. But there many hikers and tourists walked that passage, right accross the avalanches that happend just days ago.

It was clear to us that it was not a good idea to walk there. Talking to the manager of our local hotel he agreed with us about closing the path. While we paused at the hut (and had some fine snack) we heard new avalanches coming down the mountains. It's a unqiue sound, like thunder in the distance. Sylvia also watched a small avalanche coming down at the place you see here standing in the image.

As for the image, its a panorama made of 4 shots. Using my new camera, the Canon EOS 7D, I'm amazed about the good quality it delivers. The image has 33 MB and thanks to the 18 MP of the camera I can zoom in like never before. I can switch from having the full view to see Sylvia's face in clear detail. I guess I will make some more panoramas in the future. It's fun.

Click in the image and zoom in to get the full view.

(Copyright Notice: All pictures and text are copyrighted by the blog's author. You may not download the images and use it except with written permission.)

Praslin

A panorama of 4 images of Praslin island, Seychelles. The images has been taken from near the highest mountain on La Digue island.

Only recently I started to try out panoramas and it's fun. But sometimes it's not easy to find the right motif or to take the proper images. If you are not thinking twice it's easy to fail with the images. They just won't fit together to give a good panorama.

What I'm doing is: measure the exposure in all images you think you'll need. Remember the exposure with the shortest time and set your camera to manual mode. Adjust the settings to the exposure/aperture you measured and take the series of images. Focus can be different but the exposure should be always the same.

For the images try to make them overlap at least by 10%, even more. It's better for your panorama software to stitch the images when there are enough overlapping details. Also using wide angle for panoramas can be tricky as the single images are so distorted they won't properly fit together.

Another issue is the distance to the focal point in the single images. This Praslin panorama was easy as all images have the same distance to the motif. But I've taken panoramas of mountain scenes where the rightmost image focuses on a wall only 100 meters away while the leftmost image shows a distant hill 500 meters away. Although the hill is much higher in reality the panorama shows something completely different with a real huge wall and a tiny hill far away...

But in the end, just try it, make different series with different settings. You'll see on your PC what works and what not. Give it a try... :-)

See all my panoramas at RedBubble.

View and buy at RedBubble.
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(Copyright Notice: All pictures and text are copyrighted by the blog's author. You may not download the images and use it except with written permission.)