Hi-rez test with PTGui to make blended HDR panoramas
This is a rare moment for me; uploading a full-size photo to Flickr. It is watermarked but I dont really mind about the security of this as it is a test and I wanted you all to see the quality.
This was made hastily the other night; great sunset from my roof, me on my way out of the door to go and teach some students.
It’s a nice illustration of how good the source material is from making blended HDR panoramas in PTGui.
Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ f/4.5
5-shot bracketed burst [one-stop spacing]
Four shots to make up the panorama.
Approx 231degree horizontal field of view.
Images stitched and HDR blended in PTGui.
Mild post-pro done in Photoshop afterwards, with Nik3 filters: tonal contrast, brilliance+warmth.
Saved at 80% quality through Pshop’s ‘Save for Web’ function.
8 comments
Alfie Goodrich wrote...
PTGui is pretty good, especially when you start tweaking the stitch control-points yourself. I am pleased with this so am now off out as of tomorrow to shoot some 360's. Cos the major flaw in this stuff is its coverage. If you wanna cut out a rectangle, to make the thing look more 'normal', then you obviously need lots of the landscape above and below the eye's midpoint.
Thanks mate.
jonny taise wrote...
the full-size is amazing! such clarity! what was the shutter speed, as I can see no people!!!!
great poster material!!
Mugen Proxy wrote...
a lot of work, but worth it. Very nice AJ.
Alfie Goodrich wrote...
Mugen, cheers. It's nice to be experimenting with new methodologies and this technique is now set for a proper test-flight asap. I am not an HDR nut and as people have seen, I like the ones that look more 'natural'. So, finding some techniques to shoot pans and HDR together has been fun. Now to find a subject that will make you, me and everyone else go 'Wow!'. :-)
Alfie Goodrich wrote...
Jono: dont recall the shutter-speeds exactly. Will look at the EXIF. But, I was balancing the camera on the wall and the speeds were not soooo slow. Maybe something like 30th sec as the base, dropping to 8th sec for the longest exposure.
Milena Velikova wrote...
Looks very beautiful! Good panorama-effect :)
racewagons wrote...
I love this! Im going to look into this PTGui, I've always done HDR in photomatix and panoramas in photoshop but this came out so clean...
wow-wee. that's some amazing stitching! I put in a bid a few years ago to do some pixel-pushing for company who needed panoramas stitched. I thought I had a major trick up my sleeve, because I knew of the existence of auto-stitching software... so I won the contract, and soon found out that the software completely failed. (the images were of 360's taken from a balloon-cam in downtown Vancouver, ~60,000px-across once stitched, they were destined for a mural so they had to be PERFECT) so anyway, I ended up having to stitch them all by hand for an entire week... This is flawless at full-res. Nice shot!