Tunnel View - David Mathre Photography

Tuesday (23-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Mourning Dove, Blue Jay.

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

The Opossum is back.

My main 360 camera a Garmin VIRB-360 is getting old and has been discontinued by the manufacturer. The one lens has a scratch, and a battery failed. I’ve started looking at alternatives. I did this once before, trying out the Nikon Mission 360 (discontinued), Ricoh Theta, Insta360 One 4K. Each had issues. Later, I found the Ricoh Theta Z1 16-GB model then 64-GB model to be useful. But with idiosyncrasies. They have an interval mode, but with a minimum interval of 6 seconds (jpg) or 10 seconds (DNG). I decided to look at some of the newer 360 cameras. Insta360 One X2 and Labpano Lab Pilot ERA.

The following night time-lapse video was taken with the Insta360 One X2. I set the camera up outdoors connected to an external USB-C power supply to take raw (DNG) images every 30 seconds. With the external battery, the camera continued taking images all night, even though the temperature dropped below freezing. Processing the raw images was a bit of a problem since the raw image is not the standard equirectangular format. You need to convert the images via the Insta360 Studio 2021 program (batch mode) to generate a standard equirectangular image. Adobe Photoshop doesn’t appear to make time-lapse videos with DNG files, so I also had to convert the images from DNG to TIFF (using Capture One Pro) before making the time-lapse videos. With this camera I will need a better workflow.

alt_title. (David J Mathre) — Autumn Night in New Jersey. Image taken with a Insta360 One X2 camera. ISO 504, f/2, 2 sec. Insta360 Raw (DNG) format. (David J Mathre)

Time-lapse Video (Little Planet View).

Time-lapse Video (Tunnel View).

Daily Electric Energy Used (67.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 38.6 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.

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.

Sunday (06-September-2020) — New Jersey

Summer Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey.

This was the second 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. 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. If you look close, you can see some firefly trails.

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Equirectangular Panorama). Composite of 358 images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Little Planet View). Composite of 358 images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Tunnel View). Composite of 358 images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/2.1, 60 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Star Trails (360 degree Equirectangular View). Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Daily Electric Energy Used (46.9 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (59.6 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. More Sun. A surplus of 12.7 kWh.

Weekly Electric Energy Used (351 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (318 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. A deficit of 33 kWh.

Saturday (05-September-2020) — New Jersey

Summer Nighttime Sky Over New Jersey.

With a clear night sky, I decided to try the new Ricoh Theta Z1 360 degree camera to create some star trails. I set the camera up on my back patio (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/3.5, 60 sec). The camera can collect 358 raw (DNG) images which corresponds to just under 5 hours at 60 second exposures. 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. I’ve also included a time-lapse video of the night sky

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Equirectangular Panorama). Composite of 360 images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/3.5, 60 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Little Planet). Composite of 360 images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/3.5, 60 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Summertime Night Sky over New Jersey (360 Tunnel View). Composite of 360 images taken with a Ricoh Theta Z1 camera (ISO 400, dual 2.6 mm fisheye lens, f/3.5, 60 sec). (DAVID J MATHRE)

Daily Electric Energy Used (43.0 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (61.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. More sun. A surplus of 18.9 kWh.