Pano - storm clouds at dawn

Rick Ashford · Oct 2, 2003

I have been experimenting with panos using my 717! This is a composite of 5 photos taken at dawn last Saturday. I used Panorama Factory to stitch them together (Wow!... what a program!). Also used Photoshop for some post processing....

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Rick A.
Johnson City, TN

Skippy · Oct 2, 2003

Rick thats a lovely shot indeed.......I have got to learn how to do panos, I love to see how so many folks put some amazing images together to produce some truly magnificent shots........well done.
Skippy (Australia)

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Avatar · Oct 2, 2003

Hi Rick,

Beautiful panorama !!

I am a f717 newbie, am interested in taking panos.

Other than the Panorama Factory. Were you using a tripod with a pano head, and an attachement (to rid of parallax) ?

Would appreciate any details you could provide

Thanks,
Martin (Canada)

Rick Ashford · Oct 2, 2003

Hi Avatar...

Thanks. I did indeed use a tripod. No pano head on the tripod or other special tools. I turned the camera sideways, and panned from left to right for 5 frames, overlapping each one by about 30-40%. The size of my final photo is 6430X2430. (As a TIF file, it is 199MB!!).

I have not seen a pano head -- don't know what that might do to improve the photo. I need to check that out. As for distortion, Panorama Factory does a pretty good job of warping the photos to remove problems. It is just important to hold the focal length constant for each shot, as well as exposure. Also to have all the correct parameters for the camera keyed into Panorama Factory to ensure accurate processing.

I wonder if I could have used a graduated ND filter... This picture was taken right at dawn, and it was still pretty dark. To get the sky properly exposed, the foreground was void of detail. And to get any detail in the foreground, the sky was burnt out. I did several pans with different exposure parameters for each set. I ended up using a set of shots that were somewhere in the middle. And I used Photoshop layers to brighten the foreground levels while darkening the sky levels to obtain the final result. There must be better or easier ways to deal with this problem. Does anyone know?

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Rick A.
Johnson City, TN

LanceD · Oct 2, 2003

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Lance

Richard91758 · Oct 2, 2003

Richard_

Lew K · Oct 2, 2003

Rick:

With a pano head you don't have parallax errors for the software to deal with and you usually end up with the camera in portrait mode, i.e. on it's side. I have one of the units from Kaidan and it is really nice. I think the big advantage of using a pano comes when your dealing with interiors or shots where everything is pretty close.

An approach that might help you with the dynamic range of shots like your dawn pano would be to set the camera for 2/3 or 1 f stop bracketing, use manual and take all the sets with the same exposure settings. Take a bracketed shot every time and use something like OPTIPIX which will automatically blend images together to give you the combined dynamic range. So if the darkest of each set gave you the best sky and the lightest of each of set gave you the best foreground, you want to blend the two together so that you get the best of both worlds. You can do this manually with Photoshop but it can be a LOT of work. OPITIPIX does it automatically. It can also be used to average multiple exposures when you need to get rid of noise.

I really enjoy taking panos. Some have come out pretty good and some... well... ;-}

This one is a full 360 and came out pretty well:
http://www.small-town.net/Culver2003%20VR%20Tour/ManualGreenHiResPano.html

This was done with my Kaidan pano head and my Olympus 2100. I hope to be able to reshot this one with an 828 next spring.

LewK
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Windows - It's just work
Macintosh - It just works

Cheryl Meisel · Oct 2, 2003

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Cherylm
Wow this is a GREAT SHOT! Just beautiful!!!!

Yuri Pautov · Oct 3, 2003

Privet, Rick!
I nearly missed your great photo!
It's fantastic!
You used a tripod?
Spasibo
Yuri

Greg Gebhardt · Oct 3, 2003

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excellent color saturation, image has a good feeling to it.

Greg Gebhardt in
Jacksonville, Florida

3rdEye · Oct 3, 2003

mdebrieder · Oct 3, 2003

Great photo Rick!!!

I especially enjoyed the surprise when I spotted the sun "just around the corner" of the photo

It's an awesome picture!

Thanks for sharing!

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Michiel de Brieder -

If it's in your mind, get the picture and show it! ;-)
http://www.pbase.com/giel

kyle1745 · Oct 3, 2003

Very very nice
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Kyle
Sony F707
http://www.kylesphotos.com

DeeDee G. · Oct 3, 2003

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DeeDee G.
http://www.pbase.com/deedee_g/root

Harry Behret · Oct 3, 2003

Harry

http://www.pbase.com/hpb

MTT · Oct 3, 2003

NEWBIE_here · Oct 3, 2003

great job!! absolutely gorgeous pano

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Pano - storm clouds at dawn

Rick Ashford

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