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I felt the need to zone out for a bit tonight so I allowed myself to be dragged out to the city by my dad and we had a bit of a sticky beak.

I just thought i would share this pano stitch that I took from the Cahill Expressway.



Click for larger image.

Thanks for having a look. PS: I redone the old version from CS2 the old one, for comparison as per Greg's request

Great work there Cameron! That is one of the best panoramic shots I've seen in a long time! It's seamless - couldn't even tell that you had to stitch it all together. Most importantly though was the fact that you've got exposure pretty consistent as far as I can see throughout and it looks like one big picture! I feel like I can even see stars twinking in that inky darkness which is the sky. Darn it's real nice!

Now if the great result from producing that image doesn't inspire you to finish your thesis Im not sure what will!

Very nice,

I would buy that if I was a tourist

Great work !

Mic

gummi wrote:Great work there Cameron! That is one of the best panoramic shots I've seen in a long time! It's seamless - couldn't even tell that you had to stitch it all together. Most importantly though was the fact that you've got exposure pretty consistent as far as I can see throughout and it looks like one big picture! I feel like I can even see stars twinking in that inky darkness which is the sky. Darn it's real nice!

Now if the great result from producing that image doesn't inspire you to finish your thesis Im not sure what will!

Thanks mate! If you look very closely there is a bit of a diagonal stitch line (courtesy of PS CS2 - I dont own any fancy stitching or HDR software) to the left of the opera house, I think I will have to whack it through CS2 and use 'advanced blending' later on. There are a few stars in that sky, you can find a few near the coat hanger if you look at the large version

I took this as a set of shots using the 50mm end of my Tamron SP 17-50mm f/2.8 (on the D300 which was sitting ontop of a Manfrotto 055) to reduce the amount of distortion. The overseas passenger terminal got a bit of a burn in after stitching though.

This is a similiar image taken at 17mm using the same setup, this is a single image that has not been processed.



Sadly this just makes me want to go out there and take more pictures!

mic wrote:Very nice,
I would buy that if I was a tourist
Great work !

Thanks Mic...how much are you going to offer??

Cameron

Nice pano. Maybe you can get the thesis wrapped up early and make the 2x2 meet next Saturday night for some more shots like this

Cameron,

That's a fantastic image and if I were you, I'd be very proud of it.

I'm sure there are much larger versions of this image, but to be a little critical, the stitching is evident in the larger one you've made available to us. I can count four stitching lines and as you've mentioned, the easiest one to see is to the left of the Opera House. There is a major one also running through the northern end of the coat hanger.

The image is superbly sharp and the colour rendition is fantastic. I think it would definitely be worth putting a little more effort into getting this image right. I know plenty of people who would pay decent money for an image like that in their home/office.

Great job.

Cheers

While I agree with the other comments, there is also one ither thing that troubles me about this image.

In the sky, to the right of the coathanger, in the same horizontal plane as the top of the northern pylon, and just to the left of the cross on the building just back from the harbour foreshores .... there's what looks like a flying V, but not a Gibson.

Perhaps a stray Virgin? It just looks like a dust bunny in the smaller versions: do check the large one.

gstark wrote:In the sky, to the right of the coathanger, in the same horizontal plane as the top of the northern pylon, and just to the left of the cross on the building just back from the harbour foreshores .... there's what looks like a flying V, but not a Gibson.

Perhaps a stray Virgin? It just looks like a dust bunny in the smaller versions: do check the large one.

I too spotted this Gary. I'm not sure it would be a dust bunny though as it does not appear anywhere else in the pano, as you should expect from a stitch taken at the same time with the same body???

Perhaps it's a UFO???

Cheers

gasgasgas wrote:

gstark wrote:In the sky, to the right of the coathanger, in the same horizontal plane as the top of the northern pylon, and just to the left of the cross on the building just back from the harbour foreshores .... there's what looks like a flying V, but not a Gibson.

Perhaps a stray Virgin? It just looks like a dust bunny in the smaller versions: do check the large one.

I too spotted this Gary. I'm not sure it would be a dust bunny though as it does not appear anywhere else in the pano, as you should expect from a stitch taken at the same time with the same body???

It's not a dust bunny; it actually contains the letter "V", hence my comments.

Great image Cameron. I'm jealous. I still haven't managed a pano I would post here, or anywhere. So far they have all been consigned. Sigh.

Re Big V. Isn't he a member here??? On to a more serious suggestion... Could it bea seagull captured in flight? at the right point in the wing stroke, it would look like this.

wow - great panorama and some great colours coming through in the lights!

composition works well with my eye being drawn back and forth between the bridge and the opera house.

A little bit of a cleanup in the cs2 auto blends (even just playing with layer masks would probably do it) and this would be truly awesome!

Thanks guys, i will have to go back and fix these images and replace the post. I am not sure about that 'v' it is very strange.

gasgasgas wrote:
Perhaps it's a UFO???

Assuming it is flying, then, by definition, it is!

great pano.
its what i plan to do next weekend. I was at vivid last sunday and will post a pic or two.

but, the big shame is the harbour bridge has two sections that arent lit... it just looks wrong and ruined a lot of my shots !!

also, i didnt realise that the opera house lighting is constantly changing to unique colors and patterns. its not preset like the MCA...

cant wait for next saturday night. i might even lug the pano head in !!!

Reschsmooth wrote:

gasgasgas wrote:
Perhaps it's a UFO???

Assuming it is flying, then, by definition, it is!

Unless of course, we identify it, then it becomes the much rarer IFO
They're quite common really, but very few are flagged as IFO's

nice work cam, good to see you getting out there, Great Pano as for the UFO's, you chaps are looking way too hard...

Mr Darcy wrote:

Reschsmooth wrote:

gasgasgas wrote:
Perhaps it's a UFO???

Assuming it is flying, then, by definition, it is!

Unless of course, we identify it, then it becomes the much rarer IFO
They're quite common really, but very few are flagged as IFO's

And then, if it lands, it becames an IFFO?

Does anyone have any tips as to how to remove the stitch lines in the pano?? I only have CS2 and have not been able to find the auto-blends tool and manually stitching means the pictures do not quite line up....very strange.

I really like this pano, but now that I have found the stitch lines I cant help but notice them....

aim54x wrote:Does anyone have any tips as to how to remove the stitch lines in the pano?? I only have CS2 and have not been able to find the auto-blends tool and manually stitching means the pictures do not quite line up....very strange.

If you were using separate stitching software then I would recommend SmartBlend, but I don't know how you would use that with CS2. I use Smartblend as part of Hugin for my panos.

I guess you could use the old manual method I used to use. Pick two layers, set the top one's layer mode to Difference, then select a line from top to bottom through the areas with the least difference. This probably not a straight line. This is basically what Smartblend does for you automatically.

Daniel

aim54x wrote:Does anyone have any tips as to how to remove the stitch lines in the pano?? I only have CS2 and have not been able to find the auto-blends tool and manually stitching means the pictures do not quite line up....very strange.

It's been a while since I used CS2 (man it's scary saying that - I remember when Adobe introduced layers in Photoshop v3.0 ) - doesn't the photomerge function provide layered results? perhaps that was introduced in CS3 or 4

Another app I've played with in the past is PTGui http://www.ptgui.com/ there's a 30day trial available and it does produce layered stitches.

Although my personal recommendation (if you can afford it) is to upgrade to CS4 - apart from the fact they decided to move away from standard gui components (at least on Windows), it's a real treat and the photomerge quality is pretty sweet!

Cheers,

John

I managed to get a friend to do it for me in autopano pro and it looks really good now!

I have updated the files so have a look at the pictures again and let me know.

Cameron, much better stitching now. Would have been happier if you had left the original and posted the new version in a different post though. A-B comparison is much more reliable than memory (especially after a glass of wine)

Glad to see that the ghost of big V is still hovering over the zoo

The star above the HB bothers me now. Looks like a hot pixel. Oddly it didn't before, and the one over the OH still doesn't.

Hugin was mentioned in an earlier post. That is a freeware/opensource tool, so it is the right price for an impoverished student. May be worth looking into.http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

I'd buy the image too if it was on a postcard!

I didn't notice everything everyone pointed out initially, but after seeing both pics, that is heaps better now Cameron. Darn it, makes me want to go out and try to take my own pano shots!

Now if we had our D700's (or even better D3x's) do you think the increased resolution would allow us to capture somebody moonbaking on one of them distant rooftops? I'd imagine that would explain why the UFO is hovering in the night sky right? They're probably thinking: "These darn earthlings and their strange fertility practices!" It is heartening to think though that in all this starry universe even the aliens aren't immune to a bit of voyeurism and flyin' out on their saucers for a bit of a perve. Talk about Candid camera on Cameron's camera!

Now does anyone know of any places on the North side of the bridge where we could possibly get the opera house & harbour bridge framing the shot as well? We might even be able to play spot the photographer on the other side if we could! It would be an interesting comparison with Cameron's current pano shot.