Snow on The Cheviots

Travelling on the top deck of the X1 express bus to Newcastle through the heights of Gateshead, you get a fabulous view of the city of Newcastle with the Cheviot Hills in the background. This promoted me to set out to capture a view of the Cheviots with some aspect of the city in the foreground.

St James Park with snow covered Cheviot Hills

I took this shot using a Sony NEX 6 camera fitted with a 500 mm Tamron SP mirror lens, giving an angle of view equivalent to a 750 mm lens. This lens has a fixed aperture of f8. A tripod would have been a good idea, but, in its absence  I used shutter speed priority and chose 1/1000th second to reduce the effect of camera shake to a minimum. With auto ISO selected the camera decided upon ISO 250.

On the full size image you can read the writing above the entrance to the football stadium, Gallowgate Stand.

Photo available from Alamy stock number FK5871

Perspective Correction Part 2

In an earlier epistle I listed a number of methods for shooting tall buildings and reducing or eliminating converging verticals. I listed the technique of stacking several images but noted that I had not tried this method.

Well I have now given it a go and have been reasonably impressed with the outcome, see for yourself below.

This is the Emerson Chambers building in Newcastle upon Tyne, situated at the head of Grey Street and currently occupied by Waterstones bookshop. 

I used a Sony NEX 6 camera fitted with the standard Sony 16-50 zoom lens at about 28mm focal length ( 42 mm equivalent full frame). The combined photo used 5 shots, starting at the base working upwards with a healthy overlap between them. 

The images were developed in Lightroom, with the only adjustment being a standard lens profile correction.

The developed images were transferred to Photoshop (CS4) as 16 bit TIFF files, and two different methods of combining them were tried.

1) The easiest way to do this is to use the File Automate Photomerge command, selecting all of the currently open images. This did a job. The main building was not too bad but there was some weird colouration in the sky while the buildings to the rear right were well distorted.

2) The next method is a tad more complex, but produced a better result.

I selected and copied all of the images over to the base layer (the bottom of the building) so as to obtain a layer stack of images. I then selected all of the layers and used the Layer Align command, followed by the Merge Layer command.

The resulting image was a great improvement on that produced by method 1, but there was still some distortion of the buildings to the rear right, and  a little chromatic aberration along a couple of edges. 

Some Photoshop skulduggery was able to sort all that out to produce a final photo that is 6616 x 4628 pixels in size. Printing at 300 dots per inch would result in  finished dimensions of about 22 x 15.5 ", but the quality of the original and, taking into account a sensible viewing distance, would allow a much larger reproduction were it required.

Edit - I've played around with this technique rather more now and have found that the degree of perspective correction appears to be related to the geometry of the base level shot. If your camera is completely level as you take the first shot, the software tries to mimic that geometry as it adds the layers above. While this may sound a good thing, an image without any trace of convergence of the verticals looks a tad strange, while the top layer has to be contorted rather more than might be considered comfortable in order to comply. I guess that I'm still in the experimental stage, but I am beginning to prefer a base level shot that is just off the horizontal, so that the resulting image has some degree of natural perspective after assembling all of the layers.

I've also tried the automatic panorama feature in Lightroom 6 (Right click, Photomerge), which is surely the quickest software fix for this problem, but I have not been as impressed with the results as with those that I have achieved using my venerable copy of Photoshop.

Last edit 25-2-2016

Newcastle upon Tyne Panorama

I had seen the opportunity for this shot earlier in the year, but then the sun was too low in the sky to illuminate enough of the middle distance.

I had taken a few test shots and decided that the best strategy was to stitch a series of vertical format images together. I have a good solid Manfrotto tripod with both pistol grip ball and pan and tilt heads, but this journey was by bicycle and I selected instead my aged and lightweight Velbon unit. I normally use it to support a flashgun for product shots, it's not in the same league as the Manfrotto, but neither is it too heavy to carry on a bike!

As always with panoramas, I used manual exposure to help ensure even tones across the image and, on this occasion, shot using a 2 second time delay. From memory I think 5 photos were stitched together to produce the panorama.

I would have liked to have included more of the High Level bridge, to the left, but it is obscured by trees from this viewpoint.

The original is 9642 x 4953 pixels, giving a print 32 inches long at the optimum 300 dpi printing  resolution, but, for practical purposes and sensible viewing distance, it would print probably more than double that size.

Actual pixels crop, just a touch of CA but good definition

Sony NEX 6 Samsung Schneider D-Xenogon (Pentax) 35mm f2

Newcastle Shops

Contrasting shops, a traditional  bookshop, a fashionable boutique, and an independent music store

Boutique within Eldon Square

Book shop within Grainger Market

Get your vinyl here

Sony NEX 6