When we were planning our trip to Colorado for the Rottie National, I received lots of great advice about places to see when we finally had some time to explore. One area that was suggested was Mesa Verde in the Southwest corner of the state and the Anastazi cliff dwellings that are there. Linda has always been interested in that sort of thing so we put it on the agenda for the way home. If any of you are ever in the area, I strongly suggest you visit this area. It is well worth your time.
We drove the Mesa Top Loop which took us by many ruins which we got to explore and also put us on the cliffs opposite some of the most amazing ruins I've ever seen. The day we were there, it was very windy so I left my tripod in the car and just carried my 17-55 F2.8IS and my 200 F2.8L. These two lenses allowed me to get some wonderful broad perspectives from across the canyon and some very interesting close-ups with the 200. As I was shooting, other tourists would come up with their camera phones and I could imagine the conversations once they got home: "yes, this is the view of the Cliff Palace from across the canyon. You can see it right there in the middle. It's that little black dot."
As we got to a point almost directly across from the Cliff Palace, I decided to shoot a panorama with the 7D and the 200. For this shot, I took 5 vertical images and stitched them together in Photoshop to create a final image that is 30 inches wide by 14 inches tall at 310 dpi with no interpolation. Here's that image at viewable resolution.
If you'd like to see this image full-sized, go to this pbase link and just click on "original" to see it at original resolution.
Cliff Palace Pano You might notice at 200% it's a little grainy in the shadow area probably due to the small amount of tone mapping I did on this version in Photomatix. I've saved the original pano as a .psd file so I can work on it when I have more time.
Again, I'd like to thank everyone for their advice. Wish we had been able to visit all the places that were recommended. Maybe next time, we'll actually get there for a vacation.
Jim
