Edmonton River Valley HDR Panorama

[Hugo Leung]

I took this one in late march as the ice was beginning to melt. I did the HDR with photomatix, then stitched it in photoshop. Tried my best to keep the colors realistic. What do you all think?
Below is my favorite crop from the above panorama, but i'd like people's opinion on what might work better.

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[ifi]

Good work, the first one seems a little dark, otherwise good work stitching and HDRing. BTW who is that person in your photo?

[Hugo Leung]

Someone admiring the view. I was lucky they were there at that moment because i was only on that hill for a few minutes

[Nikoncs4]

Awsome Images man! I really like your site to. Did you build that yourself or is that powered by wordpress? How many exposures in each image did you use for the pano? And how how images did you have to stitch? Looks incredible !!!

[Hugo Leung]

Thanks Nikon! I appreciate the compliments. I'm still learning and I want to improve and every bit of feedback helps. I created the site with wordpress and, the lightroom module, highslide gallery.

I shoot with auto-iso (thinking about ISO leaves me less time for composition and framing. I prefer to use my SLR as a high powered point and shoot). I set bracketing at -2, 0 and +2. The exposures worked out to:
f/13, ISO 200, 1/200sec
f/13, ISO 280, 1/60sec
f/13, ISO 1100, 1/60sec
I do post processing with DxO, then did HDR with photomatix pro 3.1. In photoshop CS4 i merged 9 vertical photos into the panorama but it really only took data from 7 photos. Afterwards, i touch up white balance and exposure in lightroom.

I hope this helps. I dont do anything fancy in camera, so i'm hoping this is easily reproducible for others.

[Zhieson]

That first picture is awesome!

The clouds and angle are amazing. The colors of the clouds is also great but I would personally saturate the ground a little more.

[eric-holmes]

Wouldn't the auto-iso compensate for the exposure values you dialed in? Therefore making the exposure correct versus under or over exposed?

[pbelarge]

The HDR and the pano are nicely done.

I would like to see both photos,with some of the foreground cropped from the shots.

[Big Mike]

Great photo, and welcome to the forum.

I grew up in and around the river valley, but I can't place this scene. Where were you?

[Hugo Leung]

Zhieson: Yeah, i might have to adjust the exposure of the foreground. Even though its HDR, i'm shooting directly into the sun and I think its underexposing the trees and grass. I have a hard time noticing, but it must be more obvious with fresh eyes.

eric-holmes: auto-iso works with the EV compensation. So the first shot at ISO 200, 1/200sec is with an EV of -2. The next is at EV 0, and the settings end up as ISO 280, 1/60sec. Lastly, at EV +2 its ISO 1100, 1/60sec. I set the minimum shutter speed to 1/60 (to minimize blur because I don't use a tripod) and so the last two photos have the same shutter speed, but higher ISO, and so the photos are brighter. With auto-iso off the ISO would've stayed at 200 and i'd estimate that the shutter speeds would have been around 1/50 and 1/8 respectively.

pbelarge: Let me try that later tonight. I'll see if i can get that horizon line away from dead center.

Big Mike: Its in Riverbend, at a point in Ramsay Crescent where three multi-million dollar homes slid into the river. It only happened a few years ago so you probably never heard of it.

[Doug Solis]

Really nice HDR work, in fact the best compliment I can give you is it doesn't look like is was an HDR. what a unique setting, the colors and tones a perfect. I thought this was a fisheye lens at first, but it is similar to Horseshoe bend in AZ, almost doing a 360. The left side of the top image has a couple of concrete or asphalt pads (i'm guessing) that I would probably crop out, or if you could patch them out in PS you could save the cool looking tree. I just like looking at this photo and seeing nothing man made, at least in the foreground.

[mwcfarms]

Ah home. Very nice images. Love both of them.