Chattanooga TN Pano 21 pic stitch

[Hooker771]

I took this one these this evening on my way home. I think it turned out pretty good. I still give thanks to this forum and specifically bitter J for the tip on live view not focusing. These were handheld, and next time ill use the tripod at dusk (didnt have it with me.)

 

[fokker]

'tis a cool pano

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Thats pretty cool. I still see a little bit of banding, if I nit pick. Only important if this was to be printed large and sold. How did you go about metering this one.

Also I'd love to see this bigger, can you post it, say, 2000ish pixels wide? I know it won't fit on the screen. But I really want to get into the image :thumbup:

 

[Hooker771]

Bitter, im not really sure how to do that as far as pixels go and im not going to sell it but may blow it up a bit and print for my office. Im going to keep going back until I like it, I brought my tripod today just in case. The "Original" is over 10,000 pixels on my flickr account and way too big to post here. It is a bit grainy due to me shooting at 400 iso im afraid, so I have something else to try tonight. Below is a single shot from last night, this is not one from the pano. As far as metering, I have all the settings on manual and as I rotated my body/camera around I would adjust the shutter speed to try to keep the needle in the middle. Not very scientific but when the sun is setting and the light so different from one side to the next it seemed easiest to do. I also shot all of these shots at ap 2.8 for the light, but may try to up that with the tripod.

Suggestions on technique?

If you want to see the original size you can go here, as I dont know how to reduce it to 2000. If someone else wants to that is fine by me.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hooker771/4272365681/sizes/o/in/photostream/http://www.flickr.com/photos/hooker771/4272278193/sizes/o/in/photostream/

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

You can change the size using pixels as your variable in most editing softwares.


Ah...I believe you need to set your exposure once and take all the shots. In your image it goes from (the sky) dark to light, so I would meter the middle, then start taking the sequence with the same settings throughout. You changed your settings, metering for each segment, thus the banding.

 

[Hooker771]

Ill try that. Thanks.

I just thought the left side (more shadows) would be too dark.

 

[fokker]

Yeah I was always under the impression that you would want to set the camera to one exposure settting in manual mode then just take all the pics at that same setting. In my experience this does tend to show the sky (in particular) going from dark to light, or vice versa, but it's gradual and often looks natural anyway. Having bands between you've stitched the photos together would be far worse IMO.

 

[NateWagner]

also, one thing you can do is tie a string with a weight at the bottom to the front(? I think) of the lens. Then as you rotate make sure the string stays in the same spot. The rotation should be around the lens not the camera (not that it will make that much of a difference).

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Ah, so you pivot from the lens, rather than at the tripod?

 

[fokker]

Can't see it making a big difference when you're shooting something relatively far away. If it was something quite close then I guess it would be the right way to do it.

 

[Hooker771]

Seems like if you were close up that would make it look more fish eye? I cant wrap my brain around it, but will try it one day.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Look up Pano tripod heads. That's exactly what they do!

 

[fokker]

Look up Pano tripod heads. That's exactly what they do!

Interesting

For those of you unfamiliar with Panoramic, QTVR, and Super Megapixel photography the need for a panoramic tripod head may not be understood. A standard camera tripod is designed to hold and rotate a camera around the tripod mounting hole of the camera. This hole is located arbitrarily somewhere on the camera body. However, to take accurate panoramic photos it is important that the camera be mounted and then rotated around what is called the optical center (sometimes called the nodal point or entrance pupil) of the camera's lens. This ensures that optical distortion, called parallax distortion, will not be introduced into your pictures before they are then stitched together using computer software. Many people use panoramic tripod heads to not only take wide vista shots, but also to take 360 degree QTVR photos and photo mosaics (multi-row megapixel panoramas).

 

[Hooker771]

I did this one today at lunch and took Bitters advice. I used a tripod this time. Problem is it was hazy and I didnt have the better light I had last night but I think I did better with the banding and that is essentially what I was trying out. I left everything on Manual metered to the middle and fired away.

Too bad I got chased off the property I was shooting from, may not be able to go back.

 

[boogschd]

@ op

the link says the page is private :/

but anyway great job with the panoramic!
i do panoramics (handheld usually) myself but i never get to places such as ths :/

/me is envious