Making a panorama

Making photo panoramas is very useful skill of every photographer. City squares, mountain ranges,lakes - they never fit into one shot.
Some automatic cameras have even this function built-in, but since I'm a user of DSLR I'll focus on more professional method.



This is Mariensztat Market. Mariensztat is a very beautiful part of Warsaw, a bit forgotten, a bit neglected but with nice architecture and almost no tourists, although it's 5 minutes walk from Castle Square (this picture taken on Sunday afternoon, when Old Town was full of people). See it on Google Maps
It's perfect place for a rest, for an action of romantic novel or for...making a photo panorama. Moving people are the worse thing that can happen - they will have different position on the pictures and can make panorama stitching software crazy, or at least spoil the final result with a blurred ghost.

When I started to read about panoramas it turned out that I need a tripod and special head. Well - it's sometimes useful, but not obligatory. I've made a lot of nice panoramas without it, and this one was also done directly from hand.

So the basic recipe for a panorama is:
1. Set your camera in to manual mode and measure the light in the lightest part of the area and set the aperture. Use this setting to make all pictures.
2. Turn autofocus off
3. Make several shots covering the area you want to have on your final picture.
Each next shot should begin in approximately 2/3 before the end of the previous to allow seamless merge. To sum up: neighbour pictures must have common part.
4. Google for "panorama stitching software". I use PTGui. You can download trial version from here.
5. In most cases it's enough to load pictures and relay on the program. Software finds common point in the pictures, adjust them and merges into panorama.
6. Finalize result in any photo editing software. Crop, add some contrast, add some saturation and sharpen.

Of  course this is not a full detailed description, but Internet is full of it it's no sense to repeat it once again because the objective of this post is of course...to encourage you to visit beautiful Mariensztat!

Somewhere in Poland (4) - Water way to the border

Built in 19th century Augostow Canal is an engineering marvel that probably soon will be added to UNESCO worlds cultural heritage list.
This water way was built to improve transportation and avoid high taxes for transport on Vistula River, now is one of the main attractions of north-east Poland.

See on Google Maps




It's 105 km long (84 km in Poland / 20 in Belarus – not possible to cross the border) and there are 18 manually controlled water locks,
(14 in Poland) that allow kayakers to finish their trip 80 kilometers and 41 meters lower then the starting point.
It's popular as well for kayaking as for bike trips to the water locks. Marked bicycle paths go through beautiful scenery of surrounding forests and lake shores.

Wikipedia
About the region
Most beautuful kayak routes
Canoe and kayak routes in Poland




Other 'Somwheres in Poland':
Somewhere in Poland - my favourite bridge
Somewhere in Poland (2) - 843 km of beaches
Somewhere in Poland (3) -  The Far East

Warsaw - old pictures , new pictures - part 2

Have you seen The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw? It's not far from the Old Town, next to the Saxon Garden. Well, it looks like typical monument...but take a look at the old postcard. What you can see now it's only a part not existing Saxon Palace (built in 17th century, destroyed during World War II). There are plans to rebuild it, probably the reconstruction will start after 2012.

Every hour there's a change of guards, it's good moment to shot some interesting pictures from Warsaw.
More:
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Saxon Palace

More photos of Warsaw:
Warsaw - old pictures, new pictures part 1
Streets in bloom
When the green turns into gold
Making a panorama

3D VR 1905

Three Dimensional Virtual Reality. It sounds very modern, but we have been having it in Warsaw since 1905! It is called FOTOPLASTICON and is still working in the same way as over hundred years ago.

Address: Al. Jerozolimskie 51 see on google maps Open daily except for Tuesdays 10-18, admission 1PLN (appr. 0,25 EUR), free on Sundays.

Now you can walk through the streets of many cities by using Google Maps street view option. Hundred years ago people had the same need of virtual traveling and fotoplasticons were very popular across the world.
Fotoplasticon gives possibility of viewing photographs, made with technology called stereoscopy. Each eye has it's own point of view (close left one, then right one - you'll see that the view is a bit different- in your brain these two pictures are mixed into 3D view).
So for viewing 3D photographs a "double" picture (see the photo above) is needed. It's made with special camera having two lenses. As the distance between lenses is similar to the distance between eyes, watching this double picture gives impression of three dimensions when you see the left picture with the left eye and the right with the right one – you need some kind of binoculars for it.
Exactly the same trick is made for contemporary 3D movies - there are two views and the glasses you wear in the cinema allow to separate "left" and "right" movie and direct it to the proper eye.






Interesting links:
More about fotoplasticon in Warsaw
Stereoscopy

20 years of freedom

4th of June is important date in our history. On July the 4th 1989 we had first free elections - finalization our long way to independence. So each city organized some events - exhibitions, concerts, shows... Below - some photos taken in Warsaw. Pay attention to the first poster - it was painted by my classmate - 10 years old Mikolaj - currently known painter. I was really happy to see this poster again.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

According to ice cream my choice is always the same.
My brain has only one algorithm implemented,
in any programming language it can be written using two lines of code:

If ice_cream
then Malinova

See Malinova on google maps

Malinova café, appeared several years ago and quickly became a significant place of the all ice cream lovers.
You can take-away or enter painted in delicate violets interior and sit at a small round table surrounded by pink soft chairs. Before or after (or both) you can take a walk in Mokotowskie Fields Park or explore the green streets of Old Mokotów district - a mixture of old villas and modern apartments.

Check out other places in Warsaw:
Wanna cake?

International Children's Day

So today we are celebrating International Children's Day. For all travelling kids and they parents I've prepared a map of places in Warsaw, that could be interesting for both of them. On my map you can find parks, playgrounds, museums, skate parks, swimming pools and other attractions. Have fun!


View Warsaw For Kids in a larger map