A panorama... Newcastle Harbour @ Dusk

[DanPower]

Hi all... this is my first photo post at TPF I've been playing with a Canon 550D and kit lenses for about 6 months now, learning as I go. Before that I had a P&S that never came out of auto mode.

This is the Newcastle (Australia) waterfront at dusk, taken last night... 11 portrait photos stitched together with Hugin.

Canon 550D, 55-250mm kit lens @ 55mm, f/6.3 for 6 seconds


The mains things I'm not happy with are the haze that seems to make the orange streetlights glow which I can't seem to remove in post (it's not really obvious in this size but the final image is 25,000px wide and at anything approaching full size it makes the buildings near the streetlights look quite soft) and I've overexposed a lot of the lights while the shadows are a bit dark... I think if I had taken this photo maybe half an hour earlier when there was more sunlight left I would have been able to avoid both of those problems. Maybe the shoreline is a little high?

What do you guys think? I would like to go back and attempt to re-create this shot but nail it this time, so tips and suggestions are more than welcome. I'm hiring a 70-200 f/4L for a day next weekend so I could try to do it with that although I wouldn't get quite as much vertical range (this was at 55mm)...

Thanks!!

 

[DanPower]

Here is a 100% crop from the full size image..



You can pretty clearly see the hazy glow I'm talking about and the way overexposed lights of the boathouse.

Dan

 

[Buckster]

I like it overall, but agree with you on the points you've already raised: On the horizon line - it should come down to the top third line or so. I'd probably try to extend the height, rather than lose the bottom of the composition you already have. You need to deal with the overexposure/haze issues on the left side of the composition in your next try - maybe a few bracketed exposures in that area, then selectively layer them into the final composition later and mask down to the properly exposed bits. The yellow color of the lights don't bother me so much, but you could always put a cool filter over it in post and then mask and feather your way to a more pleasing mix in those areas.

Two other things come to mind when I view this: Your copyright notice is unnecessarily GINORMOUS, and I think the red reflections are a tad too saturated and slightly magenta - I'd dial them back just a bit.

 

[Frequency]

Excellent to see as such...but i could not see it enlarged.... it takes much time ....

 

[DanPower]

Thanks guys, yep frequency it's a big file... You should see the full-size JPG... 24,000px wide and about 20Mb

Buckster, thanks for the comments.. I was thinking of the height and I will probably use my 18-55 at about 45 or 50 next time. I really liked the water which is why the shoreline is so high but it when I got them stitched together, I realised it was way too high. I tried removing some of the water to make it fit better but it didn't look as good with the reflections cut off.

I'll work on the left hand side, I'll probably head down there tonight and have another go. I'll try for a shot earlier with a bit more sunlight, maybe that will balance it out a bit better. I'll wait til it gets a bit darker and try what you suggested with multiple shots and masks too. The reds I tried to reduce but they seem burnt into the image (overexposed but only the red channel), no amount of saturation changes are making a difference there. I might try multiple exposures and masks there too...

EDIT: I was just thinking about the red lights, they flash at irregular intervals... like 1sec on, 1sec off x3 then 5sec off or something... I might be able to time the shots so I only capture one flash instead of all three which is what I tried to do last time.

Also re: the watermark I'm not sure what happened there, Lightroom usually spits it out heaps smaller than that, but the watermark is set to print proportional so it might have gotten confused with the size of the file. Will double check that next time.

Thanks again.