Among the negatives I got back yesterday was this one using Kodak Portra 160NC. NC or Neutral Color film is normally used for portraits (which is one of my focuses for large format) but it is my only color film for 4x5 so I have to use it. I think it turned out well here. The sheet before this ended up on the ground after I jammed my dark slide into the holder and somehow pushed it out the other side. It would have been funny to another photographer had they been there.

Stitching with Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor)

As I wrote before I have to scan twice on my Canoscan 8400F flatbed because the backlight area is not large enough for 4x5 negatives. In Photoshop it was a grand pain to do any stitching at all. This week I read a discussion of stitching software that was used by Mike Nichols in this month's National Geographic for that amazing gatefold image of a gigantic redwood tree (you have to pick it up - the web version does no justice to it).

Nichols and his crew took 84 images to make up the shot and stitched it on location using Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). I found out subsequently that it is free for downloading and even includes a 64-bit version (I run the orphan Windows XP64 at home). This is to show you that not everything out of Microsoft is evil.

Also tried Hugin

I should mention that before I tried ICE I also installed and tried out another free stitching software called Hugin but I found the interface quite obtuse and with many advanced options. I even set it to render overnight and it managed to create a 45gb TIFF that caused my computer to choke so of course I was doing something wrong. Normally, I would give it a second try but then decided to try ICE this morning as I was getting ready to head out. Surprisingly, ICE worked very fast and generated this file in under five minutes. Granted, my two image composite is nothing compared to the gigantic Redwood stitch but it still looks good to my eyes.