How To Swing A Metal Detector For Success

Written by Dean Novosat


Continued from page 1

For walking speed, rememberrepparttar paint rollerr analogy above. As long as you are paintingrepparttar 150823 entire surface ofrepparttar 150824 ground and not missing any spots, you are not walking too quickly. However, if you find that your imaginary paint is missing areas, you need to slow down your pace.

I have used this technique successfully to find lots of gold coins, valuable jewelry, and other rare finds. The hope you find this technique improves your success rate.

Dean Novosat is an avid treasure hunting and can often be found metal detecting the beaches of the mid-Atlantic United States. He is the webmaster of http://www.treasure-metal-detecting.com and http://www.metal-detector-info.com.


Taking Panoramic Landscapes - The Easy Solution

Written by Gary Nugent


Continued from page 1

Then I recently came across a free bit of software called AutoStitch. Written by a couple of students atrepparttar University of Columbia, this takes all ofrepparttar 150707 heartache out of creating panoramas. All you do is selectrepparttar 150708 size ofrepparttar 150709 final image and tell it what images you want it to stitch. It then goes off and produces your panorama.

It really is that simple. Unless successive images are radically different in exposure (i.e. one image to too light or dark compared to another), it seamlessly blends them. It performs allrepparttar 150710 warping ofrepparttar 150711 images necessary to get them to align (other software I've used can cause ghosting inrepparttar 150712 overlap areas where it hasn't quite alignedrepparttar 150713 images). It also aligns multiple rows of images rather than just a single strip.

Even better, it doesn't require you to set up your camera to rotate about its nodal point. When I was in Crete last year, I tried shooting a few panoramas with my Canon EOS 300D held up to my eye (I didn't have a tripod with me). When I got home, I tried stitchingrepparttar 150714 pictures together using various bits of software (including software dedicated to stitching images together) and didn't get satisfactory results. I knew, though, that it was because I'd swivelledrepparttar 150715 camera about my spine. But I tried these images with AutoStitch and they came out perfectly. See for yourself here.

I went walking uprepparttar 150716 Wicklow mountains in Ireland no too long ago and up to a high point called Djouce which offers a view overrepparttar 150717 rolling hills south of Dublin. As an experiment, I shot 8 frames while rotating my head aboutrepparttar 150718 scene (camera to eye as per normal). I wanted to see ifrepparttar 150719 Crete photos were a fluke asrepparttar 150720 panoramas from there were composed of, at most, 3 frames each (sometimes 2).

Conclusion

What can I say? I plugged 8 frames into AutoStitch and after a bit of time processingrepparttar 150721 images, it produced a perfect panorama with no ghosting I could see inrepparttar 150722 overlap reasons. I like software like that. It may only do one thing but it does that one thing very well.

Give AutoStitch a try. It's free and, so far, it producesrepparttar 150723 best panoramic results of allrepparttar 150724 panorama/stitching software I've tried.

One thing to remember when taking panoramas is thatrepparttar 150725 exposures of each frame should berepparttar 150726 same. So if you make your first exposure at f/8 and 1/125 of a second, take them all using those settings. Yes, you will have to put your camera into manual mode. Otherwise, you runrepparttar 150727 risk of having radically different exposures for your images. For example, if you're panning over a landscape that contains water, like a lake, any sunlight reflected offrepparttar 150728 water may make your camera take a shorter exposure than forrepparttar 150729 other frames in your sequence. Setting your camera to manual mode will prevent that.



Gary Nugent is a software engineer by profession and has been in the business for over 20 years. Photography has been a hobby for an even longer period of time and he's now even more passionate about it since making the switch to using a digital SLR camera. He runs the Great Landscape Photography website: http://www.great-landscape-photography.com


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