Lansing Bridge Panorama

Ysarex · May 20, 2012

You know how you shoot all those multi-frame panoramas and never get around to assembling them? I love to shoot panoramas, but it can take me awhile to finally put them together. Oh dear do I have a backlog!

Here's one I finally assembled today that was shot back in 2005 -- three frames. This is the bridge at Lansing Iowa. It's my favorite Mississippi river bridge (I've seen them all). The trick to this shot is it was done hand-held from a moving canoe.

Joe

Buckster · May 20, 2012

Nicely done, and a very interesting bridge!

Ernicus · May 20, 2012

Pretty cool. Makes me wish I had a long bridge nearby to shoot. Our bridges are tiny. lol. I think there is a decent on out near Eastport though, you just sparked a task for me, lol thanks.

I used paintshop pro and adobe in playing with my pans. I found adobe soooooo much quicker and easier...needing very little touch up. I did both manually assembling and auto assembling and with adobe, there was not much difference. I really like how it does it. It did make for some color issues and exposure issues I had to correct doing upright panaoramas on short buildings, but other than that, I love it.

I can't find my 3 shot one, but here is my 5 shot one. Not very pretty scene, but that wasnt the point, I was testing assembling the shots. It is a view accross the border, the other side of the river is Canada.

480sparky · May 20, 2012

I can easily see the seams in the sky... are you shooting in manual or some form of auto expsure?

Ernicus · May 20, 2012

me or him? lol.

If me, I just used landscape point n shoot, didn't do any editing to speak of. Just wanted to snap a few and see how to put them together. When it's small, you can see discoloration in the sky but when its full size I can't really tell.

many of my pics are testing pics, just testing one or two things, not all things. So there will be errors in most all of them. ;-)

480sparky · May 20, 2012

Ernicus said:
me or him? lol.

If me, I just used landscape point n shoot, didn't do any editing to speak of. Just wanted to snap a few and see how to put them together. When it's small, you can see discoloration in the sky but when its full size I can't really tell.

many of my pics are testing pics, just testing one or two things, not all things. So there will be errors in most all of them. ;-)

It's in the full-size that I noticed it.

Ernicus · May 20, 2012

lol well this is his thread not mine. I'll do more and put them up for c&c I redid it real quick , used different settings, used only 3 images, much better. I was concerned with the detail of riverbank more than the sky at the time, figured it be easier to edit sky than the detail of things on bank.

Ysarex · May 20, 2012

Ernicus said:
me or him? lol.

If me, I just used landscape point n shoot, didn't do any editing to speak of. Just wanted to snap a few and see how to put them together. When it's small, you can see discoloration in the sky but when its full size I can't really tell.

many of my pics are testing pics, just testing one or two things, not all things. So there will be errors in most all of them. ;-)

I'm bettin' it's you. You can find my seams in the water -- I hate cloning those bleep bleep wave seams.

On a seven week canoe trip down the river some camera compromise was in order, but I did at least have a camera that I could lock on manual exposure. When doing a panorama always determine the exposure for the total scene and then lock that in manually. Then use a longer lens and more frames rather than a short lens and fewer frames. I remember trying this with film 25 years ago and grabbing a 28mm lens -- nothing like trying to seam together vignetted corners.

Hey Buckster -- thanks. If I remember correctly you're the bridge man. I recall seeing some spectacular bridge shots of yours. I love this bridge because it seems to be an exercise in engineering minimalism; I can't believe looking at it that the center section doesn't just fall into the river. It has a wonderful baroque approach from up river as there's nearly a 90 degree turn just above the bridge. You don't see it until you make the turn and then you're nearly under it.

Joe