Ricky
Photo Newb
Posts: 15
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Post by Ricky on Jul 21, 2010 0:40:23 GMT -5
Figured this would be a decent first thread anyway. As I mentioned in my intro post, I have a fascination with panoramic photography at the moment. I just like being able to see a much wider angle of a scene, I think it gives one a pretty good sense of what it was like standing in your shoes while taking the picture. With that said, I figure I'd share a few personal favorites. If you have any panoramics laying around, feel free to show them off 
 ^ This shot was one of the first I did after moving to California. There's a nice high spot here that allows you to see most of the city, so I wanted to take advantage of that. This was shot with my old Fujifilm S700 without a tripod as I didn't have one at the time. I ended up finding a railing near by and just hoped that would work out hah. Spur of the moment cheap solutions are good sometimes.
 ^ This is more of a recent shot, taken the first weekend I got the D5000 from the UPS guy. Drove to the top of a mountain here close to where I live, and ended up using this for a panoramic photo contest (along with a few others, but this one was the most well received of the bunch I entered). Waited around for about 20 minutes and ended up with this shot in the end. |
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Post by Thomas McKown on Jul 21, 2010 0:44:42 GMT -5
Nice stuff! I love panos. I only have a few of them myself. Maybe I will try to post them tomorrow on this thread. I really like the first one, the sky is beautiful.
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Ricky
Photo Newb
Posts: 15
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Post by Ricky on Jul 21, 2010 12:56:06 GMT -5
Thanks, I think that one is a personal favorite of mine Look forward to seeing yours! |
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Post by FearingPix on Jul 21, 2010 14:26:07 GMT -5
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Ricky
Photo Newb
Posts: 15
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Post by Ricky on Jul 22, 2010 2:01:33 GMT -5
Wow.. where was that first one taken? Looks beautiful That's one thing I need to figure out for day shots would be the lighting. A lot of pans I try to make in the day time seem pretty flat and un-interesting, where as yours here are pretty amazing to look at. Like a recent example of mine:  ^ Nothing really stands out about it, just seems "there". I don't know how to describe it  Guess it doesn't help that it was taken in a desert-like area though; but I'm sure I could have done something differently to make it stand out more. |
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Post by smphoto74 on Jul 22, 2010 2:53:01 GMT -5
Totally Awesome work!
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Post by Thomas McKown on Jul 22, 2010 7:22:20 GMT -5
Wow.. where was that first one taken? Looks beautiful That's one thing I need to figure out for day shots would be the lighting. A lot of pans I try to make in the day time seem pretty flat and un-interesting, where as yours here are pretty amazing to look at. Like a recent example of mine: ^ Nothing really stands out about it, just seems "there". I don't know how to describe it Guess it doesn't help that it was taken in a desert-like area though; but I'm sure I could have done something differently to make it stand out more. I think the biggest about the lighting is the time of day. The middle of the day is probably the worst time to take landscape pictures because of the flat, harsh lighting. Try waiting until close to sunset and capture the last hour or so of daylight. Once you learn to master that, I think you will be much happier. One thing to note though, is that you will have to start learning how to compensate for a dark foreground and a bright sky. This gets really fun when you start stitching, haha. |
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Post by FearingPix on Jul 22, 2010 11:12:17 GMT -5
what i have kinda taught my self is to use different settings when doing a pano. set a higher f stop for the sky and lower for the foreground. just keep them kind of similar so auto pano plus will still recognize them being the same picture. (you kinda gotta play around with it and learn as you go) just change it enough to get the clouds and all the detail. if by chance you loose some, you can always use dodge and burn in photoshop.
thomas and im sure sprinkle will both tell you that this is probably "wrong" but hey that first shot was taken about 2 in the after noon. maybe 3. i still agree with thomas' last post. mid day light sucks, unless you do an hdr. which i cant figure them out on how to edit it. lol
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Post by sprinkle on Jul 22, 2010 11:23:24 GMT -5
thomas and im sure sprinkle will both tell you that this is probably "wrong" Yep you're wrong LOL j/k Seriously there is no "wrong" way to shoot anything... but for panos I try to always shoot every single frame of it the exact same way. In other words I will shoot manual focus and manual exposure making sure the settings stay the same. Though what I will do is use the AEB (auto exposure bracketing) setting in my camera to get 3 different exposures for each frame. Then I will either do an HDR or manually blend the exposures to my liking after the fact. Here is an example of why you need to make sure to use the same settings... this is a single row pano and if the exposures where different then the sky would appear to have "banding" or dark to light splotches.  |
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Post by FearingPix on Jul 22, 2010 11:26:29 GMT -5
yea, i cant do hdrs. i have one i like. my church picture. ill just stick to the one lol
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Post by Thomas McKown on Jul 22, 2010 18:35:17 GMT -5
yea, i cant do hdrs. i have one i like. my church picture. ill just stick to the one lol Now don't get all wishy washy on us! You can't give up, it just takes time. Besides, the forum is here for you to learn.  |
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Ricky
Photo Newb
Posts: 15
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Post by Ricky on Jul 23, 2010 2:23:41 GMT -5
Don't know why I had never thought to use AEB mode actually. I plan on going to a high-rise area in leguna beach to try and capture some sunset photos overlooking the ocean tomorrow night. I'll be sure to give that method a try. Thanks for the idea |
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Post by Thomas McKown on Jul 23, 2010 8:39:00 GMT -5
Don't know why I had never thought to use AEB mode actually. I plan on going to a high-rise area in leguna beach to try and capture some sunset photos overlooking the ocean tomorrow night. I'll be sure to give that method a try. Thanks for the idea Just be ready to spend a very long time editing, haha. I ended up having to use Photomatix to merge the first set, then run a batch with the exact same settings for the rest of the hdr shots. Then, after it was all merged, I could stitch. Might be easiest to try not to go too high in resolution when you do the stitch or it will take ages. Although for all I know, you could be running a high end computer that handles the large files easily, haha. |
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Post by sprinkle on Jul 23, 2010 9:37:46 GMT -5
There are actually ways to still run fairly high resolution panos with HDR on a slower computer. I will eventually make up a good tutorial for that and post on here, but since I am leaving for Orlando Sunday I won't have time for a while.
Basically with both Photomatix and Autopano you can run the files in a piece by piece way and it takes very little memory.... granted you will have time to fix your dinner and eat it too while it is processing but can still do it.
I also tend to stitch the 3 separate exposure panos first THEN do an HDR because I have had inconsistent HDR tone mappings even using the batch process... your mileage may vary.
Anyway enough rambling... I will work on a tutorial as soon as I can (Thomas don't let me forget)
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Post by Thomas McKown on Jul 23, 2010 10:10:20 GMT -5
Sounds interesting! I look forward to it.
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