Two days ago I went to Polzeath to take some panoramic photos. My main objective was to create a wide image to make into a large print (I still haven’t processed all of the photos yet and only done a couple of test stitches) but while I was there I made a 360° panorama for my website.

Very stupidly I totally forgot to shoot one section of the panorama, but I managed to repair this by using two of the photos I’d taken for one of the print shots. If you know where to look you can just see where the patch is, but I’m still quite pleased with the result. In my defence, I was in a position on the edge of a 10 metre drop where I couldn’t walk round the tripod as I panned the camera, but even so it was a silly mistake and I was lucky to be able to salvage the image.

I’ve just added some new panoramas of Brixton to my website. These include two of Windrush Square, two in Market Row (one of Brixton’s covered markets) and one on the corner of Electric Avenue and Atlantic Road. These add to the older ones I made a couple of years ago of the Brixton Windmill and the walled garden in Brockwell Park, which I’ve remade to a higher resolution.

Read more…

I had a trip to Cambridge at the weekend which included going up the tower of Great St Mary’s church. It was quite a climb up a very narrow spiral staircase. Luckily there were plenty of places where you could stop to get your breath and let people going in the opposite direction pass.

Looking North

About 100 yards north of Oxford Street in London lies one of the best examples of Victorian Gothic architecture you’ll ever see. It would be easy to miss this church, even though it has one of the highest spires of any church in London. If you don’t look up and see the spire when you stand outside, you could walk straight past. All Saints church is set back from Margaret Street in a small courtyard. Once inside, a world of beauty opens before you.

Read more…

I’ve recently purchased a Fuji FinePix F600EXR so that I have a camera that I can keep in my pocket all the time. On my list of ‘must haves’ was the ability to shoot RAW which most pocket cameras don’t have, and those that do tend to be in the £300+ price bracket. When it was first introduced in August last year its list price was about £320 (street price £280) but in January this year a new model (F770) came out and the F600 can now be got for about £160 – half the original list price. It’s probably not quite as good as some of the other cameras in its class (notably the Panasonic LX5) but it has some features that I’ve been very impressed with, notably the ability to shoot panoramas. When compared with the panoramas that I shoot with my Nikon D300 they’re obviously inferior, but considering that they’re stitched in a couple of seconds in the camera, I’m really quite impressed. This, coupled with a 15x optical zoom (24-360mm equivalent), macro focus down to 5cm and a whole string of features I’ll probably never use, has made me very happy.

Southwark Cathedral have just added a tour of three 360° panoramas that I produced to their website. The tour shows views of the nave, altar and crossing, and choir. The cathedral dates back to Norman times when it was known as St Mary Overy (over the water) although it only received cathedral status in 1905. Much of the current building dates to between 1220 and 1420 when it was rebuilt following a fire. In 1536 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the church was rededicated to St Saviour. The tower and choir were restored in the early 1800s and the nave was totally rebuilt in 1839 in Gothic style. Further extensive building work was carried out in 2000 to provide conference and educational facilities.

In the last couple of days I’ve been uploading some of my panoramas to 360 Cities, the world’s largest 360° panoramic photography community. You can see my panoramas here.

I thought I’d add a panorama of the ReedDesign office so you can all see where all that creativity happens.

My laptop still has that abomination Vista installed as the postal strike seems to have held up the delivery of the Windows 7 upgrade, which I can’t wait to get my hands on.

The kite on the wall is a carp which I’ve been told in Chinese sounds like profit so hopefully it will give me good luck in business.

I’ve taken the opportunity of a couple of quiet days to update some of the older panoramas on my website. I’ve used the latest beta version of Pano2VR and decided to only go with Flash panoramas and ditch the Java and Quicktime versions completely. All of the updates used a much higher resolution image and will only be compatible with Flash 9 and upwards – but as the uptake of Flash 9 and now version 10 seems to be fairly universal I don’t think this will be much of a problem.

ReedDesign has just completed a series of 360° panoramas for Mill Hill and Belmont Schools. The panoramas include interiors of the Chapel, Favell Building and 6th Form Common Room as well as some exterior views of the grounds.

The panoramas were shot on a Nikon D300 with a 10.5mm fisheye lens and a KingPano panoramic head. They were stitched using PTGui and converted into Flash panoramas using Pano2VR.