Equally, I’ve worked my way up the heap in a predominantly Windows-world.  Beginning with Windows 3.1, 3.11 for workgroups, then on to 95, 98, the worst idea ever – Millenium, then on to XP, Vista (a.k.a. Windows 7 beta), and finally to Windows 7, I’ve become intimately familiar with the inner workings of each of these operating systems.  During that time I also became pretty familiar with Apple systems:   Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, and today’s Snow Leopard.

Last but not least, my phones started with the LG Flip Phone, before I migrated to a Blackberry, then an  HTC.  On the heels of that, I’ve also used the Samsung, Motorola Droid, Motorola Droid 2, and last but not least, the Motorola Droid X.  This past weekend, I finally caved…

I now am the owner of an Apple iPhone 4s.  The circle has been completed – working from home primarily on an Apple Macbook Pro, an iPad 2, and now an iPhone 4s – this Windows certified technology geek is now pretty much an Apple fanboy!  I gotta admit – it is pretty cool gear!  I do still work with Windows systems, primarily XP and 7 (along with the server equivalents), and am still pretty well-versed on the Android systems as well (I did a roll-out of over 250 phones on my last contract job including Windows Mobile, Android, Blackberry, and Apple devices.)

I’ve resisted the single-source ownership of computing devices for as long as I could – but the deal was just too good to pass up (psst…thanks Verizon for being out of the iPhone 4….the 4s is a great device at the discounted rate I got!)  Why did I switch?  Touch screen more than anything else.  Every smart phone I’ve had (primarily the Motorolas), the touch screen has lost sensitivity to the point where I have found it difficult to even unlock the phone or answer a call.  My upgrade window at Verizon kicked in Jan 1st.  I debated long and hard about it as the iPhone 4 was a $100 upgrade cost, and the iPhone 4s was a $200 upgrade.

After trading in my Droid X and an old iPod Touch, I had about $94 in credit due…so figured for $6, I could try it once.  A visit to the store and I was told that the iPhone 4 was out of stock – would I be interested in the 4s?  Well sure, but I had not intended to pay more than my original upgrade cost.  Well, Mr. Anderson, since you’ve been a faithful Verizon customer for so long, let’s see what we can do.  I walked out of the store with the 4s for $6!  Sort of a no-brainer…

Are you resisting the trend?  What are your platforms?  Am I joining your fold or have I betrayed the open sourced cause?

After some serious burning of the night oil, I’ve got the last Newsletter of the year ready for release – if you want to get it, the push goes out at 10:30am eastern time.  This means subscribers will also get a sneak peak of the final 5 items on the 25 for $50 gift guide list for 2010.  That final list will be released here on the blog tomorrow with full photos and write-ups of each, so if you miss the newsletter, be sure to stop in on Wed. for that.

The final podcast for 2010 is recorded and in the gates, ready to be run on Thursday too, so this is going to be a week with lots of multimedia and distributions for everyone to download and enjoy as we head into the holiday season.  On that note, I’ll be enjoying the rest of this week off (so no blog post on Friday), and hopefully get the rest of my own family and friends shopping completed in short order.  What is it – ten shopping days left?  If you’ve not started yet, time’s a wastin!

And, oh yeah, one last item to note…Lightroom has had it’s latest update to 3.3, and Camera Raw (for CS5 users) to 6.5!  You can grab the downloads here for Lightroom, and on the Raw Converter the downloads are Windows and Mac specific.

So, on that note, I am going to let the powers of scheduled posts and media distribution do their work while I catch up on a few Z’s and other things!  I will check in periodically for comments, questions, and other feedback items, but for the rest of the week, this baby’s on auto-pilot!  Happy shooting, and we’ll see you next week…..unless of course anyone has any questionszzzzzzzzzzzzzzz?

So, you’ll notice that the color on these is a little off, and the exposure is a little dark. I realized that I would have issues though, if I tried to expose for such a wide scene and range of colors across the entire panorama, most especially when trying to use the Photomerge function of Photoshop. So I set my White Balance to cloudy, my exposure to one frame, and just snapped across the image.

Here’s where it gets fun…I am running CS2 on my Mac laptop which cannot read my 40D files. My CS3 was set up on my Windows desktop. The Dell only has a 2.3 Ghz Celeron processor with 1.5 GB of RAM (I never got around to adding that last 512 before the move…). Needless to say, without being set up right, I really couldn’t process 8 shots each at 10MP (that’s a grand total of 80 MP in the final pano)! Even now with the portable AC on the Dell, it was screaming along as I ran the Photomerge utility through Bridge. Once I got the photomerge done, I stamped the layers (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) and converted to a smart object.

I then double-clicked the smart object to edit in it’s own window. This image file was now at 480 MB! Needless to say, I did some layer adjustments for exposure, and curves, then saved the file. I was now back in the full pano composite. I saved the full pano as a PSD file, then flattened before making some downsizing. For the curious, the full size pano is over 8000px on the long side. For the purposes of the web, I did have to downsize it a little. Clearly downsizing to allow the blog to show it would be out of the question, so here’s links to a large sized version (1600px long side), and a xl sized (3200px long side).

Large Pano

Extra-Large Pano

So, here’s the question: was it worth it?