Queen Mary 2 berthed at Queensferry (for Edinburgh)

This is the biggest cruise liner in the world, in part because it's the only one designed also to be an ocean liner, capable of sailing through North Atlantic storms at speed and in comfort. It's twice the size of the QE2. It's longer than it looks in this shot, due to the perspective compresssion of a long lens (250mm) on this diagonally frontal shot.

Here's a lot more detail on the QM2 for the curious in an article from Sealetter Cruise Magazine devoted to the QM2.

Big ships like this have to berth here because there's nowhere big or deep enough at Leith. But a bystander with a radio tuned to the QM2 Forth pilots' frequency band told me that dredging out approaches and a berth for big ships near Ocean Terminal is well underway, and when finished they'll berth there rather than here.

This the third time I've made a serious effort to get good photographs of a big ship here, the other two being visits of the QE2. Each time I've found problems, learned something, and done better the next time. Last time in trying to use a long lens with a low ISO in dim light with shutter speeds at a large fraction of a second I got blurred shots. How much of that was due to the motion of a big ship turning slowly on its axis? I checked that this time by photographing the Forth Rail Bridge with the same settings, being pretty sure that that wasn't moving. The result was sharp shots, which coupled with the horizontal smearing of the ship photographs conclusively fingered ship movement as the problem!

Just for fun this shot is a stitched panorama from a fore and aft pair of photographs. There was just enough light left to have a go at shooting at ISO 100. The sum of the stitching losses plus the longer zoom gain in detail is slightly more detail than a single wider shot. Because the ship was slowly swinging round at this time this may the biggest panoramic stitch I'll be able to do of it -- there may be too much inter shot movement between the 500mm shots for good stitching.

[Later note: here is a larger panorama of the ship.]

Original QM2P1X (two shot panorama)

[Sony A350, SAL 18-250mm @250mm, f8, ISO 100, 1/125th sec.]

Taken in: United Kingdom / Scotland / South Queensferry (show map)

Taken on: October 18, 2009

Tags:

Edinburgh

Queensferry

Forth

sunset

Queen Mary 2

QM2

panorama

Hugin « less

Sets appears in: • QM2 • QM2 Queensferry meetup 2009/10/17

Groups appears in: • Best Viewed Large • Queen Mary 2 more » • Firth of Forth • Edinburgh Meetups • Sony Alpha Scotland « less

Camera: Sony DSLR-A350 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony DSLR-A350
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Picasa 3.0
Show full info

Stats: 1,090 views / 1 comment

go back

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder