Ever wonder what an 85x zoom lens might do?

[Lin Evans]

Just playing around. This is a 15mm to 1280mm zoom for fun..... About 39 meg zipped executable...

http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/prowler.zip

Lin

[Ken Cox]

LIN

some shimmer first shot but then smooth as silk thereafter- colours and detail no faults for me

ken

[ksf]

Lin,

Pretty good - the ending showing the original image size for comparison was a nice touch.

Must admit I'm intrigued, how did you achieve the feathered-edge circle effect on the zooms? Were the images cropped like this or were you using mask layers of some sort?

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ken,

Yes, going from such a tiny image (subject) size there is really no good way outside of doing a gaussian blur (not really good for the image) to stop the shimmer. A faster zoom can help, but this was just for fun anyway. I'm planning on using my Swarovski ST 80 HD spotting scope for some patches to panos and just wanted to see how it might work out in terms of focal length steps with a combination of other lenses. What I learned was pretty much what I expected, that is to really do it justice it's necessary to include a good bit of extra real-estate when preparing the close-in zooms at 1280mm. To do this requires making a number of mini-panos which I didn't bother to do hence the circle zoom to mask the less that full screen before zoom on some of the frames. It's tough making panos at 1280mm primarily because of the difficulty of holding the scope rigid enough to shoot at an effective 1280 mm without using mirror lockup, remote release and lots of time and patience. If the light is good enough a higher shutter speed can do the job, but when I shot these it was overcast and pretty dim so had to boost levels a good deal in Photoshop. On the next good day I'm going to try another real pano similar to the last one. I was up at 4:00 am this morning for the 30 mile drive to try, but the overcast never burned off so a wasted trip.

Best regards,

Lin

LIN

some shimmer first shot but then smooth as silk thereafter- colours and detail no faults for me

ken

[Lin Evans]

Hi Keith,

The circle effect was done by setting the display time for the slide and the effect time identical. For example 23 seconds display and 23 seconds circle from center. The amout of feathering comes from the thickness of the smoothing line. Remember to put a check in the box next to it or whatever numbers you place there will be meaningless. The larger the numbers the more feathering and the smaller the less. If you put zero the program will change it to a slight amount but the edge will be very clean.

I discovered a work-around for those who have experienced "sparkles" on pan or zoom start for sharp images that eventually smooth out. Of course you can always use the "blur" which helps on some but not all situations or you can apply a 1 pixel gaussian blur to the image but that, of course makes everything a bit too "smooth" or slightly blurred.

The answer is to apply a gaussian blur of about 1 pixel to the entire image but save it under a different name. Make the blurred image a child of the main image. Set the main image opacity at start to zero and the blurred image to 100%. Fade in the original at the point where the "sparkle" normally quits and fade out the blurred image at the same time with keyoint opacity settings. Works like a champ....

Lin

Lin,

Pretty good - the ending showing the original image size for comparison was a nice touch.

Must admit I'm intrigued, how did you achieve the feathered-edge circle effect on the zooms? Were the images cropped like this or were you using mask layers of some sort?

[LumenLux]

I discovered a work-around for those who have experienced "sparkles" on pan or zoom start for sharp images that eventually smooth out. Of course you can always use the "blur" which helps on some but not all situations or you can apply a 1 pixel gaussian blur to the image but that, of course makes everything a bit too "smooth" or slightly blurred.

The answer is to apply a gaussian blur of about 1 pixel to the entire image but save it under a different name. Make the blurred image a child of the main image. Set the main image opacity at start to zero and the blurred image to 100%. Fade in the original at the point where the "sparkle" normally quits and fade out the blurred image at the same time with keyoint opacity settings. Works like a champ....

Lin

Thank you, I'll keep this one handy. But I have also had viewers think the shimmer is cool on certain photos.

[Ken Cox]

"shimmer is cool on certain photos. "

Bob

especially on bow waves of lake ships:)

ken