tbenedict's Most Recent Photosynths

Waikoloa Abrader Quarry

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:34:51 Z

"This is a synth of the Waikoloa Abrader Quarries found adjacent to the King's Trail near Anaehoomalu Bay. These were all made with roughly 300' of line between me and the camera. Wind was varied, so the actual altitude was all over the place. Largely, though, it was in the 200' AGL + range. The King's Trail is also visible in this set, as is the heiau that delineates the division between the Kona and Kohala districts. The road that goes out to that heiau also connects to a radio tower complex in the other direction. These landmarks can all be found on most mapping software. So even though the photos themselves are not georeferenced, there are enough clue frames to do so. Visible in this set are abrader quarries as well as work sites, or basins. I wasn't sure these would be visible from 200'+ altitude, but surprisingly they are. Also visible are a number of petroglyphs, as well as some graffiti dating back to the 1800's. Not bad. This set included no oblique views to help tie the large scale geometry down, but the resulting synth was actually quite flat anyway."

sir_ivar Over 1 year ago

Outstanding!

The Mauna Lani

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:54:32 Z

"A panorama from an earlier set of images: This flight was made at the Mauna Lani Beach Club using a 6' rokkaku kite to do the lifting, and a Canon A650IS camera in a Brooxes BBKK rig. The wind was a nice and steady onshore, which was a good match to the rokkaku's flight characteristics. There are an unfortunate number of disjoints in this panorama. These were all repaired for the print version."

douglas Over 1 year ago

I think I just found my new favourite panorama :-)

I would love to live there :-)

Kona Coastline

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:27:22 Z

"A first pass at an aerial orthogonal composite. (I hesitate to call this thing a "pano" since there's nothing panoramic about it.) 51 photos made using a camera suspended from a kite line. In this case the camera was being towed behind a boat, and the shutter was set to fire continuously while the camera was aimed straight down. So it's a planar motion rather than a rotating motion of a fixed camera base."

sir_ivar Over 1 year ago

Awesome job Tom! Keep up the great work. Always impressed with your images.

Birthplace of Kamehameha I

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:37:27 Z

"This is the birthplace of King Kamehameha I, the first Hawaiian king to unite the islands in his lifetime. This was made using a camera suspended from a kite line. This synth was made entirely with the point cloud in mind, rather than for creating a set of images that give a pleasing visual tour of the site. The flight was accompanied by a GPS waypoint survey on the ground in order to explore the idea of georectifying a Photosynth point cloud."

Espadons with Cryotiger

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:10:37 Z

"One more try to use Photosynth as documentation for projects at work. This is the EEV camera head with a Cryotiger cooler on the back end. It's installed in the spectrometer end of the Espadons spectropolarimeter instrument. Three passes at various camera heights, plus some close-ups of detail areas. For this I set my camera on a 5-second intervalometer and moved the tripod after each click. This is similar to how I do elevated photography with a carbon fiber pole. It's a quick way to do a synth of a thing. Lots of monochromatic surfaces. My guess is the point cloud from this will actually be pretty disappointing. But being able to virtually walk around the instrument and look at the grounding scheme and the arrangement of cables and hoses will be nice."

Visible and IR Synth of a Kiawe Tree

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:47:01 Z

"Just playing around with a camera in both visible and 720nm IR mode. This is a neat looking kiawe tree in the Pu`u Kohola National Monument."

tbenedict Over 1 year ago

My 20D has almost the same IR response, but the meter won't register the IR light, so you have to meter manually. Still, it's usable.

I'm still itching for an IR converted camera. It would be nice to have the higher shutter speeds you could get with an honest to goodness IR converted camera. Among other things it would let me do IR photography from the air!

Ah well, in any case I'd like to play with it a little more. 48% synthy, not because of the IR, but because my technique wasn't all that hot. I'll give it another go and try to post another one soon.

Tom

Manini Owali at Kua Bay

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:25:42 Z

"I went to Manini Owali beach at Kua Bay with the intent of doing aerial panoramas rather than a synth, but I got such a nice set of images, I had to see how well it worked out. These were done using a new approach to aerial panoramas that really should lend itself well to Photosynth. Manini Owali beach at Kua Bay is an increasingly popular spot to go swimming, snorkeling, boogie boarding, and just to hang out. I got there early enough the beach was almost empty, but it began to fill up as the day went on. It's not as devoid of human presence as, say, my Kiholo Bay synths. Manini Owali beach is also a historic site where ancient Hawaiians dwelt, so you may well see ruins in the lava. It's worth poking around through the images. (Please don't poke around on foot. Historic sites like this are incredibly fragile and easy to destroy!)"

Nathan.Craig Over 1 year ago

Tom-

Outstanding, thanks for sharing your work. Great KAP and great synth.

Thanks,
Nathan

Anaehoomalu Bay South

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:26:38 Z

"I didn't really do this with a synth in mind (and it shows!) Just south of Anaehoomalu Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii, there is a set of anchialine ponds between the lava and the sand of the beach. The intention with this set of photographs was to take a set of orthogonal aerials and assemble them into a fairly low distortion 2D composite. But after making the ortho set, I walked back and took some oblique photos so that Photosynth would have enough angles on the site to do a decent job at making an accurate point cloud. This not quite on purpose approach resulted in some odd transitions in the synth, but the comprehensive set of orthos makes most of the terrain around the anchialine pond complex easy to explore."

TonyErnst Over 1 year ago

Another great one Tom. Nice utilization of shade by the way :-)

Mauna Loa Calderas

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:56:06 Z

"This was never really intended to be a synth. Several of us hiked to the summit of Mauna Loa (13500' ASL) from the USGS station (11000' ASL), and I brought my kite aerial photography rig to do panoramas once we got to the calderas. Unfortunately the weather turned foul, the clouds closed in, and my camera was rained on several times during the flight. So distant features tended to be washed out, and the upper parts of some of the frames were blurred by water drops on the lens. Nonetheless this set of pictures synthed ok, even if the transitions between frames are a little on the weak side. All my gear made it back ok, and all the people on the hike did as well. Batteries are all charged, kites are dried out and re-packed, and people are rested and fed. Ready for the next trip!!"

Megacam

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:10:52 Z

"Megacam, which was integrated into its operating environment and commissioned in 2002, is still the largest CCD camera in scientific operation. Megacam is part of a one degree field of view visible light imager that is used at prime focus on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, on the Big Island of Hawaii. It is made up of 40 2kx4k EEV CCDs, 36 of which are in use. The total detector size is upwards of 360 megapixels. The wide field corrector for Megaprime offers outstanding optical quality across the entire field of view, and includes an image stabilization unit. (Yes, the world's largest operational digital camera has image stabilization.) The camera is read out over proprietary fiber optic communication cards on a detector host running Linux. (Yes, it includes Linux drivers. Long standing joke here.) For more information about Megacam and the other facility instruments at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, you can visit: http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu Keep looking up!"

tbenedict Over 1 year ago

That's one regret I have: I never met Jack Horkheimer. That's awesome that you did, and that he signed your book that way!

If you're interested in seeing an image off of Megaprime, here's one at full resolution:

http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/en/news/CFHT30/

It's the CFHT Legacy Survey Deep Field 1. There are apparently half a million galaxies present in that one field. For more on the science goals of the CFHT Legacy Survey, this is the project's web site:

http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Science/CFHLS/

Keep looking up!

Tom