Ride n' Hike in The Henry Mountains

[Bob Palin]

I can see the Henry Mountains from my front yard but haven't been over to them in the 3 years I've been living here, time to put that right. (They are the mountains out in the desert to the east of me). Last week I got the CRF out and headed up there, as it turned out the CRF was overkill as the access roads are excellent, will definitely be taking the truck up there if people want to. I took over 100 pictures on this trip and it has been painful whittling them down to few enough for a tale.Even then I am left with 32 which is really too many to put here especially as it is not a pure ride tale, it's taken me as long to write the tale as it did to do it! So here is a small taster, the full tale is at Hiking Mt. Ellen and is much prettier there too.

 

(All the below are on the web site too)

 

The map of the ride

 

I'm headed up there, Mt Ellen is the pointy peak near the middle, the highest point is just to the right on the ridge (11,522ft)

 

The road winds up through some nice scenery from the sand of the Notom Road to the forest high on the Henrys.

 

That's where I'm going to hike, I'm at 10,500 feet here which is at Bull Creek Pass

 

In short I hiked up there, got to the top, and had lunch

 

the views were magnificent

 

once I eventually got back to the bike I rode round the mountain then down again

 

by which time the sun was almost down itself

[Les is more]

Fascinating, Bob.

 

Thanks!

[russell_bynum]

Looks like a great hike!

[Calvin (no socks)]

Spectacular photos Bob....

 

In the cheesecake photo... ...I spy a mail box....what gives?

 

With all these adventures you are "Killing" me...I have to wait till spring...damn job...

[Bob Palin]

In the cheesecake photo... ...I spy a mail box....what gives?

Aha, so you didn't read the full version...

[Calvin (no socks)]

Dang Hypertext.....gets me every time.... Im reading it now...

[Twisties]

Now that's just not fair! Do you know how long I've longed to go up in those Mountains? Rats!!!

 

Nice job, put more pics on! That did not seem like 32 (even on the hyperlink).

[Bob Palin]

Now that's just not fair! Do you know how long I've longed to go up in those Mountains? Rats!!!

 

Nice job, put more pics on! That did not seem like 32 (even on the hyperlink).

32 pictures on 3 pages plus 2 maps, obviously I have more, I'll look around.

[Twisties]

32 pictures on 3 pages plus 2 maps, obviously I have more, I'll look around.

 

2 pages? Maybe I missed something, heading right back for page 2!

[Bob Palin]

32 pictures on 3 pages plus 2 maps, obviously I have more, I'll look around.

 

2 pages? Maybe I missed something, heading right back for page 2!

3 pages, I just updated pages 1&2 to make that more obvious.

[Twisties]

Yes, 3 pages, spectacular!

 

Thanks for posting.

[Bob Palin]

Here's a couple of panoramas from the ridge top, I'm not really satisfied with the quality so I didn't include them in the report.

 

 

[Twisties]

Are you using Photoshop Elements? I use Photoshop Elements and find that when I allow the program to stitch (Create Photomerge) them together it puts those poorly done blending lines. Most of the time I'm happy enough to let it go. But you can do some things to avoid the problem if you feel like working at it.

 

I can't believe I'm offering advice to a professional. Just kick me if this is so below you that it's crazy.

 

The main thing is to open up all the images simultaneously, lay them out in order, and manually adjust exposure and other parameters to be as close as possible before merging them. You can also manually put them together as a collage, forget what Adobe calls that. But then you put them in as layers and continue to adjust and work with each photo manually, as well as manually overlay them. That's what I did with these panoramas, the first I ever shot that came out well enough to even think of printing. As you can see they are not perfect, but at full resolution, which I've spared you, they make a pretty nice prints.

 

Southern Tetons

 

Northern Tetons

 

Northern Tetons 2

 

PS, Yours are beautiful.

[Bob Palin]

I do use Elements but not for panoramas, I'm using Panostitcher for that have had great results in the past. All the pictures for the pans were taken at the same shutter speed and F stop using Stitch Assist on my SD800. I even tried Canon's PhotoStitch program without any improvement. Don't know what is going on here but will have to experiment some more.

[Charles Elms]

Bob,

Thanks again for sharing the beauty around Torrey.

[Twisties]

Well the second one looks great. I wouldn't have known it was stitched if you hadn't said so.

[Bob Palin]

Well the second one looks great. I wouldn't have known it was stitched if you hadn't said so.

Yes, it doesn't have stitching artifacts, I left it out because I had other shots like it and had to reduce the number, it's not composed very well IMHO. I suspect the problem with the first has to do with the degree of overlap, they may actually overlap too much.

[Francois_Dumas]

The new Photoshop (CS3) has an EXCELLENT and indeed amazing 'panorama feature'. It not only finds the overlaps and stitches the pictures, it also CORRECTS the differences in lighting between the separate photos used ! (Getting rid of the sometimes dark bands you see in many panorama's I made until now). Truly amazing technology!

 

I was wondering about the mailbox too, Bob..... will check your full report now !

[Boffin]

I use Autostitch for my panoramas. Whilst not perfect (what is?), it has managed to make artifact-free panoramas from pictures that totally defeated Photoshop CS.

 

Andy

[Francois_Dumas]

CS3 ?

[Highway41]

Enjoyed that very much and the link to the Powell print archives. Am green with envy.

Looking forward to next year's calendar.

Bill

[Bheckel169]

For all those not familiar with Utah, please note the blue sky and I mean "blue". Something I already miss here in North Carolina. Now I know why they call it the "Smokies".

Bruce

[Twisties]

I use Autostitch for my panoramas. Whilst not perfect (what is?), it has managed to make artifact-free panoramas from pictures that totally defeated Photoshop CS.

 

Great!, just tried it. Much better than Elements. This is from the same shots as Southern Tetons in my post in this thread yesterday. No comparison.

 

 

Southern Tetons_pano version

 

 

Thanks!

[Francois_Dumas]

Wonderful panorama !

[Bob Palin]

It is a good picture of the Tetons. I have a tip for panoramas - they always turn out too wide and not tall enough - turn the camera round 90 degrees and take twice the pictures, gets you more height. (Not that I actually remember to do this...)

 

I tried Autostitch and am very impressed, it fixed the 8 frame pano I took on Mt Ellen

 

Original with Panostitch

 

New with Autostitch

 

The only problem I have with it is that it overcompresses, I set the jpeg level to 98 and still ended up with the above, I just noticed however that it resets all the options each time you start it *&^%, so maybe that's what happened, try again...

[Francois_Dumas]

There's an idea... will try that one day (if I can remember ).

[Bob Palin]

I have now made a Google Earth KMZ file for all the pictures in the ride tale which I geocoded with a program called RoboGeo. I haven't labeled the pictures in the KMZ file so they only show their file name in Google Earth, I'll do it eventually...

 

The KMZ file is here - it seems to take a second or two to load the images when you click on the icon in Google Earth.

 

RoboGeo is cool (even for $40), it lets you select a list of images then cycle through them using Google Earth to click on their location, then saves the location info in the EXIF of the pictures. It can create a number of Google Earth and other types of GPS files too.

[norah]

Sitting here in 103 degree, smog filled weather, those pictures are much needed and appreciated!

[Twisties]

The only problem I have with it is that it overcompresses,

 

I had to play with the size/pixel count. Since I had the original panorama as a go by, I set pixel count width to be the same as in the original, and set the jpeg quality to 100. I think there was still minor degradation, but it was too small to really be sure on screen with any reasonable degree of zoom. I didn't make a test print or do a 100% pixel level comparison.

 

I've been thinking ever since that I will probably need to make a preview in Elements to get the size before making the keeper in Autostitch if I keep using it.

 

Jan

[Bob Palin]

I've been thinking ever since that I will probably need to make a preview in Elements to get the size before making the keeper in Autostitch if I keep using it.

 

Jan

Just below the pixel count field is a scale field, you can set it to 100% and it uses the full width of all the frames. I wish it remembered that info though because I know I won't.

[Dances_With_Wiener_Dogs]

Nice Temple shot. I can imagine that it gets quite breezy up there. Thanks Bob!

[ian408]

I was so close yet so far away in Hanksville.

 

Thanks for those shots!

 

Ian

[jbr7t]

I am so jealous. I haven't made it out west yet but seeing those pictures just makes the bug grow!! Hope to see it first hand sometime! Thanks for all the photos!