Wider Than Wide

Experimenting with my panorama setup. The first photo is 8 shots taken in portrait mode with the Zeiss 24-70mm at 24mm while the camera is mounted to a Nodal Ninja pano head.

The above panorama is known as a single row panorama. It is comprised of several photos, each take side by side while moving the camera a short distance between each shot. This next one isa bit more complex. It is a multi-row panorama and is comprised of 45 separate shots in 3 rows. The camera shoots a series across while angled up, a series across while angled down and then again along the horizon.

Click any of the above images to see a larger version.

And for fun, another 360 degree panorama of the reading room shot with the Nodal Ninja and the fisheye lens. Comprised of 6 shots around and one zenith and one nadir shot. Click your mouse inside the picture and hold the left button down and you can then spin the image around and up and down to see a full 360 degrees.

Full screen, ultra-high resolution version (10 meg file) available here. Will take some time to fully load, but is VERY interesting!

Duck Duck Duck

Cynthia and I went to the Art Car Parade on Saturday. This time was different from years past because I was invited to be an announcer as the parade was going on with my friend and Technology Bytes co-host Dwight Silverman. It was a lot of fun, but I ended up not getting to take any pictures of the art cars. It took everything we had to keep up with the announcing.

I did, however, get some pictures of some of the numerous baby ducks at Sam Houston Park.

All pics shot using the Sony A850 and the SAL 70-300G lens. Click any image for a larger (and much cuter) version.

Oscar Meyer Wienermobile

I was running a quick errand to the H.E.B. to pick up some postage stamps and lo and behold, the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile was parked out front. I don’t know exactly why, but I get kinda silly when I see this thing. Of course I didn’t have my camera with me since it was a quick errand. I went ahead and bought the stamps and then ran back home and asked Cynthia if she’d be interested in taking a whimsy break.

I grabbed my camera and we headed back over to the H.E.B. and had a nice visit with the drivers of the Wienermobile who are known as “Hotdoggers.” It was really quite fun and silly, but we learned quite a bit about the ongoing Oscar Meyer marketing campaign and some facts about the Wienermobile.

They still give away little plastic wiener-whistles!

*Photographer’s Note*
The first two photos were taken using the Lensbaby Composer mounted on the the A850. The Lensbaby Composer creates the selective focus effect you see in those images and is a fully manual lens. The third photo was taken using the 16mm fisheye and the last photo was taken using the 100mm macro lens.

Fergus

Poor little guy. Looks like the wind blew him out of his nest which is up pretty high in the Bottle Brush Trees so I couldn’t put him back, plus it looked like he might have a hurt wing as a result of the fall.

That and the neighborhood cat combined didn’t give me a good feeling about his chances of making it through the night so we scooped him up and took him to the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Coalition just to be safe. His parents were frantic and dive-bombing me like crazy. I’m sure it was quite the site to see.

I felt bad. But in this scenario, everybody lives.

Cynthia named him Fergus.

Bee-lzebub

I believe this to be a carpenter bee of some kind. Possibly Xylocopa tabaniformis.

While working in the yard yesterday this guy was hanging around the Meyer Lemon Tree which is currently covered in blossoms for the spring. This bee would just hover near Cynthia as she was pulling some weeds. First he would face her, then he would turn to face the tree and then fly away, usually chased off by another, larger carpenter bee.

The bee didn’t seem to me to be mad or anything. Just curious and very adamant about hanging around in this one spot which was being intruded upon by our efforts to get the garden into shape before summer. Cynthia thought he was being rather aggressive and named him Bee-lzebub.

The above shots were captured while shooting handheld with the Sony A850 and the 100mm Macro in manual focus mode.

Click either image to see a larger version.

*Photographer’s Note* I was not able to get close enough to the subject to create a “true” macro. These are 100% crops from the original photo. For comparison, this is a resized, but original version of the photo the first shot was taken from.

A testament to the resolving power of the A850 and the sharpness of the Sony 100mm Macro.