You dont need a D3x :)

Get a D7000, a polarizer filter, tripod and PTGui to stitch the PANO images.
Final image is a TIFF 250MB, or a 28MB jpeg!



This is fun!
Cheers,

--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

Nice image, though

Lovely shot Ray.What lens were you using??17-55 2.8??

Thanks
Bruce
SA

You forgot to hack the EXIF to indicate D3x
--
Stan ;o()



In the spirit of Occam’s Razor one should embrace the less complicated formulation or simply put, less is more.
http://standavidson.com/post/Birds

I sold my 17-55 (BTW is a super lens!) and trade to a 70-200mm VRII
I used a 24mm f1.4 G, a sensacional lens!!!
Best
--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

You might try w/ a cybershot but I dont see how to get such a DR,sharpness and color w/ it

Belive me you cant (as I live in Brazil and I've shoot that in a quite sunny hash contrasty hazy summer day!)
Cheers
--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

It seems to me a polarizer might mess with the sky across a large number of panels, but obviously yours came out fine.

Yeah, how did you do that?

Reilly Diefenbach said:

It seems to me a polarizer might mess with the sky across a large number of panels, but obviously yours came out fine.

Click to expand...

--
Bob in Baltimore

I shoot with auto exposure turned on (I know its not the "right"technique) as I wanted to keep highlights well preserved.

Note that I kept a -0.5 EV EC in all pics (thanks Nikon for the D7000 DR and low noise at base iso).

The PTGui v9 is a clever software, and in its advanced options , it has a tab you must check if the pics were made with a different/variable exposure.

I had lots of sun from the left so the camera adjusted the exposure and the software adjusts all frames later nicely!
I tried Autopano pro but forget it for complex panos.
Used MUP, tripod and autofocus/autoexposure every frame.

Final TIFF was around 650 MB and I had a lot of work to PP in CS4 to distort it, although you can almost completely distort the composite pano in PTGui before the rendering, just pushing the pano preview in the panorama tools (nice feature btw).

Worked with the NEFs and added some more control points for stichting. It took me sometime to get used to it, but it was my first in PTGui (thanks for the tip Thom Hogan!)

Some CS4 clone tools to clear some dirty spots (in 2 or 3 small points even PTgui failed a bit) and a final highpass sharpening in NX2, then convert to a jpeg of 28MB.

Cheers

--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

Nice image! So I have a question. I'm presuming that your final stitched image has little to no distortion because of the stitching? Is it possible to create a massive image by dividing up the image into quarters and joining 4 of them in software to create a large image or does your technique work only for multiple images joined along their vertical edges? Thanks!

An absolutely beautiful image, thanks for sharing.
--
Bob

The rule for stitching is to tranpass around 25% on each side of the pics you want to join.

So its not a stich right in the borders. The software will "cut" every pic of the pano NOT in a straight up and down or right to left cut. It is quite amazing to see how the software choose to cut in strange formats to get the best stitch for the whole pano.
Actually you can see that in a preview before rendering final image.
Best
--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

"Autopano pro but forget it for complex panos"

Autopano will assemble triple row 150 shot HDR panos that will choke a horse.

I'm not talking about quantity: I'm talking about quality!

Autopano simply cant deal with that pano I posted: the final results were full of bad stitching / exposure problems so I just bought the PTGui following many pro's suggestions (including Thom Hogan who is a master of panos IMO)

I have Autopano for almost 3 years, but believe me, PTGui is a much better software.

Regards
--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

No, I'm sorry, Ray, PTGUI has it's strengths, including more projection selections, but Autopano will assemble the really big stuff far better than PTGUI, without any control point work. PTGUI choked on this one and wouldn't finish it, Autopano Pro aced it. three rows, 3 exposures each panel, 157 shots, no control point work, just a forty five minute wait, blended in Oloneo. Only a test, mind you, real world yet to come.

--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

Ray, that's a nice stitch. But can I make a suggestion?

I use NX2 and run into a similar issue with skies sometimes. They can go really violet. As in lacking green to the point of looking surreal. If you're using control points, try taking red and blue down a bit in the sky. While your at it, a control point or two on the water could bring out the saturation and color of aquamarine more.

http://www.pbase.com/reimar

Thanks for the tip Reimar!
Best
--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares

Cheers Ray, and thanks for the comment.

I'm still working on images from Morocco and the color balance can be quite strange. The red soil and red Kasbahs require adding green to daylight temperature (5200). When the landscape looks right, the sky is still very violet. I've never seen this effect so strongly. And it's not just my D7000. Something to watch for.

I don't do HDR, but I do my own manual stitching in PS.
http://www.pbase.com/reimar/morocco

Plz publish that Maroco pic #251 in this forum!
That's beautiful colors w/ a D7000!
It deserves!
Best
--
Ray Soares

See my pictures at http://www.pbase.com/raysoares