I had posted a couple of pics on weekly photo fun of a Philly Panorama I took last weekend to make a new backdrop.
Well my wife printed the backdrop today and brought it home. Still have to wait for the 3 x 10 foot 1/8 inch pvc sheet to come in to mount it to.
The Photo is printed in Matte Vinyl with adhesive on the back which can be re-positioned.
It turned out great, with sharp detail
A small section rolled out on the floor.
Direct Link to same: http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll17/hamltnblue/Backdrop/IMG_0213.jpg
I’ve been looking at commercial backdrops of that type. There is nothing I’ve seen on the market that comes close to what you’ve done. How long do we have to wait to see the finished product?
I’ll be putting it up as soon as I get the PVC sheet. My Wife is working on that. The detail is a little better in person. The original was a photoshop stitch of Five 18 megapixel pictures. The end file was 332 meg in size before being re-sampled for printing. Having a large file is the only way to keep the resolution for large prints. This one will be the backdrop for half of the layout. The other half is planned this summer. I plan to take a panorama of Boston harbor with the city for that side. Wife is from Boston Area and I’m from Philly area. Mr Beasley, these people claim to offer the same.
If you want a better resolution pic you can download the high res version from my photobucket site. The file size is 7.4 meg. It looks great printed out on an inkjet at 8x10.
Glad to see the old girl hasn’t joined so many of her brethren as razor blades…almost unbelievably, all 4 Iowa-class BBs are still afloat; three as museums and one, the Iowa, still in mothballs.
Very nice Hamiltnblue. I have been playing around with doing the same thing for a twelve foot long stretch on my layout.
I started by taking photos of my chosen scene and knitting them together with some help. The quality just wasn’t there using our 3 year old $300.00 Sony Digital. And then it happened! Santa bought brought my wife my a Nikon D5000 so she could take better photos of all her dogs.[:-^] Photos are much better. I borrowed it while she was at work one day and YIPPEE! quality at last.
I have a place fairly close by that can print it out like yours. However I am having difficulty getting the scale right. Some spots it appears to large and in others to small. Did you have this problem? If so how did you deal with it? If not, any suggestions. I am no photographer by any means, and have no artistic talent. I managed to get the camera turned on and people say they are very well taken shots. ( Pure luck ) The scale thing though is driving me Batty! Thanks for any help.
The D5000 is a great camera from the reviews I read before picking up my T2i. I did some reading before trying. If you’re getting different sizes etc make sure you do the following.
Use a tripod to do the pictures. Lock in the vertical movement so it can only move side to side. The tripod and focus are probably the most important parts doing these.
Use the landscape mode on the camera. A good camera like yours will take care of the other settings.
set your focus once and don’t change it while doing the set. You could do a full run with one setting then another run with another setting. I was about 1/2 miles from the other side of the river and set the lens at 35mm. That will make your pic look close to what you see with the naked eye on site.
Use the RAW setting on the camera and convert the images to TIFF when you get to the computer. jpg files tend to lose quality every time you edit and save.
Set your camera to timer. This allows you to focus and take the camera but the shot doesn’t happen for 2-10 seconds. It allows the camera to steady out after pushing the shutter button and make a sharper pic.
Start on one side and take the pics. You want about a 1/3rd overlap between pictures so that the software can do a better job. Also make sure you don’t have a polarizing lens filter. Those will change the color of the sky different at every angle and doesn’t look right.
When you get it back home make sure you have plenty of space on the hard drive. RAW files are huge but once again will give you the best to work with. Also note you will not be able to view the RAW files with picture viewer etc at first. They have to be converted.
Follow the instructions of the software for panoramic pics.
I found that the Stitch program from Canon sucked at best. The reason is it tries to merge the pics in a straight line. You can always see a blur where it d
Thanks for all that info. I think I will go out and take some more photos to see what I can come up with.
Did you have any trouble adjusting the size of the photos to be in scale with your trains? Some I have tried, the barns, trees, phone poles etc. were either too big or too small compared to the train going by. When I got the barn looking good in one spot the phone poles and gas station three feet along the photo were way too big. Any suggestions. Thanks.
I was a little weary about trying this myself, but I’m getting a new Canon G10 soon, and with your detailed instructions I’m gonna try this. I already have Corel Photo software.
