12_Misty_Mainsail_62.jpg, 1964

H:\SCANS\Favorites - Misty Mailsail

We got a most welcome question about the 56' ferro-cement ketch mentioned in passing in the Hawaii photos. This is a shot of the mainsail, taken straight up from the deck. Forward of that, the jib (almost a flying spinnaker) lofts in the wind. We have not finished the scans, but there will be more of this fabulous sail around the Islands.

I'm not sure how this photo will work out as a desktop picture. It was shot in the vertical or portrait orientation, not horizontal (landscape). To make up for this, the width is still 899 in the downloadable version, making for a big file with excellent resolution.

This photo was taken in 1976 with a Nikon EL2 35MM SLR camera. It was scanned with a Nikon CoolScan III.

18_Sunglow_Aspen.jpg, Fall 1974

G:\IMAGES\SCANS\Vol 11 1974-1976\1974-4748 FLF Yosemite

"The sun was low in a clear western sky. It was fall, so the aspens were beginning to turn. Within a canopy underside of taller and shaded green, thousands of uniformly golden aspen leaves danced in unison, with the breeze, illuminated as if from within by a bath of intense sunshine. A fluttering cloud of brightly fluorescing golden-orange waved solemnly at us, cloaked in a waving cathedral arch of dark greens and reds."

Text from essay "Dearest Mum", narrating what we saw together one autmn day in Yosemite. The photo was taken on a day trip in 1974 with a Nikkorex. Because the photo is taken in portrait orientation (vertical), it may not make a suitable screensaver.

Pan4.jpg, November 2, 1999

spliced from: G:\IMAGES\SCANS\NEGATIVES Vol 02\SFW 991102

2752 x 1008 pixel Panorama. It doesn't matter how big your monitor is. This panoramic image won't fit on your screen -- unless perhaps you have a dual-monitor graphics display. Three images were manually spliced together in PhotoShop to produce a pan image of about 150 degrees sweep without using a wide-angle lens. If you look carefully, you can see the seams in places. It sounds easy, but we wouldn't try this again without an image stitcher.

The photos were taken with a Nikon N70 (35mm film camera), then scanned with a Nikon CoolScan III. Film was Kodak Professional E100VS Ektachrome slide film.  If you're eyeing that $1,999 Olympus E-10 4.1 megapixel SLR digicam with the big lens, I wouldn't put your 35mm SLR in the attic just yet. Although we're still extremely happy with our obsolete Kodak DC-260 digital camera, I have a serious problem with the color depth and balance on some of the better mid-range digital cameras on the market now.

Photo: The original composite image is a little over 17 MB. The downloadable version of this panorama uses moderate compression (PhotoShop quality setting '7') for an 804KB download size, quite hefty for dialup modems. The scene is residential housing in Foster City, California.

To give you a better idea of the detail in this picture, look at the photo "Boat House" in this collection. It was taken with a moderate telephoto setting, probably around 150mm, in the same photo session. In the panorama, the boat house can be located on the opposite shore, near the left hand side of the frame, above the chimneys of the closest homes.

Cull_Canyon_Pan.jpg, April 1987

5931 x 1063 pixel Panorama. This panoramic image won't fit on your screen -- unless perhaps you have a dual-monitor graphics display. Four images were stiched together with the excellent shareware product Panorama Factory, by Smoky City Design.

The photos were taken with a Nikon EL2 (35mm film camera, f1.2 55mm lens), then scanned with a Nikon CoolScan III.

Photo: The original composite, made from four scans, is a little over 19 MB. The downloadable version of this panorama uses moderate JPG compression (PhotoShop quality setting '5') for a 635KB download size. A download will take about 2 minutes on a 56.6K dialup modems. The scene is the hill region bordering Alameda and Contra Costa Counties in the vicinity of Castro Valley, California. The panoramic angular field is probably about 150 degrees. This vista is not actually "Cull Canyon", but was reached by a climb out of the canyon of that name.

We've posted other photos form this area in MorePhotoGallery, but this full-size pan shows an incredible amount of detail. If you view the full-size image at 100% in your browser, you in effect have already "downloaded" it -- so just save it to your hard drive. Use the up/down and right/left scroll bars, and go exploring in the hills above Castro Valley!