Monday, March 27, 2006

More Panoramas

Back about a month ago, Sandra and I climbed Seru Wekua and got a GPS reading at the survey marker at the top. I mentioned this briefly back on my Feb. 19 posting.

Seru Wekua is located north of Bopec. After you pass Bopec on the ridge road and are back at sea level on you way to New Cove and Playa Frans, Seru Wekua is the big hill on the right, just after the small salt flats. It's about 535 feet tall.

I've stitched together some of the pictures I took from the top of Seru Wekua. It was close to sunset, so the shadows were getting long and the colors were changing, but it is still pretty interesting.

Well, it looks like blogspot ate my pictures, maybe they are too big. So if you want to see them, you are going to have to go to the club photo site.

One panorama is over 6000 pixels wide and the other is about 1680 pixels wide. To get the best look, head to my club photo site to see the full images.

Also, check out my post right below this one to learn how to tell Windows Explorer to not resize the pictures, so you can scroll across them and see them full size.

The picture called "panorama 1" is the one I posted the other day. I took it from on top of Seru Yuwana.

The picture called SlacbaaiToGotomeer is the view from on top of seru Wekuna, looking across the valley towards Brandaris on the left and Gotomeer on the right. If you look right in the middle of this panorama, you will see a notch or dip in the ridgeline. This is Yuwana Pass, and if you look closely, you can see the cement road that goes up through this pass. Yuwana Pass is one of the more interesting parts of the road you take from Slacbaai back to the entrance of Washington Park. I can remember zooming over the top of the pass in our dune buggy, back before the road was cement. It was much like going over the top of the initial climb on a roller coaster.

Seru Yuwana is the round peak to the right of Yuwana Pass. There is a long flat section of ridge and then it bumps up to the peak. I can see the pass and the peak at the same time on my laptop at 1680x1050. If you have a regular size screen, you'll need to scroll a little to the right to see the top of Seru Yuwana.

The other picture is called "playafrans2slacbaai" and that is what it shows. The beach and fishing huts at Playa Frans are a little left of the middle of the picture and Slacbaai is towards the upper right corner.

6 comments:

Doug said...

Those are some very impressive photos. Did you take the pictures with a tripod? The stiching is superb. I'd be curious to know what software you are using to do it. Thanks for sharing.

Brad said...

I think I used a tripod for the "slacbaaitogotomeer" picture. I have started lugging a tripod around on occasion, in case I want to try shooting a panoramic sequence.

For the "playafranstoslacbaai" and the "Panorama1" images, I just sat the camera on top of the cement survey marker post which is on top of the hill, and panned around to take the pictures.
There is some weirdness in the "playafranstoslacbaai" one so I'll try it again sometime.

I have used photoshop 6 to combine photos, but for these panoramas, I used ImageAssembler from www.panavue.com

I used this software to re-assemble the six scanned images I made of each of my topographical survey maps of Bonaire into a mosaic of the whole map. Six scans of each of the six maps resulted in 36 pieces to stitch together.

I now have all six maps on my computer, and am enjoying scrolling around the screen, seeing all sorts of detail that I'd need a magnifying glass to see on the original maps.

I'm still working on assembling the six maps into one giant map of Bonaire. The images and file sizes are getting huge, but so far so good.

Doug said...

Thanks for sharing what you are using to get these great results. I am guessing that you are also using an SLR camera with some pretty good optics with minimal distortion. Are you shooting mostly with at larger focal lengths as well? I haven't tried any panorama views yet, but I did try some stitching of images taken at shorter focal lengths. It seems to introduce some distortion (barrel?) at the corners. Yours are all very nicely done IMO.

Brad said...

Yes, I'm using a Minolta dslr and a 50mm lens for most of these shots. The 50mm lens magnifies like a 75mm lens on a 35mm film camera, so it is slightly telephoto.
The ImageAssembler software does have a function where you can shoot some test images and create a custom lens profile for a given lens. Then the software can better fix any distortions that the lens introduces into the images. I haven't tried that yet.
They say that closeups are harder to stitch together than long range shots, so I think that is why I'm getting away with hand holding some of these distant scenery type panoramas.

Anonymous said...

Brad - I would love to get a digital copy of the topographical map you have stitched together. Can you provide a copy or link?

Brad said...

Hi, I don't feel I can share my digitized, stitched together topo map, because of copyright issues with the original maps. On the other hand, if you already have a hard copy of the original map sheets, there probably wouldn't be any harm in sharing my scanned and stitched together version, to save you the hassle of doing that.