Year: 2016

Horseshoe Falls

The Horseshoe Falls is a part of the famous Niagara Falls. This is where the Niagara River drops around 50m (165 ft on the Canadian site) on its way to the ocean. The American Canadian border runs through the falls.

Geotag Icon Show on map
Camera Maker: SONY
Camera Model: ILCE-QX1
Exposure Time (sec): 1/1600
F-Number: 7.1
Focal Length (mm): 8

View from the SkyPod of CN Tower

With a height of 553.33 m (1,815.4 ft) the CN Tower is currently (June 2016) the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. The upper observation deck is located in the so called SkyPod, which is 447 m (1,467 ft) above ground. With an elevation of 447 m (1,467 ft) above ground this sphere is currently one of a kind in my portfolio, as I have never done a tower shot this high. It’s also unique in two other aspects. To date it’s the sphere with the highest resolution (32 k x 16 k pixel) and with the longest retouching time (about 20 hours to get everything perfect).

Geotag Icon Show on map
Camera Maker: SONY
Camera Model: ILCE-6300
Exposure Time (sec): 1/640
F-Number: 7.1
Focal Length (mm): 16
ISO: 100
Lens: Sony PZ 16-50mm

Technique:
The final panorama consists of two hemispheres. The lower hemisphere, which was taken from the aforementioned SkyPod and the upper half which was taken from another spherical, which I took some years ago. These two hemispheres were blended together with Pano2VR and Photoshop. The 36 images for the lower hemisphere were taken in two rows.

Allen Lambert Galleria – Reprojections

Upon seeing the unique structure of Allen Lambert Galleria for the first time in a panoramaic image I wanted to take my own one. I tried to find a spot which is as centered in the structure as possible, because one of my goals was to create reprojections of the spherical image. Here are the results:

Allen Lambert Galleria - Transverse Mercator
Allen Lambert Galleria – Transverse Mercator

Geotag Icon Show on map
Camera Maker: SONY
Camera Model: ILCE-QX1
Exposure Time (sec): 1/125
F-Number: 7.1
Focal Length (mm): 8

Kalvarienberg Bad Hindelang

Originally this panorama was my submission to the World Wide Panaorama event ‘Travel’. I took it with a monopod mounted on a tripod and took four images with the Walimex 7.5mm fishe eye lens mounted on the Sony ILCE-QX1.

Geotag Icon Show on map
Camera Maker: SONY
Camera Model: ILCE-QX1
Exposure Time (sec): 1/1250
F-Number: 7.1
Focal Length (mm): 7.5

Heading for Planes and Trains

The long-distance train station at the airport of Frankfurt/Main is one of 5.400 train stations in Germany. It’s operated by the German railroad company Deutsche Bahn. The station went into service 1999. It measures approx. 700 m. in length, 50 m. in width and 45 m. in height. The station is divided into two main levels. The trains operate on the lower level, the passengers can change tracks and head to the airport via the upper level (distribution level). The large glass dome, which spans the distribution level is clearly visible in the panorama.

Outside the dome you can see The Squaire, which currently (2016) is Germany largest office building. It was built between 2006 and 2010 on top of the existing train station.

Geotag Icon Show on map
Camera Maker: SONY
Camera Model: ILCE-QX1
Exposure Time (sec): 1/320
F-Number: 7.1
Focal Length (mm): 7.5

Technique:
The shooting was done with a 3 meter (appx. 10 ft) pole to reach a more elevated viewpoint. The lens was mounted with a custom-made bracket. Stitched from five images taken with a Walimex (Samyang) 7.5mm fish eye lens on a Sony QX1. Four images around and an additional image for the nadir. The zenith was retouched by hand in post-processing.