The bikes have got me back into photography.  When I go out on long rides I take my Canon Ixus 40 with me to capture the ride, the sights and the memories.  Then I bought my Canon G11 as I wanted more control – the same level of control I had when I used my Minolta SLRs in the past.

Now I’ve bought a Gigapan Epic – a robotic camera mount for taking huge, high resolution images.

What?!

Okay, here’s something cool:

“The GigaPan Imager uses the same panoramic photo technology as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, used to collect amazing panoramic images of Mars.“

“GigaPan Systems was established in 2008 as a commercial spin-off of a successful collaboration between researchers at NASA and Carnegie Mellon University that developed the breakthrough GigaPan System for creating high-resolution panoramic images. GigaPan Systems was founded to bring this powerful, high-resolution imaging capability to a broad audience.“

The Gigapan system consists of the robotic mount, stitching software and the Gigapan.org website which hosts the resulting massive images.

The mount itself ($300) fixes to the top of your tripod and then holds your digital camera nice and tightly in its special fixture.  There’s a small amount of setup to perform, so that it knows the field of view of your specific camera, and that’s it.  You then put your camera on maximum zoom, lock the focus, lock the exposure, then tell the Gigapan what to do.  It’s simple: you point the system at the top-left corner of your scene, then the bottom-right corner, and the Gigapan will then work out how many shots it needs to cover the entire scene.  Everything set, you start it off and it pans and tilts until its taken loads of individual photographs of the scene: x-number of rows and x-number of columns.

You then go home and download the images from your camera and into Gigapan’s stitching software.  This software really ‘uses’ your computer and all its processing and memory capacity to blend the photos into one huge image.  This can take a long time to compute, my initial (relatively small) capture took around 30 minutes – it’s complex and demanding for the software/computer to merge and blend these images automatically but it does it fantastically well.

Once it’s done its thing you upload to the Gigapan.org website, into your account, and then it’s available for the world to see.

Initially it looks like a normal photograph, but then you move your mouse over it and you realise that you can zoom into the image, pan around and explore it – in a similar way to the way you navigate in Google Maps.  Find something of interest in the middle of the image? Just zoom in and take a look.  As you do, the Gigapan viewing software adds the more detailed images as you get in closer until you reach the full resolution, then just keep panning.

The Gigapan hardware was shipped to to me from the USA.  I ordered it late on a Sunday night (UK time), the Gigapan team shipped it on Monday afternoon and it arrived at 1045 on the Wednesday morning!  Really quick shipping and a high quality product.

It’s a great bit of kit and I’ve only just started playing with it.  The weather yesterday curtailed my trials but I managed to get a couple of giga-images captured: the Castle and the Cathedral.  I’ve just exported the castle image to a TIFF file and that image is 450MB in size!  It is a 261 mega pixel image!  Oh, and it took my computer 1hr 55mins to stitch it together – that’s 56 images in a grid of 7 x 8.

The images below are small copies of the exported TIFF files, if you want to see the Gigapan images then click the links below each photo and you’ll be taken to the images over on Gigapan.org.

I’ll post updates of my Gigapan experiences as and when they happen.

Click here to view the Gigapan image of the Castle

Click here to view the Gigapan image of the Cathedral

My Gigapan Epic set to take the images of the Cathedral

Another post run this morning – into town to collect a parcel.  Wow, it’s cold out there today – winter is definitely here.  It’s sunny (at times) but it’s cold and the slight breeze takes it even colder, then jump on a bike and cycle and the wind really bites.

The Dahon whizzed me in and back and the back rack was, as always, fantastically useful for carrying the parcel.  It really is a great bike.

I’m a bit fed up that I haven’t really had time to use either bike over the past month or so.  Work has been pretty busy and there’s always things to do in the house (such as eating and sleeping!).  I’m planning on some decent rides over the Christmas break…

Two factors, this weekend, prevented the bikes getting an airing:

1. The Weather – Saturday morning was pretty rough but it did improve through the day but then the heavens opened again in the evening and the rains fell.  First thing Sunday morning was similar, but again things cleared up nicely.
2. Dickensian Christmas – Another one of Rochester’s annual festivals.  This one brings loads (!) of visitors to the town so everywhere was packed.  No cycling in the high street this weekend.

I did venture out today though, Sunday, to see what was going on in town; to sample the ‘Dickensian’ atmosphere.

It was packed!

High Street was shoulder to shoulder with locals and tourists all trying to see the procession and to sample the foods for sale.  The Castle Gardens had been invaded by a fair and people roamed the town dressed in antique clothing and as Dickens characters.

More photos over on Flickr.

I do like my Dahon but I don’t really go over the top with its care – honestly!

It’s not relaxing after a hard ride, it’s drying off in the bath after cycling home in the rain last Thursday night.  I suppose that’s one of the downsides for keeping the bike inside the house: if the bike gets dirty, what do you do with it?

A funny sight though for visitors to my house when they pop into the bathroom.

I decided to head out on the Dahon on Thursday night with my tripod strapped to the back.  I wanted to test out my camera’s night capability and the Dahon was the best method of transport for the job.

I had the bike kitted out with all my lights including the NiteRider MiNewt and I headed off into the darkness.  I managed to cycle 5 miles during the few hours I was out and got home just as the weather turned.  The last mile of cycling was in the rain but I was happy that I had a good ride and should have captured some good images.

Saturday afternoon I headed out again, this time without the bike but the camera attached in its pouch on my belt.  I was heading to Rochester Castle again, but this time I was going to go inside!  I’ve lived in the area for around twelve years and have spent a lot of time relaxing in the castle’s grounds but I’ve never done the ‘tourist thing’ and gone inside.

There’s nothing much inside, it’s basically a shell but it was worth paying the £5 entrance fee for the view from the top.

It was a very windy day and standing on top of the ancient building was breathtaking in more ways than one.  The sun stayed out long enough for me to take a few photographs and to look down on where I usually sit.

There’s been a castle here since 1066 so it’s got a significant history.  The first stone castle was built around 1087 by the same person that was responsible for the cathedral next door and also the Tower Of London.  For more info, click here.

More photos from my Night and Day trips can be found here, on Flickr.

Free Buff headwear when you give a gift CTC membership!

Quote from the CTC weekly email newsletter:

“CTC Festive Gift Membership is the perfect present that lasts all year and it comes with a free Buff® worth £18. It is the ideal present for a cyclist as it includes all the benefits of being a CTC member. Prices for CTC membership start at just £12. To order CTC Festive Gift Membership, simply call 0844 736 8451, quote ‘Buff’, give us the details of the lucky person and we’ll do the rest! For delivery in time for Christmas please call before 15 December.”

I was driving home from work tonight wishing that I could cycle instead of drive…

Unfortunately I cannot but my mind drifted back to my childhood and the Government safety campaigns of the 80s.  Thankfully Google and YouTube remember everything – even things which weren’t around prior to their conception.

Another wet and windy weekend and again both bikes stayed in the house, warm and dry.

It’s quite frustrating but I’m sure I’ll be out soon.  I need to go to the bottle bank on the Dahon and I also want to get out for a ‘burn’ on the Trek – we’ll see if I can get out during the nights this week…

Wow, today the weather has been crazy.  I didn’t venture out on the Dahon and I’m glad that I chose to walk.  Some cyclists were out, but they soon dismounted and began to push…

Parts of the UK have been hit by winds up to 100mph and here in Kent the weather has been, and still is, pretty rough.

I walked into town today for a coffee and to drop off a suit for dry cleaning.  I could barely keep to my feet as the wind buffeted me as I walked.  On the walk home the heavens opened and unleashed a huge amount of rain.  I was soaked but it was nice to be out in the elements.  I like this time of year and the British weather was at its best (or worst) today.

I had another (nice) day off work yesterday and headed into London.  It wasn’t a warm day but it was nice for November and at least it wasn’t raining.

Decided to visit the London Eye for the first time and the weather was good enough to give us a nice view of the city.  We were lucky as later in the afternoon the rain started and reminded us it was Autumn and England.

One biking-related thing to note, I saw a tour group from Fat Tyre Bike Tours – a nice idea and a great way to see the city.

Some more photos over on Flickr.