Re: Volunteering to shoot updated panorama


Message posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on June 16, 2011 at 9:28:58 PST:

Agreed, a new panorama to complement our planned new satellite image (I know, I will get around to it, bear with me folks) would be great. What sort of photo gear do you have?

Paul Wilson used a technique known as image stacking to enhance sharpness. It greatly reduces random noise and other distortions. Without image stacking, regardless of the equipment, I think my 2005 panorama is about as good as it gets. The conditions were perfect that morning! I have never seen the air up there so clear. See the attached link to Paul's trip report for some additional info on the gear he used.

As you correctly pointed out, haze and heat distortions are your biggest problem at 26 miles. They are least problematic early in the morning, when it is fairly cool up there, even in summer. The light is best at that time, too, so everyone I know takes their panoramas as soon as the first sunlight hits the base. At that time temps. change rapidly. To minimize focus drift I wrap my scope in insulating foam. Focussing itself is very difficult due to low contrast. I learned from Chuck Clark that the checkered water tower works well to focus on, but I always end up with over 50% out-of-focus panoramas. I usually do at least 8, adjusting the focus between each one.

It is often quite windy up there, which can be a problem. On a windy day the best tripod won't do you any good. Chuck uses sand bags or rocks to rest the scope on, but I find it hard to get a panorama that lines up nicely later without a tripod with gear head. To minimize camera shake you want a camera with mirror lock-up and a remote shutter release.

I use a Celestron C-5 spotting scope with an old Canon D-60 attached. With the chip size factor of 1.6 I get an effective focal length of 2000mm. That, plus the tripod is about as much as I can carry up there. And again, I am not sure better gear (except for a camera with higher resolution maybe) would improve the results.

I have considered experimenting with a CCD chip, but never got around to doing any further research into how feasible that would be.

June or even early July would be a good time for a hike. After that I would wait until it cools off a bit in September or October.

Attached link: Tikaboo Peak, June 28, 2008 by Paul Wilson

In Reply to: Volunteering to shoot updated panorama posted by topeye on June 16, 2011 at 3:33:10 PST:

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