The biggest panorama I ever stitched:

It just looks nice in the original version on flickr, but be aware that it is 25268 px × 1000 px!

So some statistics

I did stitch it to the end just as a test what's feasible actually:

• 90 shots (maybe 88 used here) at 83mm focal length
• final cropped panorama is 77624 px × 3072 px
• stitched using hugin with the nona engine, blended with enblend
• nona did take about 3 hours (this just morphs the images), but blending them using enblend did take about 3 days (!)
• in the first run of nona I did forget to activate LZW compression for the tifs created by nona, so each one was about 1.2 GB and my hard disk was filled up, with LZW it's just about 24 MB per pic as there're big transparent areas
• the final LZW compressed tif is about 600 MB, loaded in Gimp to crop, Gimp needs about 3.5 GB
• the uploaded scaled down JPEG version just is about 2.5 MB

Conclusion

So is it feasible?No! Just a test and next time I'll use a smaller focal length... The problem is not only the stitching time, but it's hard to work with these many images in hugin (and I assume in any other stitching program). Because of that this stitch isn't perfect by far (usually I'd have defined more vertical and horizontal lines), but I don't care for this one.

Another problem with this big panorama is that you can't view it in a nice way completely anyway. You just can look at parts or all the details will be lost. Considering all this I won't do something alike soon eventually.

Now you can call me crazy, Dirk! ;-)

Now the Origami project is not rumour any longer but real news and it looks really interesting!

There is quite a discussion whether this is really something new or just another occasion where Microsoft takes an old idea. And it may even be as there is the flybook, oqo, the motion blade, and more. But actually I don't think this is

The Point

The problem with the available devices is, that they're much too expensive to penetrate the market. Microsoft did want to push tablet PCs for quite a while now, but unfortunately until today there're only a view available and all are much more expensive than a laptop with similar hardware! I'm looking for one for quite a while now and the only thing I found effordable is the Nokia 770—but this isn't anywhere near a laptop and I couldn't use it for all the things I want to do…

What I'd Like To Do

I'd like to use it to surf while lying on my sofa, browsing my images stored on my desktop pc in another room, reading emails and blogs, browsing through flickr, and to carry it arround if I'm away for longer periods to store my images and to review them (and maybe even as a pc remplacement when I'll be away for some month end of this year…)! For surfing I could use a Nokia 770 and for image storage an Epson photoviewer. These are nice devices (though I heard much about not perfect software on the Nokia), but why should I need two for these tasks?

My Requirements

For the image storage I need quite a bit of space. It should be more than 20 GB and because of that the Nokia isn't suitable at all. For reviewing I'd like to have an resolution of at least 640×480, the more the better. For carrying around it should be about DIN A5 and weight less than 1 kg (this is hard for tablet PCs, even the flybook weights about 1.2 kg!).

It would be best if no exotical hardware would be used (yes, I'd like to run Linux as primary OS there if possible) and it should cost 1000 € at max!

Maybe Microsoft just makes this possible now and I'm waiting for the devices to hit the market! I just wonder, that Apple didn't do something similar yet…

And no, I'm still no big fan of Microsoft. But I like some of their hardware and often they hit the market on the right time and they have the power of marketing (BTW, I don't like Apple very much either and they just don't get as much criticism as Microsoft because they are the under-dog).

Printed two new Cyanotypes of the The Smoke Series at the weekend.

When Time Stood Still

And Always Was This

Some remarks

The titles are still from The Cure's “Anniversary”. Sorry that there're no German ones, but a plain translation just doesn't seem to fit and these are just perfect…

Now I think that this kind of presentation with the white background but blue left over frame is the perfect one. The blue smoke looks somehow more fragile. I still like the white on blue one, though. It's such a different expression, almost like a painting.