PhotoStitch - Ottawa River

I'm pretty impressed with how this photo stitch thing works.

I made another stitched image which is about 20,000 pixels wide by 5,000 high. It's surprisingly quick and easy. This is definitely a tool I'll be using more and more, I think it's fantastic. One of my favorite photo projects back in high school was creating a panoramic image by standing in one place and piecing photographs together. I took five 8.5x11" black & white photos of a pond in the winter and mounted them on a blue backing. It's actually a really horrible photograph, not well focused, poor contrast, very grainy. Still, I really like it. Would be interesting to go back to the same spot now and re-take the photo, see what I can come up with digitally. The original was done on Agfa 100 b&w film with the Canon FT QL, compare now with the Digital Rebel XT (which is new, as opposed to the FT QL which was about 30 and in need of a tune-up at the time). Sounds like a project for this week.



I'll do some sort of review on this, and while I'd like to compare it to something I don't think any of my other programmes have anything that enables me to stitch images together like this. So far my review is: pretty frickin' good, though not many options as to how you want the image to look (i.e., no effects of any kind - you can't really see the seams at all if you'd like that).

Photo Software

I have a lot of options for photo software, so I think it's time I started to mess around with the various tools and figure out what works best for me. So far all editing has been minimal, hopefully that will change as necessary. I've largely been more interested in composition but I have been getting more and more into technical details as time goes on.

I have a number of programs for uploading photos, for editing photos, cataloguing and stitching together. I just now tried uploading pictures to my Linux machine, and posting to flickr. I'll have to come up with a systematic way to go through this - start looking at catalogue options what works best there - I'll likely choose iPhoto. Minor touch-ups, major touch-ups, etc etc. Maybe I'll post a little review of the various things I try ... yeah, a review, how's that.



Here's what I'll be working with:

Windows 98
. ArcSoft Photo Studio 5.5
. Canon Photo Record 2
. PhotoStitch
. Nero Photo Show Express
. Flickr Uploader
. MS Paint
. MS Image Composer

Windows XP
. Jasc Paint Shop Pro

Suse Linux
. GIMP
. F-Spot Photo Album
. Inkscape SVG Vector Illustrator (I don't even know what that means)
. OpenOffice.org Draw
. Skencil

Mac OS X (10.3.9)
. GIMP
. iPhoto
. Canon software comparable to Win98, it came with the camera.



Expect reviews on some of those.


In the mean time, here is a photo I took yesterday evening.

$12 Slide Scanner Tutorial.

$12 Slide Scanner

This website was brought to my attention: Slide 2 Digital - seemed like a good idea, so we decided to try one for ourselves. A quick trip to Home Depot and we were off. A suitcase full of slides of Europe & North America in the '50s & '60s waiting, we went ahead and made this little attachment for my Canon Digital Rebel XT.

We're going to use a few simple supplies to turn this:

Into this:

Here's what you need:

. Digital SLR Camera with a lens (I used a 55mm lens)

. Lens Shade (mine is 60mm, it looks like this)

. Rubber plumbing coupling (mine is 1.5-2.0")

. Foam Tape

. Exacto knife (something to cut into the rubber plumbing coupling).

. Close-up filters (I used +6)

That's it! This is a "$12 Scanner" 'cause I'm assuming you already have a dSLR, exacto knife, close-up filters and a lens shade. These are obviously all useful independently in their own right, so the only thing to add is some plumbing gear. The coupling was about $7and the tape about $4.

Time to put it together.

Here's what you do:

What you're going to do is create an extension for your lens that the slide sits into so that you can take a picture of it as it fills the frame. Put your dSLR and filters aside, it's time to make the extension.

STEP ONE: Make sure you've got what you need and that it all fits together.

The lens shade will attach directly to the camera. This probably saves a considerable amount of work.

The rubber coupling sits inside.

Foam tape will help everything stay in place.

STEP TWO: Put it together; it's easy! Wrap the foam tape around the small end of the rubber coupling. Use your exacto knife to cut four small pieces out of the large end so that your slides will stay in place. This part is kind of tricky and not so fun.

RESULTS! This is what you get. Sorry, took the picture before the slide-bits were cut.

There's more! This is where the filters come in handy. Attach the filters (+6, here) to your camera lens (55mm). You'll be attaching the lens shade over top of this, the filters do their job acting kind of like a magnifying glass. By now, the frame will nearly be filled with the slide image.

*CLICK!* Snap away - this should be done with your camera situated on a tripod and using careful focusing. You can do it automatically or manually, whatever is most comfortable but remember that your slides are sitting at the end of the lens, so they will twist and turn as you make your adjustments. This is okay, 'cause you can just rotate things as necessary on your computer. To get a nice even light source, you should face your camera at your computer screen with a white background. Open up Microsoft Powerpoint and put a blank slide to "full screen" slideshow viewing mode.

From here, upload the picture to your computer.

Use your favorite photo editing software to crop the image and do any minor touch-ups as necessary. It seems to work pretty well, I have even given negatives a try by simply holding them in front of the camera and messing around with the results on my iBook. Pretty simple and straightforward, and we're very pleased with the results! Looking forward to archiving these family photos.

The Gear

Thought it might be a good idea to start out with a bit of info on the kind of stuff I use. I love cameras and photography but really do consider myself to be a beginner-intermediate photographer. Hopefully this space will help me to develop technical knowledge, because my primary focus has always been twofold until recently - first, enjoying it. I do, that part is easy. Second, composition. I've grown to be fairly comfortable with that element, but have lost a lot of the technical knowledge I'd developed years ago. As I enter digital SLR photography, I figured it would be a good time - and this would be a good space - to basically take notes. :)

THE GEAR
. Adox Golf 63 (link) (1952-1958), tested by me in 2005
. Agfa Ambi Silette (link) (1957-1961), tested by me in 2005
. Canon FT QL (link) (1966), primarily used 2000-2002
. Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (link) (1970s), tested by me in 2005
. Kodak Advantix 2000
. Polaroid JoyCam
. Canon EOS Rebel G (link) (2001), primarily used 2001-2004

. Nikon CoolPix 2000 (link) (2002), primarily used 2002-2004
. Casio Exilim EX-Z30 (link) (2004), primarily used 2004-current
. Canon EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT) (link) (2005), current primary camera

. Velbon CF586 Tripod

. Film by Agfa, Ilford & Kodak
. Sandisk SD (512MB) and CF cards (8MB, 64MB, 1GB)

. Polarizing Filter
. UV Haze & Haze-1 Filter
. Medium Yellow (Yellow-8) Filter
. +1, +2, +3 Filters

. Home Darkroom Kit (to develop negatives in B&W)

. Canon EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 (link)
. Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 USM (link)
. Canon EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 III (link)

agfa ambi silette

Welcome

Welcome.

This will compliment my flickr account. Essentially a space to take notes and write about my experiences with photography, to be a big photo-geek. I'll talk about the gear, offer up interesting links, take notes and experiment.

If you're just interested in the visuals, flickr is the place to be.
warning: flickr can be very addicting.

Up next: a run-through on the gear, followed by my photographistory and a recent experiment in a $12 slide-film scanner.


Thanks for taking the time to check this out, feel free to drop me a line via email: email.jessi@gmail.com