DSLRUsers.com

Following on from my earlier attempts at a panorama, I have had another go.
This time I took the photo at a more reasonable hour, but it lacks the colours of the sunrise.
The upside was that I was able to control camera shake much better, and the picture is much sharper as a result.
Critique & suggestions for improvement more than welcome.
EDIT: Click through to bigger - 4400x800, about 900Kb

Even though it lacks punch - suggestions welcome - I had a go at printing it. That had challenges of its own.
My printer is a venerable Epson 1270, and although it has a roll paper option, I do not have the accessory, and am unlikely to find one, so I cut the paper roughly to size, and laid it out on the dining table, with the printer at one end, and a wooden ramp to catch the output. The final print is about 1800x300

Now for the challenge of framing it. The wood is easy, but glass and Mat board 2000mm long???

For future panos, I will have to work out a way of getting better colours in the print too. This one has come out a little darker than I would like. Clearly some test prints of relevant portions on the same paper are the way to go as I don't have any of the fancy gear to do this precisely. and printing the whole thing multiple times would be exorbitant - it used about a third of my colour cartridge so the total cost came to about $50 for the print. Again, suggestions welcome.

I like the set up Greg. Nothing like home engineering to give life a boost.

The glass should not be a hassel as they will knock it up to your size no probs, I would get it delivered also
The hard part is to work out what sort you want relative to cost.

at that size glass is too easy to crack, so think about perspex, as a backing board, there are 3 or 4 mm sheets of craftwood 2400 long from bunnings.......

big pix wrote:at that size glass is too easy to crack, so think about perspex, as a backing board, there are 3 or 4 mm sheets of craftwood 2400 long from bunnings.......

Point taken about the perspex. Much as I dislike it, it seems to be the way to go for this.
I am not worried about the backing board. I have heaps of stuff lying around that will be suitable, but I do like a mat surrounding the picture. Seams in that though would be a real no-no. The largest mat I have seen is about 1200 mm long. Much too short for this beastie.

Mr Darcy wrote:

big pix wrote:at that size glass is too easy to crack, so think about perspex, as a backing board, there are 3 or 4 mm sheets of craftwood 2400 long from bunnings.......

Point taken about the perspex. Much as I dislike it, it seems to be the way to go for this.
I am not worried about the backing board. I have heaps of stuff lying around that will be suitable, but I do like a mat surrounding the picture. Seams in that though would be a real no-no. The largest mat I have seen is about 1200 mm long. Much too short for this beastie.

...... Matt Board try Sydney framing Co in Silverwater Road Silverwater..... he may even cut your perspex...... framing profiles are a set size length, unless you make your own

Hello Greg

What a view! I think that's much better. Just my personal taste but I'd be inclined to either clone out the hand rail or (maybe better) adjust the handrail highlights to midtones so you can see it if you look for it but it's less noticeable.

Mr Darcy wrote:My printer is a venerable Epson 1270, and although it has a roll paper option, I do not have the accessory, and am unlikely to find one, so I cut the paper roughly to size, and laid it out on the dining table, with the printer at one end, and a wooden ramp to catch the output.

I have an R1800 with a roll attachment. All the roll attachment does is to hold the paper in a rectilinear path so that it feeds straight. To make sure of that you could knock up a wooden channel (or even cardboard for that matter) for the paper that sits against the back of the printer.

Mr Darcy wrote:For future panos, I will have to work out a way of getting better colours in the print too. This one has come out a little darker than I would like. Clearly some test prints of relevant portions on the same paper are the way to go as I don't have any of the fancy gear to do this precisely. and printing the whole thing multiple times would be exorbitant - it used about a third of my colour cartridge so the total cost came to about $50 for the print. Again, suggestions welcome.

The best way would be to calibrate your monitor with a good colorimeter such as the Eye-One Display 2 (and the full package not the lite version) and this would also set your luminosity. that doesn't eliminate the need for test prints but generally gets you very close to start from. However, you say that's not currently an option. The problem is likely to be that your monitor is too bright as most LCD monitors have default settings far too bright for photography.

If you're not calibrating your monitor, it might be worthwhile to try printing a test image and working out what adjustments it takes for a print to reasonably match the screen (probably small adjustments in curves (increase contrast?) and maybe hue/saturation. You could print these small (eg 5x4) to save costs. Then you could save them as a preset and apply to other images (at least for the same paper and intent) or simply drag them from one image to another. (I'm assuming Photoshop but you could do the same sort of thing in LightRoom).

Regards,
Murray

I opened this up and said WOW!!!! Very nice work...I would cut off a sliver from the bottom to get rid of that rail...and if you get the chance maybe try to get a bit more sky into the shot....just a thought.

Great work on getting the print done!It would be an impressive picture to hang up!

Next time I am up that way I will have to get you to take me out and we can shoot some Pano's together!

about 900Mb

wowzers!

Looking at the full res image it does it much more justice! very nice and sharp and I agree with other comments about the handrail....chop and / or clone

so I cut the paper roughly to size, and laid it out on the dining table

hmmm, am I the only one who thinks it strange to have a drill press in the dining room?

thanks for the follow up story with the framing and the printing image!

getting better colours in the print too. This one has come out a little darker than I would like

I have found the same, fortunately the guy who does some printing for me is quite handy and kowns when to add that touch of overall brightness.

I look forward to seeing some pictures of the finished framed product!

Oops BigGerry, that was a typo. About 900k in the larger file. The full image that I printed from does run to about 800Mb though.

hmmm, am I the only one who thinks it strange to have a drill press in the dining room?

It could be said that I have a dining table in the workshop.
We have no garage or shed, so the "big" room does double (triple?) duty as workshop, dining room, home theatre etc.
You can see the whole room in the "show us your work desk" thread here

clone out the hand rail

I tried cropping it out, but felt the photo worked better with it. I suspect that something is needed in the foreground for focus. I would prefer to borrow one of Leeks' models, but a hand rail was all I had on the day Maybe reducing brightness would be the way to go.

good colorimeter such as the Eye-One Display 2

I have an EyeOne, but it does horrible things on my new monitor. I suspect it's a wide gamut & the colorimeter doesn't cope. I can't afford to replace it. Still it gives me an idea: If I adjust the monitor's brightness so it matches the print, more or less, then if it looks good on the monitor, it should look good on the print. The laptop in the picture is an old one. The drivers for the Mac don't allow for roll paper on the Epson, So I do the PP on the Mac in CS3, then move the file to the HP which runs XP and CS2 (just so I can print PSDs). Of course the XP driver doesn't allow for Roll paper either, so I run the Win2K driver which does. The colour rendition on the HP is terrible (even after calibrating -
This improves things but perfect is beyond the adjustment capabilities), so it is no good for PP.

Mat board. I did a quick search on the Web & choices are VERY limited (white or cream) when you get up to these sizes.

Next time I am up that way I will have to get you to take me out and we can shoot some Pano's together!

Sounds good. Cameron , it was your Vivid Pano that got me started on them again.

Greg you have made the sublime point very much SUBLIME! This is an awesome landscape... The lighting is ...sublime!

[ BTW if you believe that the removal of the railing will help, I am happy to attempt this on the full resolution file. Just send me the portion of the file with the handrail (which should be quite managable) and I will try to clone the whole area out for you. ]

Mr Darcy wrote:

good colorimeter such as the Eye-One Display 2

I have an EyeOne, but it does horrible things on my new monitor. I suspect it's a wide gamut & the colorimeter doesn't cope. I can't afford to replace it. Still it gives me an idea: If I adjust the monitor's brightness so it matches the print, more or less, then if it looks good on the monitor, it should look good on the print. The laptop in the picture is an old one. The drivers for the Mac don't allow for roll paper on the Epson, So I do the PP on the Mac in CS3, then move the file to the HP which runs XP and CS2 (just so I can print PSDs). Of course the XP driver doesn't allow for Roll paper either, so I run the Win2K driver which does. The colour rendition on the HP is terrible (even after calibrating -
This improves things but perfect is beyond the adjustment capabilities), so it is no good for PP.

Sorry Greg, most of my colour management comments were telling you what you already knew. I suppose I should have guessed. If your monitor is like mine you can set it to sRGB but can't profile it there. (Otherwise, that might be worth trying). I notice that Coloreyes still supports the original Eye-One, unlike the Spyder (1) and the Optix (non-XR), so it's probably still OK as long as you don't have a wide gamut monitor and therefore probably still has a second hand value when you come to replace it.

1800 - that's 70 inches! I'm surprised that you can print to that because the 1270, like the R1800, is supposed to only print to 44". I would have thought you'd need, say, QImage for a different driver but it seems not. (I've only tried to print to 36" or 37" to stay inside the standard matte size of 40"x32").

I also have an interest in panoramas. I have a Gaoersi 617 and you can see some of my images from that here. I haven't used it since getting the D3 (I haven't got out much to do landscapes) but will go back and reassess it around Xmas. If I decide to continue with it I may upgrade to the new Da Yi which has shift, tilt and interchangeable backs so you can compose on the ground glass for each shot.

Regards,
Murray

1800 - that's 70 inches! I'm surprised that you can print to that because the 1270, like the R1800, is supposed to only print to 44". I would have thought you'd need, say, QImage for a different driver but it seems not. (I've only tried to print to 36" or 37" to stay inside the standard matte size of 40"x32").

The Mac and WinXP drivers would only let me print to standard sizes, but the Win2K driver allowed me to define a custom size. So I defined 18000x3290 measured in 0.01cm. The maximum it would allow was 32768 which is 3.2768 metres or 13 feet or 150 inches or thereabouts. The actual number is a binary limit: From memory, 15 bits. I suspect if you put that number in and set to continuous roll, it would just go forever. At least until the paper runs out. In my case that's 10 metres. (8 now) Of course it would be a b$&&#y expensive experiment to prove one way or the other. The paper is $120 a roll. Then there's ink. One could always print a white photo I guess.

The above pano covers about 100 degrees, looking South. Sublime Point actually offers about a 300 degree view of the distant cliffs. The sunrise one I showed the other week was from the same spot, but looking West. I am very tempted to do a pano of the entire thing using 85mm glass in portrait mode. Now that would be something

Surenj, I tried removing the rail, but it reduced the impact of the photo. I think it needs some sort of foreground interest to make it work. Some people, or even a tree or two would be better, but I was there on my own & there was a guard rail but no trees, not in that part at least. I'm actually wondering if the guard rail went all the way round it may add to the sense of being there. Mind you, thinking about it now, if it was framed as a window, and minus the rail, it could be a very convincing illusion. Lighting would be tricky though.

That's a good point Greg about the railing. How about adding some silhoutted leaves on the two corners or even on the top to give it more framing?

I have a Gaoersi 617 and you can see some of my images from that

Hell Murray, you must be dedicated. That's one mother of a camera, or should I say collection of parts - you needed to do a lot of work to get it together.
The photos are an inspiration. I must try some of those ideas. I had just been thinking in terms of expansive landscapes. As I am using rotate & stitch though, I will definitely need to come to terms with the nodal point concept.

Gaoersi 617

zomg, that sounds like somehting you go to teh doctor for... or it could just be the way I am saying it

This thread is an excellent read - nice work Greg, et al.

I thought I'd posted this several posts ago but it was still sitting there on the screen:

(1) I'm not sure whether it would have been a good idea but you could have got yourself in the photo, it would only have had to be one frame (well, assuming you were using a tripod).

(2) Perhaps an easy check for monitor brightness would be to adjust it against a step wedge such as this one.

(3) That's interesting about the W2K driver. I never would have guessed.

(4) 100deg is very close to the angle of view of my 75mm lens on 617. Maybe we should do a comparison one day.

Regards,
Murray

Mr Darcy wrote:

I have a Gaoersi 617 and you can see some of my images from that

Hell Murray, you must be dedicated. That's one mother of a camera, or should I say collection of parts - you needed to do a lot of work to get it together.
The photos are an inspiration. I must try some of those ideas. I had just been thinking in terms of expansive landscapes. As I am using rotate & stitch though, I will definitely need to come to terms with the nodal point concept.

Thanks, Greg
The camera operates as a rangefinder. I have a zoom finder that I use to wander round and compose. Then when I am taking the photograph I use a fixed focal length finder. You could even use the camera hand-held but it kind of defeats the purpose quality-wise in most situations, the lenses are slow and generally when you want to use it the light is low. I have a ground glass focusing screen for a later model but mine doesn't have the magnet to keep hold of it so I haven't used that much.

It's a whole different world using that sort of a camera - manual exposure with an incident meter; manually calculating the focus and the depth of field (you don't see that through the range finder); exercising the shutter on the lens to make sure it hasn't slowed down too much; making sure you have the dark slide in or out according to the need of the moment; only four exposures per roll of film; centre-weighted neutral density filter for the wide angle lens. Also, I find my exposures are nowhere as accurate as when I was shooting film all the time.

The potential quality is immense but the bottleneck is the scanning. I have a Canon 9950 which is pretty good; these days you'd get an Epson V700 or V750 which are a bit better, a Nikon 9000 would be much better, an Imacon would be amazing. There are also some things you can't do in digital that you can do in film. You can't scan a seascape with surf and I once had a successful 8 hour nighttime exposure.

I also have a Widelux (35mm 1:3 ratio, lens rotates, 130deg angle of view) though I haven't used that for a while.

Regards,
Murray

There are also some things you can't do in digital that you can do in film.

Don't I know it. My failures were legion before I started to get somewhere with this.
Do you want to see my Pano of Mt Aspiring with wavelets on Lake Wanaka just refusing to line up, or the Lake Burleigh Griffin shot done with a CPL on, or the Commonwealth bridge shot with half a bus, or the handheld of Sydney CBD where I followed the skyline instead of moving the camera horizontally or my Vivid Sydney shot missing the harbour bridge ( the stitching software left it out but put half the toaster in the middle of Sydney Cove on a new island) or...

Also, I find my exposures are nowhere as accurate as when I was shooting film all the time.

I know about this one too. Time was with my Spotmatic F I didn't bother with the battery for the meter. I was so good at guesstimating the exposure I would get a better result than the friend with the Schmancy AE-1 and spotmeter. These days I'm lucky to be within 5 stops without the meter.

I was so good at guesstimating the exposure I would get a better result than the friend with the Schmancy AE-1 and spotmeter. These days I'm lucky to be within 5 stops without the meter.

Now that would be a skill that would be a bummer to lose

Here is another option for a digital blended panorama - the telephoto panorama. No problem here with perspective distortion and most things won't move fast enough to be a problem.

There's normally a limit of 800 wide in this forum but that relates to images size and assumes 800x600. Since this image has an aspect of 13.2:1 instead of 1.333:1, I assume 2500x190 is OK (same image size as 800x600). However, I anticipate that this image, though still fairly small, will make this page go as wide as the mouth of the Amazon (or the mouth of Godzilla for that matter). ... Ah, looks as though I'm wrong. You'll get to click on it for the larger image but it still won't be very large (2,500x190 instead of 33,000 x 2,500). I don't have enough web space to post a larger one anyway.

Now if I were able to print the full sized version out on my (A3+) R1800 and did so, it would be over 14 feet (4.35m) long! I guess I could do it in four passes using the normal driver and carefully line up the bits but matting and framing might be a tiny problem....

No prizes for guessing what this is an image of. I took this when I was climbing Mt Ainslie (I live at the base) and I only had a monopod with me. Consequently there's a hole where an exposure or two is out of synch vertically. It was taken on a D3 with a 300mm F4 (I might also have used the 1.4x TC14E but I think not). There's a wealth of detail there but I don't have enough web space to post a larger image as well. I should go back to the same shot and reshoot the missing section on another fine day and merge it in (too much detail there to clone or patch).



Regards,
Murray

Here is another option for a digital blended panorama - the telephoto panorama.

I suspect that's what I am doing. I use either my 85 or 105 (the longest lenses I own) and stitch the images together. I owuld use a longer lens if I had one. Thinks. I do have access to an ancient AI 100-300 zoom. Must give that a try.

Now if I were able to print the full sized version out on my (A3+) R1800 and did so, it would be over 14 feet (4.35m) long! I guess I could do it in four passes using the normal driver and carefully line up the bits but matting and framing might be a tiny problem....

Or you could get an Epson 1270 Actually, I had a look at the R1800 manual, and it looks as though if you put it into roll paper banner mode, it will print the next page immediately adjacent to the previous. This would be effectively the same as setting the custom width to 4.5 metres. Would depend on how well the R1800 handled the transition.

but matting and framing might be a tiny problem....

Framing would be no big drama You can get timber up to 12000 mm or so Just run it through the spindle moulder* in the dining room ( ) to get the profile you want & bob's your uncle. Mat board is another matter entirely. I've been looking. The longest I have been able to find is 2400 and then I can only get white in that length & have to buy 10 sheets minimum. The colour is not a major issue - you can always spray paint it, but 2400 is still a long way short of the 4500 you would need. One option I have been thinking about is to print separate pages and frame them separately. Then it would be a matter of hanging them as a Dyptich, Tryptich, or in your case, a Quadtich (???)

*Actually, I only have a router table in the dining room, but it will easily do the simple profiles I prefer. Oh and to do that kind of length, I would need to open a window

I do have access to an ancient AI 100-300 zoom. Must give that a try.

I imagine you'd have to stop it down for image quality. I have an ancient 50-300 AI zoom and it's noticeably less sharp wide open and at 300mm.

Actually, I had a look at the R1800 manual, and it looks as though if you put it into roll paper banner mode, it will print the next page immediately adjacent to the previous. This would be effectively the same as setting the custom width to 4.5 metres. Would depend on how well the R1800 handled the transition.

No, unfortunately not. The printer ejects the paper a bit after each print.

Framing would be no big drama You can get timber up to 12000 mm or so Just run it through the spindle moulder* in the dining room ( ) to get the profile you want & bob's your uncle. Mat board is another matter entirely. I've been looking. The longest I have been able to find is 2400 and then I can only get white in that length & have to buy 10 sheets minimum. The colour is not a major issue - you can always spray paint it, but 2400 is still a long way short of the 4500 you would need. One option I have been thinking about is to print separate pages and frame them separately. Then it would be a matter of hanging them as a Dyptich, Tryptich, or in your case, a Quadtich (???)
*Actually, I only have a router table in the dining room, but it will easily do the simple profiles I prefer. Oh and to do that kind of length, I would need to open a window

I've looked and I can't seem to find a spindle moulder in my dining room. And Bob's my great uncle actually (well, was, he died before I was born). No drama for you but I don't have those skills. I know what's involved in framing once you have the mouldings and I'm not keen to go down that route. It would cost me $500 to $700 to get the post-moulding equipment anyway (buying it from FrameCo that is, you may have a whole different perspective on second-hand or home-made equipment). Currently I'm just finishing off 50 A3+ prints for an exhibition and since I'm still working full-time there's no way I could have to time to do the framing for that anyway.

Another option could be block mounting. I'm not sure how that's done - dry mounting perhaps. Actually I do have a dry mounting press. Large and very heavy. I picked it up second hand for $400 though I haven't actually used it yet. I got it when I was generating 617 panoramas because hinge mounting is not so good for very large prints but I don't need it at the moment anyway for A3+ prints on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk (which is fairly heavy). You can dry mount images of any width by moving them through the press a bit at a time.

Another option would be to get smaller sized matte boards and cut a combined bevelled edge hole. Then find some large roll paper and put that (with an appropriately sized hole) over the matte board. Double-sided tape would probably work better to hold it down than glue. As long as the bevelled edges line up, the joins shouldn't be too obvious.

Another less conventional option might be as above but use foam core with a straight rather than bevelled hole instead of the matte board for a deep-recessed effect.

Regards,
Murray

Greg
I have been following this thread and it is a good read, especially your note about the epic failures. I have had some of those as well over the last couple of years and it only looks like I am only just starting to come to grips with how this pano stuff works. I have shot a couple with my 105vr and it does give good details, but these have only been singly row panos, I will have to try a few with multiple rows.
First I should try and print a couple, I have the printer and the roll paper, I just need to finish off this quarters gst return and then I might have some time.

biggerry wrote:I look forward to seeing some pictures of the finished framed product!

This has been a long time coming, but I finally got this print framed and up on the wall. Thank god for rainy weekends.

In the end, I went for a bare gatorboard mount, using a french cleat to hold it to the wall. The end result seems to float, & I really like the effect.

I simply could not track down mat board in the size and colour I was after, so that meant a bare mount. Then because I no longer had a mat to hold the glass away from the print, I ditched the glass. That in turn meant it was fairly pointless to put a frame around it, as the purpose of that, to my mind, is to hold the glass. I was reluctant to put a screw eye into the gatorboard for the hanging wire, so I made a french cleat & glued it to the back. This eliminated the need for a wire and hook system altogether, and guarantees it will remain level.

The result is minimalist, but I like. It will of course degrade over time, but the 1270 inks are only rated for 10 years anyway.

For those of you who don't know, a French cleat is simply an angled block of wood. It sits onto another block of wood screwed to the wall. That block has a matching angle, so the whole affair locks on to the wall, but can be simply lifted off. It is a traditional method for hanging cupboards on walls. It is very strong.

Anyway, the final item in situ:


The best source I found for Gatorboard was the ArtScene on Victoria Road at West Ryde. They had 2440x1220 in stock in both black and white. They also delivered. I ordered four sheets so I could be fairly certain of one arriving intact. Delivery for 4 sheets was the same as 1 sheet. One outer sheet arrived damaged, so they refunded 3/4 the price of one sheet. Fair enough as I was able to use most of it anyway.

Nice one Greg! It's nice to see things from start to finish!

Are you using an umbrella (camera right) to light this scene??

surenj wrote:Nice one Greg! It's nice to see things from start to finish!

Are you using an umbrella (camera right) to light this scene??

Thanks Suren,
I actually ended up using two umbrellas side by side to get even lighting. I started by simply bouncing off the ceiling, but the sideboard cast ugly shadows up the wall. As it was simply a "This is what I did" shot, I didn't bother to crop the edge out.

The view, BTW, is taken from the lookout where the sunrise meet will be held.

Oh and you can check out the framed photo when you come up to keep those snakes warm

Greg
It's a great pic.....but if you had included more of that top cloud then it would have been a master print! Every time I look at it the cloud being clipped so heavily just spoils the vista. Sorry...I can only give you 90 out of a 100 for it. Despite my nit picking....it looks beautiful on the wall!
You worked the light like Ansel!

Thanks for posting the hanging art
Looks fabulous

I must admit the final product looks fabulous on that wall . I guess printing it yourself saved you lots of money and gave you the satisfaction you did it all yourself.
Question: how big can I print a file 4096 X 6144 pixels without getting deterioration on the final output? I ask because with a 30D I thought A3 was as big as it would get. I only need a rough idea.

zafra52 wrote:I must admit the final product looks fabulous on that wall . I guess printing it yourself saved you lots of money and gave you the satisfaction you did it all yourself.
Question: how big can I print a file 4096 X 6144 pixels without getting deterioration on the final output? I ask because with a 30D I thought A3 was as big as it would get. I only need a rough idea.

Thank you.
Assuming 300 DPI, 6144 Pixels comes to about 520mm. A3 is 420x297mm A2 is 594x420
You can probably get to A2, but it depends on the photo. I once printed a sunset from a 3Mp camera to A3 & it looked great, but there was not much detail in it. It was more about the gradations in colour than seeing the pixels If it was an intricate carving however, I would not print above A5 from that 3Mp camera.

The above photo was quite a few photos stitched together. That is how I got away with printing 1800x300mm. It is also about impact, rather than detail.

Thank you Greg. That gives me a more accurate idea of how big I can go with a single photo. I realise that in your case because the final image is made ups of several photographs you have more latitude. It's that someone wanted one of my pictures enlarged to a poster and I wasn't game to spend $ 60-80 just to try it out.

zafra52 wrote:I wasn't game to spend $ 60-80 just to try it out.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. This one photo probably cost me about $700. That is because I have to figure in the four sheets of Gatorboard and the roll of paper. It was an excellent learning experience though, and the next few will only cost about $20 each for the ink as I already have the paper and the backing

Very good! I should remember next time, thanks.

It looks really good up there, Greg. Even matches in with the colours of the cabinet and the wall.

By the way, should you decide to upgrade your operating system and still hang onto the 1270, there's a freeware utility that might work to give you pano printing. It doesn't specifically cover the 1270 (or 1290) but works with a 1400 so perhaps it could work as for a 1400.

zafra52 wrote:Very good! I should remember next time, thanks.

I've been thinking about this.
What you can do is print select parts of your photo at the size they would be in the final photo. Because you are only printing part of the photo, you need only use, say, a sheet of A4. If you choose your sections carefully, this A4 print will give you a good idea of how well the whole thing will come out. I actually did this for the above print, but forgot about it till just now. I printed a section of sky, the detail in the cliffs, and some shadow areas. It gave me the confidence to print the whole thing.

Murray,
I have upgraded my operating system. I now use a Mac running OSX. I run XP within a Parallels Virtual Machine that when I need to. Parallels doesn't handle printer talk very well though. You have to set a specific printer within XP, and Parallels handles the conversion to what you really use on the OSX side. Fine for M$Word documents on plain paper. Decidedly less so for photos on Premium Glossy.

So I use another machine running XP native when I need to print photos. I simply loaded the Win2K drivers into the XP OS. It worked fine. I had a quick look at the link you gave though. It looks good. If I ever upgrade to an R1900 or similar, I will give it a go. The upgrade is decidedly tempting to get the better quality modern inks, and I suppose I'll have to do it eventually anyway as ink for the 1270 is getting increasingly hard to find. It won't be the first printer I've had to junk simply because I could no longer get consumables.

zafra52 wrote:I guess printing it yourself saved you lots of money and gave you the satisfaction you did it all yourself.

Mr Darcy wrote:

zafra52 wrote:Very good! I should remember next time, thanks.

I've been thinking about this.
What you can do is print select parts of your photo at the size they would be in the final photo. Because you are only printing part of the photo, you need only use, say, a sheet of A4. If you choose your sections carefully, this A4 print will give you a good idea of how well the whole thing will come out. I actually did this for the above print, but forgot about it till just now. I printed a section of sky, the detail in the cliffs, and some shadow areas. It gave me the confidence to print the whole thing.

... which is why, for my money, the primary reason for printing yourself is because you can fine tune the print and should be able to get better quality than if you just send it off. The first step is you should be profiling your monitor.

Admittedly, you could have a colour managed workflow and send softproofed images for printing on say an Epson 7900 or 9900 which has a higher potential image quality than a consumer printer - but even so you can probably get a better result by making all the decisions yourself.

Nice stuff Greg, how does it look in natural light? I have found with some printed images in our place they have to be positioned correctly to maximise the wow factor when people walk in, for example I have pano lit by the skylight looks great, however looks ordinary by normal bulb light!

The window on the right looks like it would provide great natural light...

biggerry wrote:The window on the right looks like it would provide great natural light...

It does. It is south facing with a white (Laserlite Arctic White) translucent roofed deck outside the window.

Here is a photo I took using that window as the sole light source PS Don't tell Pam I have posted this

Nice tonality.

Greg that is indeed nice light indeed...

Great capture there Greg, that is some awesome light!

Very nice portrait!

suggest using acrylic not glass when you are framing

Having just seen this Pano on the wall...I would say it looks BLOODY AMAZING!!