Pano newbie question

[radar]

Hi,

on the NZ trip I did recently, I was at the top of the Treble Cone ski area. It gives a magnificient view of the Mt Aspiring Nat Park. So I thought it would make a great panorama. Made sure everything was level, took 8 photos in this series. It was probably around 1pm, only time I could be there, so high sun. I had my CPL on.

Each individual photo comes out pretty good. I used a trial version of PTgui to put them together. What I find is that because of the CPL and the changing angle of the CPL to the sun as I rotate, I get the various shades of blue, which gives the bands of light/dark blue in the pano.

Question is: am I stuffed or can I save the images to still get my nice pano?

Here is the sample from PTgui. Sorry about the watermarks, it's just the trial version. Click image for a larger version.



thanks,

André

[sheepie]

Something I've learnt on panos is to take the CP off

You may be able to salvage something, but it's going to be difficult

If you like, throw your originals somewhere I can get to and I'll have a play with Pano Factory and see where I can get - it looks like an image worth trying to save.

[rooboy]

Looks like some white balance problems, as well as different exposures. If you shot RAW, make sure you select the whole group, and then convert them using the same settings. If not, have a play with setting the grey point for each image to the same value.

The exposure looks good on both sides, but seems to have wandered in the middle . Again, a play in RAW if you have that option should be able to even this out for you.

Give Autostitch a try, it's free and gives pretty good results without annoying watermarks.

Other than that, the shot looks gorgeous, hopefully with a bit of work we can see the high res version

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[Aussie Dave]

Radar
I think any way you go with this, you're up for some decent photoshop trickery. CPL's and pano's, as mentioned previously, do not mix well (as I am sure many of us can tell you from bitter experience).

Cloning or blending will obviously be a pain to try and do to the entire skyline. I wonder if you could perhaps go out and take a pic of a nice blue sky, or perhaps even another 8 images and pano them together to give you a nice even sky (without the CPL, of course).....then mask everything but the "existing" sky and drop the newly acquired sky over the top.

At least this way the sky will be of the same resolution and if you can mask effectively, you should be able to make it look quite realistic.

One tip might be that when you take the new images of the sky, try making sure the bottom of your images are close to the horizon, so any atmospheric effect (which usually looks whiter) will be present. Then when it is pasted over the top of the existing sky, you will have a nice gradation of blue and it will look more genuine.

Just a thought. We've all gone through this and at least next time you will be better prepared to tackle the "pano".

Let us know how you go with it  PS.. Another friendly tip, when shooting panos, Exposure-Lock OR shooting in Manual mode can be your best friend. This way every image in the series is taken with exactly the same exposure. Shooting in A or S mode (without EL on) can also create similar, disheartening results.

[Wocka]

Radar,

I shot the pano in this thread with the CPL attached and stitched with Panorama Factory. I always save my stitched images in photoshop PSD mode and then sometimes I need to adjust the exposure slighty between the layers to make it look 100%. PF does a pretty good job 95% of the time when you ask it to correct exposure.

Take Sheepie up on his offer or download a trial of PF and try again to see if you get better results.

http://www.dslrusers.net/viewtopic.php?t=14187&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=lord+howe

Cheers,

[radar]

Thanks for all that.

One thing I should have mentioned is that I am on a Mac, so Pano Factory and Autostitch won't work yet. But I will be installing a WinXP virtual machine.

Sheepie, thanks for the offer. It would be a pretty big file to transfer, probably around 40Mb. I'll play with it some more as suggested and if I don't get anywhere, I'll take up your offer.

I did keep the CPL constant but not the exposure. As Dave said, should have used manual. Next time I'll also do bracketing, will give me a bit more to work with.

Dave, good idea to get the blue sky picture, may save me some cloning work.

I'll also look at adjusting some of the exposure to try to make it consistant across the range of photos. A fair bit of work but I think if I get it right, it will be worth it. It will still be a worthwhile learning excercise.

For other newbies:

-keep you CPL off when doing panos
-lock your settings, ie shutter and aperture
-doing bracketing is also a good option
-keep things levelled, which I did for this one.
-get a pano head when getting more serious.

Thanks again for all your suggestions.

Hopefully I'll be able to repost a much improved version

cheers,

André

[sheepie]

-get a pano head when getting more serious.

While certainly helping, don't be put off trying panos without one. I haven't got one - in fact, many of my panos have been handheld (probably more testament to the abilities of Pano Factory than my skill)