Chicago’s Union Station is one of the great trains stations in the world. And the centerpiece of the station is the Great Hall. It was once the main waiting room for rail passengers. Today, it also serves as an indoor mall. We were fortunate to be there in December when it was decorated for Christmas.
I photographed this first panoramic with the camera horizontal in landscape format. I took four pictures as I rotated the camera. Unfortunately, without a tripod there is some parallax distortion at the seams.
Photo courtesy of Amazing Travel Panoramics
Click for full-size image (2.2MB 14147 x 2576)
Open the larger image. You can zoom in on some of the detail in the columns and Christmas ornaments. You can see that everyone is dressed for winter–I think it was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit that day. Can you find Santa Claus playing the saxophone in the picture?
Here is the second panoramic I took. For this one, I held the camera vertically in portrait mode. This shows more of the ceiling in the great hall. I shot six exposures for this one. There is worse parallax distortion in this merged image. I really need to get a tripod and head that is designed to shoot panormics. Also, the density doesn’t match in each picture. I must have forget to get the camera on manual mode.
Photo courtesy of Amazing Travel Panoramics
Click for full-size image (2.9MB 12083 x 4052)
You can also zoom in on the detail in this one if you open the larger image. One thing I see is what looks like video camera up in the ceiling at each end of the hall. Big Brother is watching!
The camera I used was a Nikon D700 with Zeiss T*2.8/25mm lens. I normally set the camera’s exposure control to manual mode when shooting panoramics so that the density matches. The photos were stitched together using Photoshop CS2 Photomerge function.
