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I'm doing a little project for a friend which involves creating a panorama of a scene down at Balmoral here in Sydney.

Here in Sydney we've been having glorious sunrise skies here of late - each morning I'd look out my bedroom and bathroom windows and see this fabulous sky out east and wish I was out there shooting. Monday and Tuesday had very nice skies so I figured I'd try my luck on Wednesday morning and head out early and see what transpires. The sun is rising later at this time of year but it still requires a 5AM start to get there early enough - I arrived before 6AM, about 50 minutes before the 6:40AM sunrise.

Note: You can click through these small images to much larger versions which are easier to view

As I'm doing these for a friend to print large I would appreciate useful any feedback on them - thanks...

This first pano was taken at 6AM and is the result of stitching 8 frames taken at 29mm (with the trusty Nikon 16-35/4) with exposure times ranging from 120 seconds down to 40 seconds @ f/9 at ISO 200 (I bumped the ISO so the exposure times wouldn't be too ridiculous). I actually took most of the pano sets going in reverse from right to left (I normally tend to shoot panos from left to right). I did this because it might take quite a few minutes to finish the whole set and as the sun is rising all the time and the sky/ambient is getting brighter as I'm going through the set I wanted to start with the brightest part of the scene first and work my way around to the darkest (which would brighten up a bit more by the time I got around there )

Even with it being 40 minutes before sunrise you can see there's quite a bit of colour in the sky and the long exposures have helped here

Balmoral Evening


This second pano was taken just before sunrise at 6:32AM and is the result of stitching 9 frames taken at 20mm with exposure times of 2 or 3 seconds @ f/13 at ISO 100. I'd actually taken 12 frames for this set for a full 360 degree panorama but I didn't stitch that (yet)

Burning Sunrise over Balmoral

Rodney, I quite like both images but what I find most frustrating in both is the fact that the dominant tree is cut off at the crown and the uninteresting foreground. Is a re-shoot possible in order to address those points?

i agree with geoff. there isnt enuf in the foreground to hold much inteest and i think the tree would be far more interesting. for me these look too processed and over saturated aswell just quietly.
that aside, can i just say...the whole right to left pano thing to capture the light...the fact that you are so self aware and deliberate to take that into account...well i mean farrkkk...what can i say other than...

unfortunately, I have to agree with both comments.
I like both pictures, but I would prefer less foreground
and see the top of the dominating trees.

I think the composition of the first one is much stronger and even cropping up to just below the circle around the tree improves it greatly.

I think there are a few ways you may be able to improve if you shoot again.

For this sort of image, the horizon needs to be exactly in the middle when you shoot to keep it straight. You then crop in from top or bottom later. Both visually and by proportions assuming you haven't cropped, it appears to be a touch low.

I don't think cropping the top of the trees matters, it's just a question of what the best proportion should be for the finished image.

I don't know what camera you're using. With the D3s or D800 I'd probably be happy to go to 1600ISO, certainly 800, if shorter exposures were desirable. I'd expect you could go to at least 400 with little cost.

It's conventional to have the camera in portrait mode and about 30% overlap. If you want to be quick you could always shoot in landscape, especially since you can do it at 16mm if necessary. I'd be inclined to try for subtle realistic HDR as well. Rather than bracketing, shoot say three sequences at different compensations. Then you can either pick one or combine them.

Geoff M wrote:Rodney, I quite like both images but what I find most frustrating in both is the fact that the dominant tree is cut off at the crown and the uninteresting foreground

Rooz wrote:i agree with geoff. there isnt enuf in the foreground to hold much inteest and i think the tree would be far more interesting. for me these look too processed and over saturated aswell just quietly.

zafra52 wrote:unfortunately, I have to agree with both comments. I like both pictures, but I would prefer less foreground and see the top of the dominating trees.

Thanks guys - note that cropping the images is likely a given - I've included the full uncropped images at this stage.

I should probably also have given a little more detail with the brief which may also provide more context... the couple were married in the pavilion on the left and then headed over the bridge onto the island on the right - so all three elements hold a special significance and they a) wanted to be able to see all three, b) have them approx the same size/presence in the image, c) try not to have people in the image

The small area where I took the panos from was one of the few spots in the whole area (and I did try a number of different spots) where you could see all three important elements in the clear where they weren't merged or covered buy other things like trees, the concrete wall, etc. Personally I would have liked to have shot the scene from much further away with a more tele (I even tried one which I don't mind except the pavilion is half covered by a tree) - a chainsaw is probably the only option

that aside, can i just say...the whole right to left pano thing to capture the light...the fact that you are so self aware and deliberate to take that into account...well i mean farrkkk...what can i say other than...

Thanks Chris

I did shoot one from this spot at a wider focal length which shows that closest tree in the middle - here it is with a lot of the grass cropped from the bottom

Murray Foote wrote:I think the composition of the first one is much stronger and even cropping up to just below the circle around the tree improves it greatly.

Thanks Murray

For this sort of image, the horizon needs to be exactly in the middle when you shoot to keep it straight. You then crop in from top or bottom later. Both visually and by proportions assuming you haven't cropped, it appears to be a touch low.

For all but the first set of source images (which I wanted to take quickly before it got too light) the horizon (well by the electronic level) was pretty close to bang on middle with the source frames but I've done a little cropping and content aware fill for some gaps after stitching

I don't know what camera you're using. With the D3s or D800 I'd probably be happy to go to 1600ISO, certainly 800, if shorter exposures were desirable. I'd expect you could go to at least 400 with little cost.

Yep - the D600 has the same ISO performance as the D800 so I'm not concerned on that front - In this case I wanted the longer shutter (esp for the first) - just not too rediculously long - I was OK with 1-2 mins per frame - just not 4+ mins

It's conventional to have the camera in portrait mode and about 30% overlap. If you want to be quick you could always shoot in landscape, especially since you can do it at 16mm if necessary. I'd be inclined to try for subtle realistic HDR as well. Rather than bracketing, shoot say three sequences at different compensations. Then you can either pick one or combine them.

Yep - all the source frames I took were vertical (portrait) and I generally use about 50% (or a bit less) overlap - I find it's just easy to rotate the camera till the edge of frame is near where the centre was before.

I didn't try any HDR brackets this time but I did take some last time but didn't use them

With respect to HDR it just struck me that it might help to hold back the inside of the rotunda and bring out a bit more shadow detail, especially in the big clump of bush in front of the pink clouds.

I prefer this last version to the others, although I think
a bit more sky on top the trees and just a little less
forground would be better.

I agree it could help to crop up further from the bottom. I'm not sure that more trees would help because that would tend to take your eye out more into the sky rather than across the harbour.