Here's One for the Classics Folder

Well the old trustworthy Nikon D700 just went blank at 13.5 months into ownership--how convenient. I was deep in my favorite tunnel at the peak moment of light and holy holy. What to do as we enter some of the best shooting days here on the coast--well I pulled out the back-ups. First on cue was my Mamiya 645 Super with am unfinished roll of Velvia from over a year ago. Next was the Nikon FA also with an unfinished roll of the Tmax variety. After going through all my old films lying around with untold numbers of bad shots and misfires--just rusty with those old things, I said ok Nikon D70, I'll give you another chance. So off to the beach I go with this feather of a camera mounted with a 50mm 1.8 when suddenly I notice a pretty sweet cloud and sea stack setup. The gods were putting on a show this eve. Unfortunately, 50mm was not even close to what I needed. Not to worry, I'll just shoot a mosaic and spend the rest of the week putting all the shots together. It's taken that long, but in the end, I have some shots that although color and range challenged, certainly have the bits. The resultant image (cropped) is 11659 x 5982 pixels with an equivalent sensor resolution of over 100mb's--all from a 7 year old 6mb DSLR.

best to click on the image and view fuller size ... "Enflamed"


And BTW, I did get some fresh film and will be leveraging the Mamiya for the remainder of the D700 repair. This kind of stitching from handheld source is not a casual affair.

added another one ...


and one more that failed taken just after the first one - this should give you a good idea of what I was up against - never stitched it and what a mess!
If I do ever end up printing these, and they will print pretty huge, I'll probably go back and revisit the source files for better white balance (forgot to lock it down), value and alignment matching. I'll also seek to minimize any blurring in the blendings which I have a few tricks for that I'll share in a future post.