USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Naval Museum in San Diego California. by Bill Bailey

Nodal Ninja Ultimate M2 Panohe...

Nikon D800E

Nikon D800E with 80-400MM Zoom...

This is "my" largest gigapixel image to date and I believe may be the largest ever shot with a manual panoramic tripod head. Ranked about 37th in size out of 50,000+ images hosted here on Gigapan.org. As with most of my work it's far from perfect so not seeking criticism.

Nick Fan at Fanotec sent me the new M2 w/RD8-II to start playing with and I was more than eager to get started.
On a recent trip to San Diego I wanted to shot something other than a cityscape so I decided to try and shoot the flight deck of the USS Midway. A must see Naval Museum if ever in San Diego.

The biggest challenge was with all the hundreds of people moving about the flight deck. While I was able to pause and wait for people to move out of the shot this was taking up valuable time so ended up with lots of chopped up people. And because the image exceeded 300,000 pixels I couldn't do any edits in Photoshop.

The entire 1560 images sequence took only 1.5 hours - much quicker than a robotic head. With positive control over the camera and shutter release I could shoot faster than the memory card could write. Without the pauses and with smaller image size I'm sure the image could have been shot in under 30 minutes. With the adjustable detent tension on lower rotator, and end tab on upper rotator makes for more comfortable and reliable shooting. If you have a little patience and can count shots then shooting with manual head is IMO preferable over robotics for the shear speed and positive control not to mention lighter and no power source needed.

All in all the Ultimate M2 is another excellent product I can boast about - well done Nick!

Stats on the USS Midway (CV-41) Aircraft Carrier.
Commissioned 10 Sept. 1945
Decommissioned 11 April 1992
Branch of Service Navy
Length 972 ft
Beam 113 ft
Height 237 ft
Max Speed 33 knots
Crew 4100+
Arms:
18 5" 54 caliber guns
84 40mm guns
68 20mm cannons
Aircraft 100+