Many masts of Newlyn (pics, pano and history)

Here is a very small taster of Newlyn Harbour. Newlyn is a working fishing port in Cornwall, South West England. I include some words, for those who like words, and a very few selected pictures, taken with my S3. One of those is a large and detailed pano of the harbour, so I hope you stay with me for long enough to see it. I have put the big pano in a reply thread, with a smaller one in this parent thread.

Newlyn has a long history. One of the fishing boats there is a very venerable old lady. Ripple SS.19 is 113 years old. She is now the oldest fishing boat on the UK Fishing Vessel Register carrying her original name and fishing registry number. She was built in 1896 as a sailing fishing lugger, for catching pilchard. She was fitted with her first engine in 1915. She was in use until 1933 when a serious fire took her out of service and she passed into private use as a pleasure motor yacht. After another 70 years she sank. Finally, she underwent a 4 year restoration project, to be refloated in 2007. Work is still in progress on constructing masts and a lot of boat anatomy that I do not understand.

Oh, this is a photography forum isn’t it? OK, well, here is a picture of Ripple then!



You can read all the technical details about the restoration here:
(long article with lots of words about ships’ bits)
http://www.newlyn.org/content/view/107/0/

or a shorter one here:
http://www.newlyn.org/content/view/45/0/

Because Newlyn is an active fishing port, there are plenty of boats and nets to photograph:



There is a huge area devoted to recycling damaged nets and paraphernalia. I believe these get repaired and then are returned into service. They make a nice abstract subject for a picture in the meantime:



Newlyn is more than just a working fishing port. In fact Newlyn is home to either the largest or the second largest fishing fleet in England, depending on which account you read and technicalities concerning what kind of fishing fleet is meant. All that is beyond me. The Newlyn catch includes mackerel, pilchard and herring. It also fishes for my favourite white fish - monkfish. The water off the Cornwall coast is comparatively warm and there are some 25 species of fish available. Much of this is exported. You may well find Newlyn fish in Spain!

All this is a prelude to showing you a pano of the entire harbour.



I find that scene pretty amazing. It is big. How do they all get in and out? I do hope you think this picture is far, far too small to do justice to the complexity of all those boats.

If so, please have a look at the bigger version which I have posted as a reply. It is a 2MB image, aggressively compressed for the web to keep it down to that size but it is still of good quality and well worth a look (IMHO), especially if you like fishing vessels. Maybe you would like to tell me how many masts you can see in the picture.

I hope you find some of this interesting or entertaining and that I am not posting too many images. Thank you for looking.

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So you decided to look at it then? I have watermarked it somewhat destructively. I don’t normally write on my images but this one is plenty big enough to print so I feel it is justified. My full pano file is twice the pixel dimensions you see here.

Not too bad for an S3 Pro, is it?

As I said, how do they all get in and out?

How many masts are there? Don’t fall asleep counting them.



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Just amazing Stephen!!! and I only count three people in the pano. Great job keepem coming!!
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A wonderful description of Newlyn and its Lady, Ripple. Furthermore your images show a keen sense of delicacy to color and saturation as well as a beautiful sense of the subtlety of light and shadow.

The pano is, without a doubt, a great achievement, and I anticipate a much better reaction when I return home this evening and view it on my "monster monitor." I seem to recollect your saying at one time you did not like panos or did not do them. If any of this is correct, you surely are showing the highest degree of skill. I find it somewhat humerous you would watermark the pano in the water I'm sure it was intentional and is appeciated.

Again the pano does not show your previously stated preference for highly saturated colors. Rather it shows a real, but interpretive, impression of the entire harbor whether or not you can get in and out.

Though the nets are interesting my preference in this set is the first and the pano. Your skill and hard work demonstrates that it is truly the capable photographer and a great instrument of color that yields a dramatically beautiful result.
Kudos, again, Mr. Stephen

Bob

It is wonderful, even better than the St Ives panorama in my opinion.

Some additional information: a lot of the fishing vessels which are moored on the pier are of Dutch origin and belonged -among others- to my birth place, IJmuiden. The owners left their harbour in the Netherlands due to national contingents they were allowed to catch and settled in Brixham and Penzance, where they were able to keep fishing. This exodus of skilled fishermen started about 20 years ago and ended about 5 years ago.

--
Leen Koper
http://www.fotografieleenkoper.nl

It looks even better on the big monitor!!!!!

Kudos, again..

Bob

Bobtheamateur said:

A wonderful description of Newlyn and its Lady, Ripple. Furthermore
your images show a keen sense of delicacy to color and saturation as
well as a beautiful sense of the subtlety of light and shadow.
The pano is, without a doubt, a great achievement, and I anticipate a
much better reaction when I return home this evening and view it on
my "monster monitor." I seem to recollect your saying at one time
you did not like panos or did not do them. If any of this is
correct, you surely are showing the highest degree of skill. I find
it somewhat humerous you would watermark the pano in the water I'm
sure it was intentional and is appeciated.
Again the pano does not show your previously stated preference for
highly saturated colors. Rather it shows a real, but interpretive,
impression of the entire harbor whether or not you can get in and out.
Though the nets are interesting my preference in this set is the
first and the pano. Your skill and hard work demonstrates that it is
truly the capable photographer and a great instrument of color that
yields a dramatically beautiful result.
Kudos, again, Mr. Stephen

Bob

Click to expand...

A real masterpiece , lovely colour and control of the light . A job very well done.

I'm not going to count the masts , let's just settle on a " wheen ". It's a frustrating thought that we used to have so many ports as full of boats as Newlyn which supported thriving local economies . I also look at Sutcliffes' pictures of Whitby in it's prime and think what a bustling place it must have been.Truly we are a nation of shopkeepers now.

I also look with envy at the recycing of nets etc, our shoreline here is littered with the unwanted detrius of seafarers , all totally unneccesary .
"Off soapbox now" ..
Thanks for posting such lovely images.
Rgds Joe.

claypaws said:

So you decided to look at it then?

Click to expand...

Yup.

This is an amazing image. Simply because it is wonderful to see but also because it is fiendishly clever.

Although the water is almost glass-like calm, it isn't totally. There is a wind in the bay and ripples across the channels in the harbour that look to be wind induced. Wind means the boats will be rocking, bobbing and drifting even if only slightly. Such movements are worst at the tops of masts. That you were able to stitch this without drastic mismatches of these millions of masts, I counted them (not), is fantastic. I have done a scan and cannot see any confirmed stitches yet. There are a couple of very minor possibilities but I'm really not sure, so that is an amazing job.

I would suggest that this would make a fabulous jigsaw puzzle and you should approach some manufacturers with this. It's should be an ideal time right now, preparing for next Christmas.

Thanks for allowing us to see it.
--
Norman Young

What focal length lens, how many shots and what F stop Shutter speed and ISO please for the Pano?
Was it automatically stitched or did you adjust certain sections by hand?

Did you use nodal point rotation of the camera or just stitch several shots together?

Oh yes, and also, what equivalent photo length does the whole composite represent if it had been taken in one shot with the S3?

And of course, very nice photo.

I believe there would be a market for a small automatic pano device that would take 3 or 5 photos at a specific focal length, say 35mm since most point and shoot cameras can get to that focal length. The device could be spring loaded and it would rotate about the nodal point of the camera and fire the camera at each location automatically. I know it would take the fun and skill out of making the panos but I think the public would buy some of the devices. I think I see more attempts by amatures to put together multiple shots than about any other travel photos and invarriably they mess up on alignment of shot to shot where parallax is very apparent, of exposure from left to right and of course white balance is usually different in different frames. The Grand Canyon is a frequent target as are harbors, river fronts mountain ranges and even large groups. Of course the company, I was thinking Kodak, would have to provide the stitching-color balancing-exposure compensation but I do think there would be a market for the output.

Again, very nice photo. I really love pano's and consider them to be the ultimate in modern photography.

A variation of what you are suggesting exists and I think they are planning some sort of device for a Dslr:

http://www.gigapansystems.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=GS&Product_Code=I-E1&Category_Code=GPI

Bob

Walter S Matthews said:

What focal length lens, how many shots and what F stop Shutter speed
and ISO please for the Pano?
Was it automatically stitched or did you adjust certain sections by
hand?

Did you use nodal point rotation of the camera or just stitch several
shots together?

Oh yes, and also, what equivalent photo length does the whole
composite represent if it had been taken in one shot with the S3?

And of course, very nice photo.

I believe there would be a market for a small automatic pano device
that would take 3 or 5 photos at a specific focal length, say 35mm
since most point and shoot cameras can get to that focal length. The
device could be spring loaded and it would rotate about the nodal
point of the camera and fire the camera at each location
automatically. I know it would take the fun and skill out of making
the panos but I think the public would buy some of the devices. I
think I see more attempts by amatures to put together multiple shots
than about any other travel photos and invarriably they mess up on
alignment of shot to shot where parallax is very apparent, of
exposure from left to right and of course white balance is usually
different in different frames. The Grand Canyon is a frequent target
as are harbors, river fronts mountain ranges and even large groups.
Of course the company, I was thinking Kodak, would have to provide
the stitching-color balancing-exposure compensation but I do think
there would be a market for the output.

Again, very nice photo. I really love pano's and consider them to be
the ultimate in modern photography.

Click to expand...

Wow, day dream it and there it is. It actually costs less than a good nodal rotation head. It's not what I had in mind but it certainly does exist. I was thinking more in line with completely mechanical stops, spring loaded, and made for one camera or a few by one manufacturer and costing under $100 but that is impressive.

Looking over the specs and having shot with my Canon G10, I am certain you can make some pretty amazing panos with that device using the G10. I'm not going to get one but it is pretty impressive....

mmm, what should i day dream about next?????

How about a FF Fuji Dslr?

Be sure to post a link when you take your first panos with the new toy.

Bob

Walter S Matthews said:

Looking over the specs and having shot with my Canon G10, I am
certain you can make some pretty amazing panos with that device using
the G10. I'm not going to get one but it is pretty impressive....

mmm, what should i day dream about next?????

Click to expand...

Bob, I already own the Nodal Ninja that works really well.

I have posted a few panos from using it but now that I have the Canon G10 I plan to make a few more. The advantage of using a camera like the G10, especially in good light at ISO 80, is the tremendous (almost infinite) depth of field you get at F8 on the 28mm setting.

The resolution of the camera significantly exceeds my S5 at ISO 80 and once the distances have been set on the pano head for a specific focal length, pano's should be very easy to accomplish. Moreover, the increased DOF should bring a welcome improvement to shots where the foreground is included. I have been pretty disappointed in some of my DSLR pano attempts where close objects are just OOF.

No, I won't be getting the contraption you found and honestly, I think it is too expensive to sell very many, too heavy to carry around and who needs to make pano photographs in their home. Would someone buy a 4 pound device to put their half a pound camera in? I don't think so.

Thanks for looking and commenting Walter. I'll do my best to answer the questions.

Walter S Matthews said:

What focal length lens, how many shots and what F stop Shutter speed
and ISO please for the Pano?

Click to expand...

The lens was the Zeiss 50mm f/2 Makro Planar.

8 shots in landscape orientation, overlapping 1/3 of each frame with 1/3 of the next frame.
Shutter speed 1/750s
ISO 200.

Since the Zeiss lens provides no aperture data to the S3 (and hence no metering either), I cannot be sure of the aperture. I think it was probably around f/3.5 to f/4.

It was about 5pm and sunny. In England, we rarely get light bright enough for sunny f/8 rule (and never for sunny f/16). Sunny f/5.6 is more a working value.

At ISO 200, sunny f/8 rule would give 1/200s at f/8. 1/750s is about 2 stops under. Two stops more aperture than f/8 would be f/4. If the light was not quite as bright as sunny f/8, then f/3.5 would be about right. So I think my guess of f/3.5 to f/4 would be about right.

That gives us 1/750s, f/3.5, ISO 200.

I use manual everything, of course. I took test shots and adjusted my chosen exposure based on the histogram before shooting the 8 frames that I used for the pano. Then all shots were made at the fixed exposure with my usual fixed custom WB.

I shot raw.

Walter S Matthews said:

Was it automatically stitched or did you adjust certain sections by
hand?

Click to expand...

I stitched with PtGui.

Walter S Matthews said:

Did you use nodal point rotation of the camera or just stitch several
shots together?

Click to expand...

Handheld!

That is why I wanted a 1/750s exposure. I do a kind of nodal dance when I shoot these things. Instead of just pirouetting on one point like a ballet dancer, rotating my body, I imagine that the lens is mounted on a nodal head and I walk around that. So I dance a little semicircle. Very sophisticated eh? My nodal dance!

Walter S Matthews said:

Oh yes, and also, what equivalent photo length does the whole
composite represent if it had been taken in one shot with the S3?

Click to expand...

8 shots in landscape orientation, overlapping 1/3 of each frame with 1/3 of the next frame.
Thus two overlapped frames provide 5/3 of a frame of field of view (FOV).
Three overlapped frames give 7/3 frames FOV
Each additional overlapped frame adds 2/3 of a frame to the FOV.
8 overlapped shots provide 17/3 frames FOV

FOV is inversely proportional to FL. FL was 50mm

Therefore, the equivalent FL for a single frame taking the complete pano in would be:
50/(17/3) = 50*3/17= approx 9mm

So to get this pano as one shot, you would need a 9mm FL on the S3 and you would of course have to crop off the top and bottom. 9mm would give you the width of the stitched pano's FOV.

My stitch was a little more complicated in fact.

With my fixed exposure, the exposure was not perfect for the entire field. The left end of the image really needed a bit more but I did want any abrupt changes and so I fixed my exposure to the compromised value I have described.

Shooting raw, I made two conversions of the 8 component images, one set with an "exposure compensation" of +1/2 stop. (Of course this is not real exposure compensation, just some multipliers in processing the raw file). Both sets had sharpening off.

I stitched each set with PTGui. Then I layered the two stitched images. I put a mask in the upper layer and put a left to right white to black gradient in the mask. A bit like using an ND grad filter but left to right instead of top to bottom. That gives me a nice smooth blend of the two exposures with no sudden transition. It also gives me a file that is 1.3GB in size for the 16 bit, two layer, full size .psd file.

Then I could merge the layers, fiddle with the colours a bit and resize and sharpen. My usual multilayer sharpening with masks in LAB colour, sharpening just the L channel.

The different sizes I have posted here have hence had different sharpening. If I print this file, I will sharpen differently for print.

Walter S Matthews said:

And of course, very nice photo.

Click to expand...

Thank you!!

Walter S Matthews said:

I believe there would be a market for a small automatic pano device
that would take 3 or 5 photos at a specific focal length, say 35mm
since most point and shoot cameras can get to that focal length. The
device could be spring loaded and it would rotate about the nodal
point of the camera and fire the camera at each location
automatically. etc.......

Click to expand...

Bob has taken this discussion further, so I won't comment on the specific device he mentions. I think that the nodal avoidance of parallax is of somewhat overrated significance. (And my image is IMHO, some direct evidence that a good image can be made without a nodal mount, or indeed without a tripod at all). When making a pano from close to the subject, parallax is important. But when all components of the subject are fairly distant, the parallax effect is small. Before I start my "nodal dance", I simply move my head from side to side and see if parallax is going to be significant. For these big subjects at some considerable distance, the effect is not usually significant. The further away you can get, the better. Hence, it is better to use a long FL from further away, then a shorter FL from nearer to the subject.

At the harbour, I had no real choice of distance. The boats were where they were and there were buildings behind me.

Walter S Matthews said:

Again, very nice photo. I really love pano's and consider them to be
the ultimate in modern photography.

Click to expand...

Thank you. I enjoy panos when I think the subject is true pano material. A wide and immensely detailed subject such as Newlyn Harbour seems ideally suited to pano treatment.
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Thanks for the PP tips. I am pleased to know that someone with your skill level takes the images "hand held." I always hesitate to say that in public. I own the Nodal Ninja but found the intuitive pano works well in many situations.

Bob

claypaws said:

Here is a very small taster of Newlyn Harbour. Newlyn is a working
fishing port in Cornwall, South West England.…

Click to expand...

Excellent Post Stephen and as a man of words you had me reading all the delicate historical details of 113 year-old fishing boat Ripple S5 19. Hopefully this esoteric info will come in handy someday on "The Weakest Link" quiz-show if I ever get there.

The pics are all excellent - and so too is their treatment.

claypaws said:

One of those is a large and detailed pano of the harbour,
so I hope you stay with me for long enough to see it. I have put the
big pano in a reply thread, with a smaller one in this parent thread.

Click to expand...

On my montor the big pano popped up almost immediately, barely any wait. - optimized processing. My 17" MacBook screen was obviously too small and I naturally had to scroll both up and down and sideways to see it all. Stephen this is an absolutely masterful pano. Congratulations!

From your bug photos i know that you are armed with the necessary patience to scout the site for the right position, wait for the weather and carefully calculate and make each click. Then like a maestro conducting the orchestra, you stitch it all together together till it sounds magnificent. Applause - Bravo!

I particularly like the saturated reds that pops everything to life. And the detail is exceptional. I can well understand why you chose the S3 over the S5 for this. One can almost share the snack with that distant couple on the yacht near the harbor entrance. I notice that two of the boats have the name "Penzance" on them. Brought back memories from the time when i was about ten and took part in the chorus of a school operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan - "The Pirates of Penzance". I still remember "Climbing over rocky mountains…"

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_inside.html?item=3664677&cart=3442666115640651&type=soundclip&page=&cm_re=detail-_-lookInside-_-thumbnail:inside

claypaws said:

I hope you find some of this interesting or entertaining and that I
am not posting too many images. Thank you for looking.

Click to expand...

Yes indeed Stephen - interesting and entertaining. But how about educating - like Walter, my curiosity is all-a-bubble about how many pics, stitch technology, processing, lens, settings etc? In time I hope all will be revealed here

As for 'posting too many images' as far as I'm concerned there's ample room for more… Thanks & best wishes,
--
Herbert Bishko

Thank you so much for the original in depth comment and the later addition, Bob. I do appreciate your remarks because I regard you as the forum pano master!

I am glad the description of Newlyn and its first Lady was interesting.

Shadow and quality of light are essential to all the images here. I did enhance those a bit in PP but getting a good exposure is critical and I bracketed the difficult light of the Kimba (shot #2). All these were taken with Zeiss lenses on the S3 so I had the added joy of having to do all this with no metering. Histograms are good though!

Watermarking the water in the pano was a little bit of a joke, yes . Watermarks eslewhere are more destructive and deliberately so but I hope not so conspicuous as to spoil enjoyment. They should be rather tricky to edit out as they are all at different sizes and angles and include drop shadow and bevel effects ;-)

I did not force the colours in the pano. There are plenty of strong primary colours already. Bright red, blue and green boats. So converting the raw files using "high" colour was enough. That is why I did not saturate the colours further in PP. Just a few tweaks to colour where needed - maybe a strengthening of a yellow here and there. Just a little bit of fiddling - nothing dramatic. I could rely on sharpening to add the necessary impact, with some parts of the image getting two or three passes at sharpening and some getting none at all. Sharp letters and numbers are good. Sharp water is not.

The other images had a greater degree of colour enhancement.

You are right. I do have mixed feelings about panos, especially the long and thin kind (extreme aspect ratio) like this one. But sometimes, there is a subject that cries out for being seen as one continuous image. I think this harbour is such a subject. Individual compositions from parts of the scene could be effective. But I think the real impact of this harbour is the incredible complexity of all the intertwined vessels and the pano is the best way to show that. Your many-bison pano is another good example of an ideal pano subject. 10 bison are nice. But bison as far as the eye can see make a stronger point.

I'm glad the image looks good on the big monitor. It is anyway quite a good idea to download the image and scroll around it in an application that makes that easier and ideally that is colour managed too.

You may be interested in the answer to Walter's technical questions that I have just posted.

Thank you again for your comments. You are a loyal cyberfriend.

Stephen

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Thank you for the nice comment, Raymond. Three people only. That is rather funny. I suppose it was because it was late afternoon and the fishing fleet - and most of the fisherman - would be resting before going out again before dawn the next morning.

I have plenty more series from Corrnwall and Devon, and indeed Yorkshire, remaining to post. I shall prepare and post them all - but not too close together.

Stephen

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Thank you for that nice approval, Leen. I am glad you generously said it is better than the St Ives pano because I think so too. I like all those crazily tangled boats.

That is very interesting information you have given concerning the migration of Dutch fishermen and their vessels to Cornwall. The matter of fishing quota is something of a sore point in Cornwall. I think the Cornish fisherman are not too happy with the fact that some countries in Europe are allocated a larger Cornish quota than the Cornish fishermen are given. Let us hope they can all reach agreement on how to fish sustainably while each receiving a fair quota that allows them to make a living.

Stephen
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I have a home on pbase
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