# Köln and Aachen -- C&C Welcome!



## Vautrin (Dec 8, 2008)

Below are panoramas I stitched together using Autopano.

1.  This is a picture around the Aachen city center (full res here):







2.  This is a picture of the Köln Dom (Cathedral) (full res here):






Comments and criticism?

Thanks,

Dan


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## AdamBomb (Dec 8, 2008)

Very Cool! I enjoyed looking at the First one in full resolution and looking what all those people were doing


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## Vautrin (Dec 8, 2008)

did you find waldo? (j/k)


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## ATXshots (Dec 8, 2008)

Wow! #2 is amazing, you are so lucky to be able to visit such beautiful architecture!


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## ChrisOquist (Dec 8, 2008)

Wow that cathedral is just MASSIVE!


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## LaFoto (Dec 9, 2008)

Pity about the totally featureless sky you had when you did the pano of Kölner Dom ... other than that I've hardly ever seen an undistorted photo of the entire cathedral plus "Domplatte" in front (OK, so there's little of that there). Well, your photo is leaning a bit, but the two towers don't lean together forming a bow, which happens when you go about all wide-angle, trying to get it all in in that manner.


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## Vautrin (Dec 9, 2008)

It  was actually raining when I took the photos.  I was just there for the weekend so I just had to go with it.  I had to mess around with Autopanos settings a little -- under the default project it does end up looking fat around the middle and skinny (bulging inward) at the top..


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## Chiller (Dec 9, 2008)

Nice shooting.  Well done with the pano. :thumbup::thumbup:  Im really diggin that structure in the second image.  Wow...what a place.


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## AverageJoe (Dec 9, 2008)

Is it just me (or the cathedral) but doesn't it need to be standing up straight?


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## Vautrin (Dec 9, 2008)

AverageJoe said:


> Is it just me (or the cathedral) but doesn't it need to be standing up straight?



Well the cathedral is MASSIVE.  Even with my smallest lens I could only get one of the spires in a frame.  And on three sides there is a street and more buildings so you can't go very far back, and on the fourth side there is a small plaza that i shot from.  Bottom line is to get the whole thing in a frame you'd need a fish eye lens and to be sitting in a helicopter.

Anyways I used autopano to stitch together 10 different images.  It was my first building panorama so I made a lot of mistakes, which is why you can notice that many of the lines are not quite as straight as they should be.  I also messed up by putting the camera on auto, so while I should have had 10 frames with the exact same focal length and exact same shutter speed and exact same everything I actually had 10 frames with different everything (the more sky visible in the frame the shorter the shutter speed and the darker the building).

I also forgot to focus to infinity so you'll notice that while I focus in on the lower part of the building the upper part of the building is out of focus.

To top it all off it was absolutely pouring out that weekend, and I took the one opportunity when the clouds had a break to try to get a picture of the cathedral.  You can see the umbrellas and drizzle if you look closely.  I was trying to make it quick so I think that made things less than ideal.

I actually tried taking maybe five or six other panos of the cathedral but they all turned out really bad -- the pollution made the building much too dark or the building ended up bulging much more... 

It still needs quite a bit of photoshop work that I'm not qualified to do but I'm still proud of it.  It's a really beautiful building and considering the difficulty of trying to get that shot I'm happy with the results.  Next time I'm in Köln I'll know how to get it right.


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## LaFoto (Dec 9, 2008)

And shhh, Joe. A secret among you and I (who I studied languages in that VERY town, and came out of the train station RIGHT NEXT TO THIS cathedral every day for years on end): in reality the building is totally straight. No need to worry it might fall over. It won't. Only does its stone suffer - and needs therefore to be under continual repair - from pollution in the air. But it is all straight.


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## Vautrin (Dec 9, 2008)

LaFoto said:


> And shhh, Joe. A secret among you and I (who I studied languages in that VERY town, and came out of the train station RIGHT NEXT TO THIS cathedral every day for years on end): in reality the building is totally straight. No need to worry it might fall over. It won't. Only does its stone suffer - and needs therefore to be under continual repair - from pollution in the air. But it is all straight.



Where did you study?  Sprechen Sie deutsch?  Of kun jij Nederlands spreken?

It's OK I freely admit this building should be straight, and both spires should actually be the same height.  I'm just happy I managed to get the pano to not bulge at the center like the cathedral was wrapped around a ball.


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