| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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My new vantage point is 190 Metres, about 600 ft elevation with views which include Morecambe, the Fylde coast, North Wales, the Isle of Man, the Duddon estuary and of course the western Lake District. According to Google, the IoM is 53 miles to the central mountain area.
I read a comment recently, probably on this forum, that the Lightroom pano stitching feature is better than the equivalent feature found in the Photoshop 'Automate' section. According to my recent experience using the latest CC 2015, software, neither are infallible.
So far I have spent two evenings at my new vantage point, collected over 500 images most of which are sequences, intended to be used to create stitched panoramas. My first attempts were with my 300mm f2.8 MF lens on my D200, but at this stage I found that needed too many images to create a worthwhile panorama. I also used the D3100 with the 18-105 @ 105, but in low light the sensor noise rules the D3100 out, the 'noise' is horrendous, far worse than the D200 even.
I have good (very heavy!) tripod and a nice solid video head which can be levelled, I am using the D200 viewfinder grid to help me maintain about a 25% overlap at each side of every image, so each image 'throws away' at least 50% of it's content. I read somewhere that I should be throwing away 60%...?
I have found the Nikkor 50mm f1.4 is pretty good in very low light, the coverage is about right but it seems to suffer from vignetting which is showing up badly in the Photoshop stitched pano's, I have had to resort to manually correcting the uneven patches of darker sky. I plan to try the Nikkor 55mm f2.8 Micro lens next, if this wonderful weather holds long enough.
One sequence of about 5 images I took with the D1x and the Nikkor 300mm f2.8 @ f2.8, of the Isle of Man over 20 Minutes after sunset, i.e. quite low light, I can clearly see two of the radio masts on top of Snaefell. Stopped down a little in daylight would be an interesting comparison. Maybe on a clear winters day?
I am finding both Lightroom and Photoshop pano stitching features hard work, I have found another dedicated stitcher,
http://www.boltnev.com/panoramastitcher/
But although it isn't very expensive I have a feeling it may be a bit simplistic? Lightroom simply give up with a message that there isn't enough information in the images to stitch them??? Photoshop seems to be working then produces an image with some of the exposures stitched but several below on the same canvas unused, which I then have to extend the canvas, then layer the unused exposures into position by increasing the transparency of the upper image then slide the next exposure under the pano to align it, then use the auto align and blend controls to finish the job. Repeated for each unused exposure...
So far my widest stitched panorama is about 30,500 pixels wide, by about 2000 high. It's extremely interesting and very enjoyable. So far the challenges have been getting the camera level and steady, vignetting, ensuring a consistent overlap and getting the software to play nicely, although I am getting more familiar with manual stitching techniques!
This is the D1X / Nikkor 300mm f2.8, @ f2.8 1/10 Sec, Pano which Lightroom refused to do, Photoshop did it, all bar the last two exposures which I had to add manually.
The full image is 11,500 pixels wide by 1,900 high so I can't post that here!!!
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Robert.