Caprock Sunrise

[Shane]

I am learning how to do panographic images. This is my first try. It's the sunrise over the Caprock from my trip to Briscoe County a couple weeks ago. I went through lots of trial and error before getting it to my liking.

You'll probably have trouble seeing the detail unless you click it to go big, and then you'll have to scroll around to see it all. When you get to the Lightbox, click on larger sizes up at the top. Click on "O" to get the original huge size. It's three shots stitched together using Pixtra Panostitcher.

[DJames]

That's awesome Shane!

[Hawg]

Cool! that makes a big picture.

[Ted]

That's really neat!

[justhrowit]

Pretty cool. I have some pictures of Lake Tahoe that I want to stitch. How is working with Pixtra Panostitcher? Is it fairly easy?

Jay

[Michael]

Very nice, Shane. That looks like a painting, especially the original size. I'd like to attempt some panos.

[DBHIII]

very nice!

[Russell Graves]

Great image, Shane.

[Shane]

Thanks, y'all.

Pretty cool. I have some pictures of Lake Tahoe that I want to stitch. How is working with Pixtra Panostitcher? Is it fairly easy?

Jay

Yes and no. The software is easy to work with - very easy. Just feed in the pics and click a couple of buttons and it puts them all together.

I am figuring out that you need to do proper planning when taking the pics to get it to work. I just had the idea to try it when I was out at the canyons taking pics, so I shot a couple of 3-shot groups in hopes of trying it later.

When taking the pics, I tried to have as small of an overlap between frames as possible without missing any part of the scene. Well, the software recommends that you get a 30% overlap between frames so that it can easily find the overlaps and stitch them together. Still, even with the small overlaps I had, it didn't have any trouble putting them together.

Then you get to the exposure settings... You need to shoot in manual or Av mode so that you can use the same f/stop on every shot to keep the depth of field the same. I think it probably would be good to shoot manual focus and leave the focus the same on each shot.

In this sunrise shot, I captured just about a 180-degree field of view. That meant that there was a different amount of light through the lens on the two outside (north and south-facing) shots than there was for the middle shot that had the sun in it. Same f/stop, but different shutter speeds. Auto white balance applied slightly different settings to each shot, and that made the color balance different from frame to frame - especially in the sky.

I had to do some trial and error adjustments in post processing. I processed the middle pic and then used all the same settings for the other two. The skies in the outside pics came out darker than the middle one (in the overlap edges it was noticable), so I had to boost the exposure level in those two pics. Each one required a different value, but I finally guessed right on them and got them evened out. Then I had to go back and set the white balance adjustments to the exact same values as the middle pic had. That made the sky colors blend smoothly in the "joints".

I also discovered that I didn't have my tripod/camera set up level and plum. I was about 2 degrees off. It required a little extra cropping in the pano creation, and then I had to level the horizon in the pano pic once I got it stitched together. Again, meticulous planning would have prevented some extra steps later.

I just tried to stitch together another group of shots I took that day, but it came out in a U-shape. I shot it at 22mm, and the camera tilt I had caused some lens diffraction. Once the shots were combined, the diffraction caused the pano to come out heavily curved.

Next time, I'll shoot twice as many shots with a longer focal length to avoid this. The shot I posted here was shot at 21mm, but I must have just lucked out in having a level camera tilt. It didn't curve much on me.

Lots to learn.....

Very nice, Shane. That looks like a painting, especially the original size. I'd like to attempt some panos.

Michael, I'm sure you'll have less trouble than me. I didn't read any instructions before diving in. I guess that would be my best recommendation so far....read up on how to do it somewhere before trying it.

[Sika]

Pretty country.

[justin156bc]

Wow

[huntmaster]

yee ha, ain't that cool

[Devin]

Very well done, Shane!

[Legdog]

very cool... very nice skill to have in the photography arsenal

[stan]

Amazing.