Vacationing with Phoebe
Following our lovely visit from Matt and Erin over the July 4th holiday, Jess returned to full-time work for the first time after Phoebe was born. I’ve been spending the last two weeks at home with Phoebe, and we have successive grandparent visits the next two weeks in order to avoid daycare until Phoebe’s 4-month anniversary. I’ve enjoyed the time with Phoebe, but it’s also been one of the most stressful “vacations” I’ve ever had. Currently Phoebe isn’t eating from a bottle reliably. Some days I can get her to eat an entire bottle and then some, but other days, she refuses the bottle all together. Add to that the realization that we were due for a new car, and you will get some idea of what I was dealing with.
A self-portrait of Phoebe and me on our hike in the national park.
I spent most of the first week looking at various car adds in an attempt to weed through the huge number of options. We had some idea of what we wanted, and had been leaning heavily towards a Subaru Outback for some time, but with daycare costs on the immediate horizon, we wanted to keep the costs down somewhat. Since the Outback is pretty much the quintessential Colorado car, it does command a premium that it wouldn’t fetch in the other 49 states. Ultimately, we didn’t want a big SUV or something that would cost significantly more to drive than Taco, our formerly-faithful old Dodge Neon. In the end, we found what we hope turns out to be a good deal on a fairly-new Subaru Legacy sedan from 2008. It’s silver and has a few features we really like. It doesn’t offer any more ground clearance than the Neon did, but then again, that never stopped us from flying across Colorado’s sometimes badly worn dirt roads. Besides, we’re not likely to be seriously upping our back-country adventures in the next few years either, and a regular old car will get us to most of the trailheads in the state without any problem. A big thanks to all of our friends and family for putting up with us over the last few weeks (or months). We should be both more reliable and fun now (okay, maybe just reliable).
Having wrapped up the car purchase on Monday with a marathon session of haggling where neither I nor the car salseman’s boss-apparent were willing to budge on pricing, Phoebe and I had the rest of the week to enjoy ourselves and our newly restored ability to travel about the area with ease and air conditioning. I mention the air conditioning because we hadn’t run the air conditioning regularly in the Neon for several years. Hey, the car was old.
On Tuesday, Phoebe and I went into Boulder to watch some of the day’s Tour de France stage with our friend Elijah. After the stage wrapped up, we drove down near Elijah’s place and I pulled out the Chariot so that we could enjoy a walk along the Boulder Creek path. We walked all the way from Settler’s Park to Jess’s office at 30th street. Since Phoebe was again being stubborn about the bottle, we made a lunch date for her with the breast. After a bit, we made the walk back to the car and then Phoebe and I headed back home. After work, we headed up to Fort Collins for our monthly grotto meeting. There was some sad discussion about the encroaching White Nose Syndrome threatening bats across the country. Sadly, it’s also threatening cave access in Colorado.
Here's a glimpse of the lake Phoebe and I hiked to in Rocky Mountain National park. It's another stitch from 4 separate images. Phoebe seemed to really like the lake.
Wednesday we spent around Lafayette. Phoebe finally ate en entire bottle at a single sitting, but it seemed more like a fluke than a permanent change. By the end of the afternoon we were glad to see Jess come home. That night our friends Katie, Todd, and Henry came over for some dinner. They’re moving to Minnesota in a few weeks; we’re really gonna miss them, but I guess that gives us another place to travel to in the future–especially if we need to get our mosquito fix.
Thursday brought a lot of new fun for us. We stopped by church to look into some issues with the printer, grabbed a coffee at Cafe Sole, stopped by Jess’s office for lunch, and headed up to Estes Park to do a little hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. We try to avoid Estes on summer weekends, but the midweek traffic isn’t much better either. Despite some criminally slow drivers, it only took us around 45 minutes to get to Estes Park from Boulder, but something like an extra half hour to get into the national park. Phoebe and I speed hiked up to one of the lakes near Bear Lake and stopped for a little snack along a shady shore that was relatively lonely. Phoebe seemed to really like looking at the lake and the lily pads floating about on the lightly rippled water, but she wasn’t at all interested in snacking. I managed to get a few pictures before we packed up and hiked back down to the car. Phoebe was hot and tired. She passed out just a few minutes into the car trip and slept all the way home.
Friday, we spent most of the morning around the house. I had a number of songs to put into Finale(R) and transpose in time for a rehearsal on Saturday and some church services on Sunday. Luckily Phoebe was pretty cooperative, so I was able to get them all transposed. It takes a little longer to put the music into the computer than it would to do the transposition by hand, but it makes for much nicer looking music which also translates into easier sight reading. Since we occasionally change the keys of music at church it also makes subsequent changes a breeze. Later that afternoon, I finished some much-needed cleaning around the house and saddled up Phoebe for her first bike ride with the Chariot. Technically she’s still too small to use it as a bike carrier, but we spotted some other parents using the “infant” sling Jess got me for Father’s Day for this unsanctioned activity, so clearly that means it’s a safe practice, right? We just rode around the neighborhood for a bit and met up with Jess at Cannon Mine for a picnic dinner and desert. After riding back home, I left Jess and Phoebe and headed off to the airport to pick up Chris and Betti for their visit. In a way, it’ll be nice to get back to work on Monday, but it will also be sad to stop spending as much time with Phoebe. Of course, it’s also sad to see such a long “vacation” come to an end.
Lost Creek Backpacking, Take II
Poor Taco; you can see the greenish coolant that burst forth from the old radiator. Alas, the sealant didn't hold, so Taco needed yet another tow. Henry would have been excited to see the truck; unfortunately, he wasn't there.
As you no doubt recall from Jess’s recent post, Phoebe’s uncle Matt and aunt Erin were out for a visit. We had a wonderful time introducing her to them, and thought a short trip over the holiday weekend would be a great way to introduce Phoebe to backpacking. Since we’d had a great time backpacking in the Lost Creek Wilderness last summer (technically Phoebe’s first backpacking adventure), we thought we’d return. We were also looking for something relatively close to home. Unfortunately for Taco, the Lost Creek wasn’t quite close enough. Just after turning onto highway 285 outside Golden, the temperature gauge began to climb. By the time we managed to get the car off the road, steam was billowing from the hood, and the tell-tale signs of a coolant leak were staining the engine compartment a lovely iridescent green color. Luckily we were traveling with two cars in order to facilitate a shuttle route option, so we coalesced into Erin’s Honda and called Matt’s savior (AAA) for a tow. The tow truck arrived pretty quickly, and dropped the car off right in our driveway. After the short diversion, the trip was on.
This time we were headed to the wilderness’s namesake trail (Goose Creek, AKA Lost Creek, Trail). We somehow missed the dirt access road and ended up blowing right through Deckers, CO. It wasn’t until we saw signs for Douglas County that we realized we were pointed in the wrong direction. At least it wasn’t Lincoln, Nebraska, like in Dumb and Dumber. A little route correction, and we were back on our way.
Jess and Phoebe happy to finally get out of the car and on with the hiking.
When we arrived at the trailhead, there were already several cars present, and one large group was just about ready to set out onto the trail. I’d seen from the Internet that it was a popular trail, so I wasn’t totally surprised; however, it was still early on Friday afternoon. We all piled out of the car, stretched, and answered nature’s call before pulling on our backpacks and adjusting the straps. We even gave Phoebe a fresh clean diaper, but that was mostly for our benefit! I think it was about 3:30 by the time we left the trailhead. Jess was carrying Phoebe in the Baby Bjorn along with my light backpack stuffed with some clothes and all of Phoebe’s accouterments. I had the great big Gregory Denali stuffed with two sleeping bags, the tent, the water filter, a small gas lantern, two days worth of food, some dishes, and all of my clothes. I also had two sleeping pads strapped onto the sides. All together it wasn’t too bad, and the Gregory really carries monster loads pretty well—often better than the wearer!
After filling out the free self-serve permit at the registration we were off on our real adventure. The first part of the trail passes through a section of the wilderness that burned back in the Hayman Wildfire of 2002. There were charred, black tree trunks everywhere and a few lovely wild flowers growing up in the scorched forest. From the images I’ve seen, we were likely a couple of weeks too late to see the flowers at their peak. After just about a half mile, we crossed Goose Creek on a little metal bridge and left the burn remnants behind us.
Here's Matt with his massive training weight, er, tripod. He'd look like this most of the weekend.
The trail was nearly flat as it continued to follow the creek for about a mile or so before climbing up and out of the valley. As we gained elevation, the views really opened up. The landscape is pretty interesting with little domes and spires all around us. Much of the rock was reminiscent of Vedauvoo in Wyoming. At several occasions I’d wished we’d brought some climbing gear, or at least a crash pad and some rock shoes. There seems to be enough bouldering potential to keep a small army busy for months.
Since we no longer had the shuttle hike option, we were now set on the out-n-back route. There was a loop alternative, but we’d pre-determined that the 18 mile loop was too much for two days of backpacking with a baby. After all, this was supposed to be a fun trip, not a death march! Based on that reality, our itinerary was to hike as far as we wanted with the plan of visiting the “shafthouse” and cabin remnants from the 1891-1913 attempt to dam Lost Creek by the Antero and Lost Park Reservoir Company. I spent a few minutes trying to dig up some additional background on the abandoned reservoir project, but there is scant info on the web. All I can tell for sure is that they attempted to pump concrete into one of the sumps where Lost Creek disappeared into a pile of large boulders near the convergence of Goose Creek and Refrigerator Gulch. It seems to have been a relatively large operation with at least 3 good sized cabins housing the employees. But the would-be dam never held water, and the site was eventually abandoned. Good for us, but bad for the Lost Park Reservoir bond holders.
This is the elevation profile for the entire 18-mile loop. The turn-off for the "shafthouse" site is around marker 002. The remaining markers represent various trail junctions and alternative routes.
Along the Goose Creek Trail we passed dozens of well used campsites. Most, being either too close to the trail or the creek, or in some cases both, weren’t technically legal sites; nevertheless, they were very well worn, and additional damage seemed unlikely. Regardless, we found a spectacular, and legal, site a little more than 3 miles into the hike. It wasn’t hard to find, as a small, but well worn little trail led back to some level tent spots adjacent a lovely fire ring of found rocks with pre-arranged log seating. We could have gone a bit further, but it was literally irresistible.
We set up camp for the night and set about preparing some dinner. Jess and I split a tasty curry courtesy of Matt and Erin. After rigging up the most ineffective bear bag I’ve ever seen (Note: the bag proved
Baby, cloth diaper, wet wipe, waterproof food bag, and exhausted dad; it must be bedtime on a backpacking trip.
adequately effective but likely just because there were no critters in the general vicinity), Matt and I headed down to the creek with the filter and all of our bottles in hand to fetch more water for the coming day. The dry stream bed we followed to the creek turned out to be a bit of a bushwhack, but we made it in about 10 minutes anyway. Matt did his best Ansel Adams imitation while I pumped a few liters of water. Somehow I ended up with the worse job! We even saw a small trout swimming alongside the filter inlet. I’d guess it was around 5 inches. Matt tried to get a photo with his new waterproof camera, but he kept getting nice shots of a submerged log instead. There was a fish there, honest!
Our tent and home for the night. As you can see, I have the Nikon with me for easy photo-snapping convenience. This image was courtesy of Matt and Erin and the new waterproof compact. That's right, collectively we packed 4 cameras into the woods. Do you think we're ready for GoLite sponsorship?
For the return trip, we just wandered in the direction of camp. Despite being uphill with a big load of water, it was much faster and easier without the bushwhacking. As we approached camp, we discovered that Jess and Erin had a nice little fire going. We sat by the fire and threw back the beer (Sunshine Wheat in backpacker-friendly aluminum cans) I’d schlepped all day until the terribly late hour of 8:30 (or thereabouts). It was starting to look like rain and was nearly Phoebe’s bed time, so we packed everything up, thoroughly doused the fire, and shuffled off to our tents. I retold Phoebe the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, but neither Jess nor I could remember how it ends.
Not long after getting snugly into our sleeping bags, the rain started. It lasted until about 1:00 in the morning, but the ground was almost completely dry in the morning. Phoebe woke up a couple of times in the night for a little snack, which worked out well because Jess didn’t need to pump the following morning. Good work, little girl!
The following morning we cooked up some instant oatmeal and stuffed our essentials into our day packs. Without carrying all of the gear for the family, I was able to carry Phoebe in the Baby Bjorn. We tried her facing out, and she seemed to do pretty well. We experienced nothing like the circulation issues we encountered the last time we went hiking. The trip to the cabins was pretty quick. Despite having been abandoned almost a century ago, they’re in pretty good shape. One has a magnificent stone chimney in almost perfect-looking condition. You can see the remnants of a few steel bed springs (badly rusted, of course), some woodburning cooking stoves, and various other odds and ends. The roofs no longer appear leak tight, and the doors and windows are just openings, but it doesn’t appear that it would take too much to make them cozy again.
Erin looks right at home coming out the door of the smaller cabin. It even has some lovely landscaping.
We spent quite a while taking pictures and wandering around the cabins before marshaling for the final 1/4 mile hike to the “shafthouse.” In reality, the only real remnant is a big rusted winch that they must have used to pull boulders and rock out of the would-be-damn site. It’s interesting, because it appears to have been water powered. You can see where the fittings for the water delivery should have been attached. There’s also a single section of an old penstock system or water pipe. It’s unclear where the water to drive the winch must have come from, but I’m guessing most of the residual material was hauled out years ago for salvage.
A short distance farther upstream, you encounter a rickety old metal ladder leading down some boulders that could probably be safely downclimbed. We didn’t proceed, but next time, I’ll plan on continuing and trying to reach the sump. Maybe it’s the caver in me, but I think it’s neat to watch whole streams disappear underground.
After taking a ridiculous number of photos, we packed up and headed back to our campsite to collect the rest of our gear. By the time we returned, everything was nicely dry, so we packed up and prepared to hike back to Erin’s car. There was one Sunshine Wheat left, so I polished it off (hey, it’s hydration and energy). Don’t worry; we packed out all of our trash and recyclables. The return hike went by pretty quickly. There was a short uphill section back to the high point followed by a couple of miles of flat to downhill hiking. We stopped back by the bridge over Goose Creek to dip our toes into the cold water. Phoebe dipped her toes as well, but much like her bedtime story, found it to be too cold!
An artsy shot of the rusty machinery left where the shafthouse once stood. It's artsy because you can't really see what it looks like.
A few more minutes of hiking (and several more pictures) and we were back at the car. By this point (now Saturday) the parking lot was literally in overflow mode with cars parked all along the dirt road just before the parking lot. There was even a driver patiently waiting on us as we were packing up for our parking spot. Despite all of the foot traffic, the wilderness was generally pretty clean, and after leaving the trail behind, we saw and heard no one from our cozy campsite. I know we took too many pictures, because I had around 2 GB of stuff on the Nikon when I returned, and Jess had another 100+ photos on the little Casio. We exchanged pictures with Matt and it required emptying the USB memory stick and refilling to copy over all of the photos. I guess that means it was a fun trip and one we’d highly recommend (if you’re in Colorado, of course).
Growing Baby
Phoebe and I are back from visiting her daycare, Take a Break. We went to meet her teachers. She doesn’t start until August 2, but I’m headed back to work full time on Tuesday, so it was a good time to go check it out. Their brand new building is officially opening on July 10, so Phoebe will be taken care of in luxury. She probably won’t want to come home! Here she is with her main teacher, Tomi.
Phoebe and Tomi at Take a Break.
While she was hanging out at daycare, I went swimming at the rec center, treated myself to a latte, and read a book for a while. So I was in the lap of luxury too!
Let me catch you up on the last week and a half. I bought Dave an infant sling for our Chariot for Father’s Day, so we tried it out right away. Phoebe seems to really enjoy it. She looks around quite a bit and then often falls asleep near the end of the ride.
Phoebe's first ride in the Chariot.
At work last Thursday.
Starting to fall asleep.
Napping.
Wide awake!
...and asleep again!
On Friday I had a LOT of work to do for the University of Phoenix, so Phoebe entertained herself quite a bit. Just in case you didn’t believe me about how well she knows how to get the farm animals moving…
Here she does some interesting things with her toes. I think she’ll be grabbing her feet soon, which will mean they’ll end up in her mouth. I’m kind of looking forward to that feat of flexibility (pun intended)!
We had coffee again with Brenda, and I brought Phoebe a new toy. She’s been chewing on her shirt constantly, so I thought it would be nice for her to chew on something else…like Miss Horsie! She seems to really like Miss Horsie to chew on. Crinkle Lion was too crinkly for comfort, but she still loves to play with him.
Here’s a shot of Miss Horsie in action.
On Saturday, Uncle Matt and Aunt Erin arrived for a visit. They hadn’t met Phoebe before, and they seem to like her pretty well, even when she screeches and spits up all over. They’ve elicited plenty of smiles, too!
Phoebe and Daddy watched some soccer while we waited for Uncle Matt and Aunt Erin.
Nooo! Don't kick it to him!
Look how big those feet have gotten!
Will you guys score already?!
On Tuesday, Matt, Erin, Phoebe, and I went over to Waneka Lake in the morning. I had never walked all the way around, and I regret not taking photos of the HUGE tadpoles and baby ducks we saw in the wetland part. (I only know what they were thanks to our resident biology experts. I would never have seen a tadpole on my own.) There was a pelican on the lake and some carp in it. Of course, with Matt there, we did a little exercising on every one of those fitness challenge pieces of equipment. Having a baby really messes up your baseline fitness! I was awful, especially on things that used my stomach muscles.
Pelican.
Carp.
Ubcle Matt and Aunt Erin take Phoebe for a walk.
I made noodles using Matt and Erin's eggs. They were delicious!
Phoebe and I were dancing!
Aunt Erin and Phoebe play in the back yard.
Having fun outside.
Uncle Matt is so fun!!
Grasping!
Our little Phoebe has had quite the exciting week. She’s turned into a thumb-sucking, grasping, elephant-kicking, sleeping-through the-night sensation! On Monday she slept almost all day, which seems to be how she conserves energy to learn something new. On Tuesday she had figured out how to reach out and grasp a toy repeatedly. She doesn’t always know how to let go, but it’s pretty awesome to watch her take Crinkle Lion in her hand and wave him around. By today, which is Sunday, she can use both hands and capture her friend Lion between them.
This video is much longer than the usual, but I was so enamored of Phoebe’s grasping that I couldn’t turn off the camera!
At our last doctor’s visit, Dr. Terpenning suggested that we give Phoebe a bedtime. She’s really responded to it! At 9:00 she gets a diaper change and we read her a story. I feed her and say her prayers, and she goes to bed. She sucks some combination of thumb and fingers until she falls asleep. We couldn’t wait for her to start self-soothing, and it really helped that she got old enough to reliably find her thumb. She’s quite the little thumb-sucker these days: just like her Mommy. She comes by it honestly, and I think it’s adorable.
- The morning of June 14.
- There’s something suspicious over there…
Check out this awesome outfit Phoebe got from the Mundschaus!
- Balloon poodles on the front…
- …and a naughty little teddy bear on the back.
Phoebe was very photogenic that day…maybe because she’d learned something new!
- Wednesday morning.
On Thursday at work, it became clear that Phoebe knows that she can wiggle the animals by kicking the farm.
- Holding Crinkle Lion.
On Thursday night, Phoebe slept from 9:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m.! Hooray! She slept through Friday and Saturday nights too. I didn’t mind getting up with her once in the night, but this is terrific. We do have to double-diaper her, as one diaper can’t handle eight or nine hours of pee.
On Friday we had coffee with Brenda at Cannon Mine. Phoebe was awake and had a good time standing and showing off her grasping skills.
The past two mornings, Phoebe has been kicking the elephants that hang over the pack ‘n play. It’s great that she can control her body a little better now! She can actually put her good ideas into motion.
Digital Photography
A traditionally captured image with Fuji Velvia 50 color transparency film. This shot was scanned commercially at ~2200 dpi to yield a 1.92 MB jpeg (roughly 6.3 megapixels). This image could easily yield even more detail if scanned at a higher resolution.
So last weekend Pete and I went out to Buena Vista to climb Mount Hope and pick up Taco. I’ve already written all about our 50% success rate in last weekend’s endeavors, so I won’t bore any of you again with the extended details. Instead I thought I’d spend a few minutes outlining one of the new techniques I’m really getting into with digital photography.
For starters, let’s just say that digital photography is just plain different than traditional photography. While the differences are many, for my money, the biggest single difference is sensor size. I’ve been excited about photography for a long time, and for me that means a lot of different cameras. Along my journey there have been countless 35 mm point-and-shoot cameras, an old 110-format camera, and even a funky disc camera; remember those? Later in high school I got a lot more serious about photography and purchased a nice Minolta SLR. I was also shooting occasionally with my grandfather’s old 6×9 medium format Graflex Speed Graphic press camera. The more portable 35mm was an all manual system with a few nice lenses before some French thief swiped it in Paris. Oh well, c’est la vie!
My first multi-image stitch with the Nikon D5000 and Hugin. This one was calculated with manually selected control points.
Since insurance massively depreciated the camera it was quite a while before I could afford to purchase a replacement. When I did, I switched to another Japanese brand. Now I’ve been shooting Nikon for several years. Since I mostly enjoy shooting landscapes, I don’t bother carrying a light meter. The TTL spot meter does just fine, and I’ve learned through years of practice the value of bracketing. I don’t tend to carry a tripod as often as I should (although one of those ultra-light carbon fiber units would sure make a swell Father’s Day present). Luckily I prefer to work with a fairly open aperture and relatively fast lenses for the reduced depth of field and selective focus control. This allows me to typically get away with hand holding the camera and still pull off some pretty good sized enlargements.
The point of all of this rambling is to drive home the importance of sensor (or film) size when it comes to enlargements. With an excellent 35 mm negative, you can pretty easily make enlargements all the way up to 20″ x 30″. Given the size of the original image (slide, negative, etc.) is 24 mm x 36 mm, that’s about a 21.2 x enlargement. If the same image had been recorded with my 6 cm x 9 cm view camera, a 20″ x 30″ print would have only been a 8.4 x enlargement, and a 21.2 x enlargement from the resulting image would produce a whopping 51″ x 77″ print (rounded to the nearest inch). Going the other direction, with a sensor measuring only 15.8 mm x 23.6 mm the same 20″ x 30″ print requires a massive 32.2 x enlargement. The same 21.2 x enlargement would result in only a 13″ x 20″ print (again rounded to the nearest inch). It’s still a good sized print, but I’ve got prints of both size hanging in my living room, and the 13″ x 20″ seems way smaller than the 20″ x 30″ print. The point, to get the same enlargement from a smaller image requires much higher resolution which is even more demanding on your equipment. This is a case where size really does matter.
One of the multi-image composites I put together from images recorded while climbing Mount Hope last weekend.
Luckily the computer age has has really matured as of late. It’s now possible to carry around a relatively portable digital SLR with a single lens and get some of the benefits of a medium or large format view camera. You may even be able to achieve all of this without the bulk of a tripod. I wish I could take credit for some of these ideas, but alas, they aren’t mine. Nevertheless, I think they work well enough to share with you all. Having shot with medium format sheet film in a lovely, yet old, view camera, I won’t pretend to tell you that a larger image size is the only benefit. I also won’t pretend that portability is the only down side to the medium format camera. For starters, shooting without a tripod is just about impossible with a view camera. Even with a rangefinder attached, it becomes increasingly difficult to hand-hold the beast.
A 24 mm perspective correcting lens from Nikon. For a cool $2,200.00 you too can have one of these bad boys. You can see the little knob on the top that controls the horizontal lens tilt.
The basic approach here is to expand the image size captured with the digital SLR. In theory this approach can be used with traditional film cameras, but the darkroom work would have required unbelievable levels of skill. In the modern digital darkroom it would be a lot more practical, but still much more time consuming. What we are going to do is stitch together multiple images to make one larger image. In principle, if we stitch together enough images, and they align well enough, we can get something comparable (at least in size) to the much larger images recorded by traditional view cameras. Much of this concept came from landscape photographer Jack Dynkinga. In brief, he is using some fantastically expensive perspective-correcting lenses to expand the sensor size of his full-frame Nikon digital SLR. Check out this article about his techniques for more background.
Even without perspective-correcting lenses and a full-frame digital SLR, we budget-constrained photographers can reap some similar benefits. For those unfamiliar with perspective-correcting lenses, these little marvels have a built in hinge within the lens and a small knob to control the tilt of the front element. They often crop up in architectural photography when the artist wants to avoid perspective effects that cause parallel lines to converge towards the horizon. This effect is averted by positioning the film (or sensor) parallel to the vertical or horizontal lines and tilting the lens to capture the image. If instead, you lock the camera in place (tripod) and use the tilt feature to grab more of the image in both directions (up and down or left and right) you get several images that you can stitch together perfectly. In essence, the final stitched composite image is similar in size to one shot with a view camera and a much larger sensor.
Another multi-image stitch composed with automatically generated control points. This one includes 8 highly overlapping images.
Now, this isn’t a new technique. Point-and-shoot cameras have come with panorama stitching software for years. Our old Canon offered this very feature, and we’d tried it out on several occasions, but the results were always pretty sub-par. While I too cannot afford PC lenses, I can get pretty good results with this technique. The first major change from taking “panoramas” is to turn the camera sideways. Rather than stitch the images together length wise, we’re going to stitch along the longer edge. The resulting images will be much closer to the traditional 3:2 aspect ratio of 35 mm photography. The other main trick is to set everything manually.
What I like to do is survey the scene from one extent to the other with the aperture I intend to use. This is important as the aperture setting will dictate depth of field (what’s in focus) throughout the resulting image. I then look for the brightest and darkest spot within the scene and set a shutter speed that keeps the brightest spots from blowing out and losing highlight detail while also avoiding the complete loss of shadow detail in the darkest regions. This can require a bit of compromise. Of course, I can correct the exposure for all of these images after returning to the digital darkroom, but it’ll be far more time consuming, with no guarantee of getting a good composite image.
Once the aperture and shutter speed have been selected, the only thing that remains is to focus and shoot. I list focus as a specific step, because this too is a spot where allowing the camera to take over might reduce the quality of the finished product. If you’re shooting with a tripod and your camera allows manual focus, you can set the focus for exactly the point you desire. As an alternative, I’ve achieved good results using Nikon’s focus point control and centering a point for each image on either the same feature or another feature at a similar distance. This is much easier if working without a tripod, but increases the odds that two regions in adjacent images will be differently focused. If this occurs, the stitching algorithms won’t work as well. Also, unless you’re really worried about the exposure, resist chimping and taking looks at all of the images as you capture them.
As mentioned before, and featured prevalently in Jack Dynkinga’s article, perfect alignment will be assured if the optical center of the lens doesn’t shift during the picture taking process. This is only really possible with a tripod and perspective-correcting lenses. Of course, you could also get this effect with a view camera with a lens bellows, but you wouldn’t really need to if you had such a setup. Instead, concentrate on moving the camera through just a single plane with as little shift about the lenses center as possible. If you’re mounted on a tripod, you can pre-align the pan to maintain the camera alignment. You can also purchase, or make, some mounts that will help to position the camera’s nodal point right above the tripod’s axis of rotation. This will simulate the effects of a fixed sensor and PC lenses so well that the alignment might still be very nearly perfect.
So far, all of this sounds pretty easy, but the daunting task of stitching all of these images together still remains. If your alignment is perfect, just drop the images into Photoshop or the Gimp and git ‘er done. If, like me, you have less than perfect alignment, a dedicated stitching program might be a better way to go. There are myriad programs available, but being a big fan of open source software (and unwilling to pay hundreds for Adobe products) I’ve really glommed onto Hugin. You can get the software from SourceForge. To make the best use of the software, you’ll also need to download one of the automatic control point generators. I painstakingly located about 5-10 points per stitch for the first composite I produced with Hugin and the results were pretty good; however, the automatic control point generators will locate about 1000 points for each overlap and downselect from those to obtain the optimal fit. A number of good tutorials exist to discuss the multitude of options like projection, so I won’t cover them here. Just check on the SourceForge page and follow the appropriate links.
If you don’t follow my advice regarding the manual exposure settings and instead let the camera select the exposure for each image, you can still stitch them together, but you may not like the results nearly as much. This image is a good example of how Hugin attempts to deal with widely varying exposure values at the individual image boundaries. As an alternative, you may adjust each image individually to a standard, but again this will result in a slow and time-consuming process. Using all of the details outlined above, I was able to perform the RAW conversion and stitch 4 different composites I recorded during a recent climb of Mount Hope in just an hour at the coffee shop. It would have taken much longer if I’d also had to adjust exposure and white balance for each of the individual images. I did add a little sharpening through the Gimp’s unsharp mask and increased the color saturation of the final composite slightly. These were performed on the TIFF output from Hugin based on the 8-bit high-quality jpegs I used as the input. I’m sure the color saturation and sharpening would have been a wee bit better if I was working with the 12-bit RAW files.
An un-edited multi-image composite made from several images captured with auto exposure. As you can see, the software did a pretty good job of correcting for the widely varying exposures, but the clouds and especially the colors in the upper left-hand corner are clearly a bit distorted.
While Hugin doesn’t support any of the popular RAW formats directly, it can work with HDR-type images through 16-bit TIFFs and a few other formats. If you anticipate significant modification after the stitching has been done, you might want to convert all of your RAW images to TIFF prior to the stitching. To date, I’ve performed all of my stitching on high-quality jpegs, but I’ll be re-stitching a recent composite with 16-bit TIFFs, and I’ll post the results once I’ve finished so that you can see what impact you might expect. One thing is a certainty; it’ll take the software much longer at every step in the process than with compressed jpegs.