BUDAPEST BASILICA, BY FRANCOIS PANCHARD
The Esztergom Basilica, near Budapest, Hungary.
by Francois Panchard
Esztergom is the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Hungary. Situated on the right bank of the Danube at the foot of the Pilis Hills, Esztergom has a long and illustrious history. There are cultural remains dating back to prehistoric times, because Vár-hegy (Castle Hill) was already inhabited then. During the Roman period in the early centuries of our era, a long line of fortifications was built along the Danube, which more or less marked the border of the Empire. A defensive castrum was built at Esztergom in the 1st century. Later, in the migratory period of the Dark Ages, successive peoples passed through or settled. This was a major crossing point of the Danube. Among the goods passing was gold from the highland mines of today's Slovakia.The basilica: The cathedral of the archdiocese founded by St Stephen in 1001 is the largest place of worship in Hungary, with a height of 100 metres, an external length of 107 metres, and an internal height under the dome of 72 metres. It is a masterpiece of 19th-century historicist architecture. Excerpted from HerendHerald. November 2003, shooting of the Basilica of Esztergom, a town 60 km North West from Budapest, Hungary.
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For the first time I’m going to make a cubic shooting. Everything is ready: I have the new Manfrotto303 SPH spherical head, a Canon EOS10D and a 16-35 mm f/2.8L USM. The only tests I made before the shooting were done to determine the optimal number of pictures. As I will use REALVIZ Stitcher in multi row mode, this issue is very important. I found out that 12 pictures taken at 0° and +/- 45° and zenith / ground was a good combination with the camera and the lens I have. To be sure to get the perfect exposure, I bracketed every picture. 114 pictures were taken for every cubic (3 x (12+12+12+2)! The shooting itself was fun. We came up with the wrong name at the first try: no, it’s not possible to shoot the Basilica, we have to apply, wait about 2 weeks (means 2 months at least) and maybe we can get the permission. The second name we tried – my father in law – was the right one: like in a fairy tale, the doors of the basilica suddenly opened! Even the Cupola was accessible for us. The weather was not the best but what can you expect in November? I appreciate the presence of my friend Balazs because it’s always good to have someone for the last picture looking at the ground. When you are ready with the camera in your hand, you can ask this person to remove quickly the tripod. This improves the accuracy a lot. The stitching was kind of easy. Every project was started with a lens calibration, a very cool feature of Stitcher. I was impressed by the ability of the software to deal with pictures of different exposures. You don’t realize in the final image that shots with different brackets were used. And as we wanted to link the pictures together, we use the hotspots function of Stitcher. Again, easy and effective. The only problem I faced was the amount of memory resources needed by the soft. To avoid the program shutting down, I simply take this habit to save the project (this flushes the memory) quiet often, especially with the last pictures. Some tests made with the panorama conversion tool shows that once you have a project without any stitching mistakes, you can ask for any format you like including very big size cylindrical pictures ready to be print as posters. View the virtual basilica and view more panoramas of Hungary at www.panoramas.hu. Read another article on Panchard, Destination Budapest.
email :fp@panoramik.ch
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