Scarecrow Festival

Today was Lubenham Scarecrow Festival and Market Harborough Arts Fresco, so in the morning I set off towards Lubenham to see the scarecrows, since last year I missed the scarecrows and went to Arts Fresco instead. I left the house probably about 8.30am, but after I had walked part of the way the Lubenham, the weather had got much better, and there was now quite a lot of blue sky compared to totally grey sky when I left home. So I decided to go back home and get my tripod so I could take some 360° panos.

By the time I had got my tripod and got to Lubenham it was about 9.30am. Unfortunately, I found that I had forgotten the QR plate for my camera to mount it to the Nodal Ninja. So the first pano, I just held the camera on the Nodal Ninja where I thought it should be.

After that, I realised that actually I could take the QR Clamp off the Nodal Ninja, and screw the camera directly on to the Nodal Ninja. So I took the QR Clamp off, and had to move the vertical arm in a bit to compensate for extra width of the QR Clamp that was now no longer there. Then I had to move the screw on the upper arm to try and hold the camera in the same place as it would normally be held by the QR plate. Unfortunately, this means that when I re-attach the QR Clamp I will have to re-do all the testing to find the No Parallax Point.

After fitting the camera to the Nodal Ninja I found that I also had forgotten the Remote Shutter Release cable for the camera, so I had to manually press the shutter in, which is likely to mean that the bracketed images don't align perfectly, and so a HDR/enfused stitch will be impossible/difficult. I did a couple of panos, then decided there wasn't much point doing any more since they probably won't stitch very well as I had to just guess the No Parallax Point.

I walked all the way down the main road to the other side of the village, then walked back through the village going down all the different roads, taking photos of all the different scarecrows. There was quite a few political ones, like about the proposed windfarm nearby, the recession and the Government loosing people's personal data. Unfortunately, a lot of the scarecrows seemed to be half in bright light and half in shadow, so on the photos one side would be blown out and the other side would be quite dark.

By the time I got home it was about 1.20pm, and my feet were worn out. I had lunch and then copied the pics across to my PC. I spent all afternoon sorting/processing the pics, they didn't look as bad as they looked on the camera LCD when I took them, although quite a lot of them did need a highlights/shadows adjustment (or 'Active D-Lighting' as Nikon calls it, I processed all the non pano pics in Capture NX).

After Dinner I watched an episode of Battlestar Trashlactica with Mac (we're on about episode 3 of season 3 now) then finished editing the 1st of the scarecrow panos.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: West Country Mature Cheddar Cheese sandwich; plum; grapes; mince pie; Pink 'n' White; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Breaded fish portion; baked beans; mashed potato. Pudding was a creamy straeberry yoghurt. Coffee; White chocolate buttons covered in hundreds and thousands; Roses.