Panoramic Vivocity

Biggest Shopping Mall (as per area) in Singapore and maybe in SE Asia. The usual look and feel, but the architectural features are more curved, round or organic, as the expert says.
Nice location, at the back side you can loiter around outside while having a beer at Brotzeit (german restaurant/pub) and enjoy the view to Sentosa Island, which is nothing more than a big construction site at the moment, thanks to the upcoming casinos, uhm.. Integrated Resort.

Advertising Imagery

Slightly off-topic, but I need to share this with you. It always amuses me the kind of works of photography (mixed with some Photoshop) is displayed in advertising or on the box of a product. I wonder sometimes if someone earns money or just get fired with something like this. I bought a 30$ ladder and it was shrinkwrapped including a this true piece of art:
Besides the description "Famlly Stair cnse" which most probably means "Family Staircase" (which also doesnt really match the product), the image striked me in particular !
A ladder arranged in photoshop together with a globe on a green field. What do they want to tell us with this ? This ladder is bigger than earth ? You can climb on top of the globe ? You will feel like being at a green field together with your new staircase and a globe ?
We will not find out ....
Btw, I would love to appreciate the IP of this work and mention the copyright, but the product is not showing one sign who is producing the ladder and this awful picture. In case you know, let me know.

Panoramic Berlin II

Some remaining shots before I left Berlin. Great City, a lot to see and great summer time atmosphere. Check out these V705 pans from the S-Bahn, Der Reichstag and Potsdamer Platz.

Worldwide Panorama 06-2008 online !

The 19th worldwidepanorama event and the second for this year is online. Please visit at geoimiges.berkeley.edu/worldwidepanorama/wwp608. My contribution covers the Henderson Waves in Southern Singapore. (link)

Panoramic Berlin

A short biz trip brought me to Berlin, the german capital. Have not been here for some years, it changed quite a lot, specifically the eastern part of the city and the area around the "wall". I brought only the Kodak V705 along, but regretting that I dont carry the bigger equipment to make some nice panos. Anyway not much time to explore, maybe next time. Here some shots around the new Central Station and the government buildings.

Going anaglyph !

I was always amazed by this 50 (?) old way of looking at pictures and movies and creating a sense of depth by cheating eyes and brain with the 2 merged images with the "red/cyan" look. I am not elaborating on how and when it was invented or how it exactly it works, but will experiment with the technique and plan to experiment in the panorama field with this. Lets start small with a simple 2 camera setup, 15 cents red/cyan glasses and some photoshop work. I bought a box with 100 paper red/cyan glasses, so my local readers, let me know and you can have one (terms and condition apply, haha).

Upgrading to Nodalninja

I am waiting for the latest Nodalninja model, No.5. It seems this is gonna be a sturdy panorama VR head capable to take heavy equipment, and I will use it with Mamiya ZD to produce some serious highres images. Anyway, the version with the upper rotator is not released yet, so I can spend some time on other experiments in the meantime. Check out the gear at www.nodalninja.com.

Extreme PanoRig

My very own panorama rig project collects dust since half a year, but it is certainly not off. I also will continue to play with 360 degree video with the one-shot lens setup and the videocam, but in case you want to see some serious stuff, then you should have a look at 2k360 by Paradise FX (link). Dont forget to download the demo movie ! There is no pricetag, but there are some 9 HDR pro cams mounted on a rig, and if you have close look, you will see 9 Apple Powerbooks underneath it. That must be a cool toy, maybe a bit too big to carry along.
I will keep you updated on my budget projects !

Invitation to SingaporeVR.com

Today I want to highlight a website of another VR fellow in Singapore. He shares on almost daily base new VR spots around town ! Man, I wish I had more time.
Drop by www.SingaporeVr.com and the blog at singaporevr.blogspot.com !
Thanks Aram !

One Shot Panorama Shenzen

Another trip to Shenzen, seems the city attracts me for business trips now. I was able to shot one panorama from the office. A lot of interesting details that would be worth to cover in a gigapan. Maybe when I return in July. The haze is not really creating a nice background. More info about Shenzen at wikipedia (link).
I could sense the second day earthquake in Sichuan (more than 1000km away). It scares me, I think we dont have any idea, sitting here in our armchair, what suffering and pain that created for the people there.

Panorama History Lane - Part 2

I put the QV-100 aside in 1998 (I roughly shot 250 images with the battery sucking camera) and rather focused on classic panorama photography with Noblex and co using film (while waiting for digital technology to mature and settle at a reasonable price region). My next digital camera was the Sony DSC-P1 (dpreview link)announced by Sony in September 2000 (I bought it in december 2000), a nice and small camera creating 3Mpix images. I used it for about 1 year (I kept using it occasionally until 2005) before finally getting my first DSLR Canon D30 in January 2002. In 2001 I used an early version of the Panorama Factory (today V5.1, link), which kept me pretty happy before new kids on the block took over with different feature sets.
The first panoramas with the Sony DSC-P1, shot in Zuerich (Switzerland), where I lived for about one year. Here the original files, I also used todays panorama stitcher software on the old image files to compare the results, main differences are tool handling, speed and auto accuracy reducing post-processing effort.

First digital Panorama from 1998

The same time I got my hands on the first digital camera (Casio QV100) I tried to create panoramas. In 1998 there were only few stitching applications around and with a camera that runs at 640x480 and doesn't know any whitebalance pre-settings it was hard to create any decent results. The panorama here is a rather poor result, despite shooting during changing light conditions (as the observing reader might comment). I kept on experimenting the following years followed with better results with a Sony P1 in 2000 and later with Canon D30, 1Ds and Spherocam. The panos was created with an earlier version of Photovista (the software is still around in a more up-to-date version, link). In 2005 I created this panorama from the same position (smaller viewing angle though, link).

Zoomify - Panoramic View over Wachenheim

The second viewer of my large panorama and image viewer test series is Zoomify (link). The viewer is flash based, Zoomify created the concept already a couple of years ago. Adobe Photoshop CS3 comes with a Zoomify export function.

Zoomify Test
View over Wachenheim with 24.433 x 7.681 pixel (~188MP, uncompressed 536 MB file)
Canon 1Ds, 24-105 L IS lens at 105
40 Images stitched with PTGui Pro
Resulting in 4.004 tile files in 16 subfolders (107 MB).

Click here to see the result here (only flash required)

(hosted on a free hoster, I dont want to fill up my webserver with tons of files)

10 Years Digital Photography

While spending some time at home, I was browsing through old backup CD's (hoping to find these old digi snaps). And surprisingly the 10 years old CD (still readable) revealed some of the very first digital images I ever took ! Made with a CASIO QV 100 (link), compared with todays technology any mobile phone or webcam can do better picture than this, but it was one of the first affordable consumer cameras in 1996-1997 for 700 DM (~350 Euro) - I bought it (used) in 1998 for 200 DM. It creates crappy 640x480 (0.3 Mpix) greenish pictures that are completely awful but it brings back some nostalgic moments and I really regret that I sold it later for 100 DM. Maybe I will hunt for one in ebay or ask the guy who bought it, if I can buy it back !
10 Years later and I use a Medium Format Back with 21 Mpix, maybe the personal development might be more significant than the numbers and tech stuff !? Another 10 years and ... ?
The (untouched) shot from April 5th 1998 in amazing 640x480. (The stone is removed by today due to a street).

Panoramic Visit at home

Finally, after 7 months, I visited home again. Besides meeting up with family and friends, I managed to do a couple of shots with the V705 and a big number of VR's. I will share some of them with you shortly (the usual processing delay). Here some snaps from Bad Duerkheim with the Kodak (a sunshine camera, ain't?).