Little Planet View - David Mathre Photography

Friday (29-October-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Downy Woodpecker, Black-capped Chickadee, House Finch.

Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Images of a new solar-powered water fountain in the birdbath at different exposures/shutter speeds (1/100, 1/30, 1/13, 1/8 sec).

Water Fountain in a Birdbath. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Today I figured out how to attach a rear weight and tool box to the 3-point connection on the rear of Red Rover. It took a while to figure things out, and I can see I need to get a variety of pins to hold the connectors. Also, I couldn’t adjust the turnbuckle on the 3-point hitch stabilizer chains. The jam bolt was “jammed” too tight. Will probably need to take it off and put the turnbuckle onto a vice. Job for another day. Then moved the last of the deer fence pipes from the metal pallet.

Assembling the Shelter Logic “Shed in a Box” Storage Shed on a windy day. The first thing the hieroglyphic assembly instructions show is two people, and that it can be completed in 2 hours. By myself, it took a lot longer…

Daily Electric Energy Used (39.2 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (12.5 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy most of the day. Deficit of 26.7 kWh.

Thursday (18-February-2021) — New Jersey

Wintertime Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

About 4 inches of snow and sleet. I waited till late afternoon until the precipitation stopped to clear the driveway. More snow, sleet, and frozen rain expected tomorrow. It is a lot easier clearing the snow right away. Time-lapse video recorded with a Garmin VIRB-360 camera.

Daily Electric Energy Used (85.3 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (0.0 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. The solar panels totally covered with snow. Geothermal HVAC system on. A deficit of 85.3 kWh.

Four-Years Ago (20-October-2020) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard

Little Planet view of the backyard. Patio construction in progress. Note the solar panels.

Backyard. (David J Mathre) — Little Planet view of the backyard. Composite of 36 images taken with a Nikon D800 camera. Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and stitched together with AutoPano Giga. (David J Mathre)

Daily Electric Energy Used (43.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (18.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Clouds and rain. A deficit of 24.8 kWh.

Saturday (19-September-2020) — New Jersey

Late Summer Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey.

Ricoh Theta Z1 camera set up to capture the night sky from my patio. Two versions of the 360 Equirectangular, 360 Little Planet, and 360 Tunnel view. The first ones processed directly with the jpg files from the Theta Z1 camera. For the second set, the DNG files (dual fisheye) were first processed with Capture One Pro then converted to single 360 Equirectangular 16-bit TIF files. By processing and converting the DNG files to 16-bit TIF files I was able to bring more detail out of the dark shadow areas in the images.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Backyard Late Summer Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey. Equirectangular 360 degree Panorama. Composite of 360 (jpg) images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 360 camera (ISO 400, 2.6 mm, f/2.1, 60 sec). Star Trail composite generated with PhotoShop CC (scripts, statistics, maximum). (David J Mathre)

Daily Electric Energy Used (35.3 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (54.6 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny. Geothermal HVAC system off A surplus of 19.3 kWh. Notice the hump in the afternoon solar — has to do with the Sycamore tree shading the roof mid-afternoon

Monday (07-September-2020) — New Jersey

Summer Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey.

This was the third night in a row with a clear sky. The moon would rise a hour later. I decided to do star trails again with the Ricoh Theta Z1 360 degree camera. This time I mounted the camera horizontally so one of the fisheye lenses pointed straight up. I wanted to see if this would make a difference with the star trails. Camera settings (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). The images were processed with PTGUI, Capture One Pro, and Photoshop CC to create the following 360 degree Equirectangular Panorama, 360 degree Little Planet View, and 360 degree Tunnel View images. Interestingly, the camera adjusted the output with a correct horizon. It turned out that the horizontal settings were not as stable (wind jitter?). Fortunately, the PhotoShop CC settings I use to create the composite images (scripts, statistics, maximum) has a setting that tries to align images. Presumably using major common features in all of the images. If you look close, you can see some firefly trails.

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Equirectangular Panorama). Composite of images (20:12-20:59) taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). Without image alignment in Photoshop CC (scrips,statistics, maximum) (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Equirectangular Panorama). Composite of images (22:00-22:59) taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). With image alignment in Photoshop CC (scrips,statistics, maximum, align images) (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Equirectangular Panorama). Composite of images (20:12-03:20) taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). With image alignment in Photoshop CC (scrips,statistics, maximum, align images) (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Little Planet View Panorama). Composite of images (20:12-03:20) taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). With image alignment in Photoshop CC (scrips,statistics, maximum, align images) (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Tunnel View Panorama). Composite of images (20:12-03:20) taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). With image alignment in Photoshop CC (scrips,statistics, maximum, align images) (DAVID J MATHRE)

Star Trails in one hour segments. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.