sheeny
15-07-2006, 07:45 PM
Just got back yesterday from a week on the NSW north coast - Grafton to be exact. Had wonderful weather, but did no real observing apart from an unsuccessful attempt to see the Moon occult Antares...
But I did spend a couple of days at the beach - Brooms Head and Minnie Waters - and gave the 20x80Ts a run at whale watching. The bees knees for the job... practically the veritable wasp's nipples! The whales were, I would estimate, roughly 8ks out (eye level about 3-4m above sea level and the whales on the horizon - does that sound about the right distance? I can't find a handy reference... There must be an old salt here who can convert that description to a distance!) but the 20x80s did a great job o bringing them close enough to make out detail!
While there I also took a few panoramas. Seaside panoramas are difficult to do due to the lack of fixed points on the horizon for alignment. These 3 look OK when reduced in size for the web, but if you look really closely you might be able to pick the alignment errors in 2 of them.
The first at Brooms Head is a 180 degree panorama with my partner Lyn doing some whale watching through the 20x80s. 7 images with the C5060WZ.
The second was taken from the headland at Minnie Waters. 6 images with the C5060WZ.
The last one is 4 images from the northern end of Minnie Waters Beach. The joins are perfect in the full size original on this one thanks to the land on the horizon.:thumbsup:
All were assembled with autostitch, cropped and saved for the web with PS CS2.
Al.
But I did spend a couple of days at the beach - Brooms Head and Minnie Waters - and gave the 20x80Ts a run at whale watching. The bees knees for the job... practically the veritable wasp's nipples! The whales were, I would estimate, roughly 8ks out (eye level about 3-4m above sea level and the whales on the horizon - does that sound about the right distance? I can't find a handy reference... There must be an old salt here who can convert that description to a distance!) but the 20x80s did a great job o bringing them close enough to make out detail!
While there I also took a few panoramas. Seaside panoramas are difficult to do due to the lack of fixed points on the horizon for alignment. These 3 look OK when reduced in size for the web, but if you look really closely you might be able to pick the alignment errors in 2 of them.
The first at Brooms Head is a 180 degree panorama with my partner Lyn doing some whale watching through the 20x80s. 7 images with the C5060WZ.
The second was taken from the headland at Minnie Waters. 6 images with the C5060WZ.
The last one is 4 images from the northern end of Minnie Waters Beach. The joins are perfect in the full size original on this one thanks to the land on the horizon.:thumbsup:
All were assembled with autostitch, cropped and saved for the web with PS CS2.
Al.