NDR: Playing with panoramas

Not underwater but I was standing on slippery, seaweed covered rocks in the dark so it was at least somewhat dive related. This was my first pano attempt and my leveling was less than perfect - see the dark and slippery part - but overall I'm pretty excited about this image.

Portsmouth NH

Nikon D2H w/ 85mm 1.4 lens about 45 minutes before sunrise. This is 14 images taken in vertical format stiched together

Larry,

very cool and nice job!

did you use a pano tripod head? also what tool did you use to stitch the images? it's very seemless.

-- will

Will,

Thanks. I used a regular Kirk BH-3 Ballhead. As I learned from doing this the tripod itself needs to be level - next time. I used Autostitch to stitch the images. It's a very simple program to use. I'm sure that there are much more powerful and full featured programs available but since this was my first attempt and something I was experimenting with I didn't want to have to learn a complicated piece of software. I was extremely pleased with the result and, like I said, it couldn't be easier to use.

Larry,

That's cool. I also have been thinking about this. I have the software and just havent done it yet. How many images is that? Can you make a 360 quicktime file?

Joe

Joe,

I did this with the intention of creating a large photo mural so I haven't explored the possibility of using Quicktime although that is an interesting idea. The image was made from 14 separate photos - all shot in vertical format. I just kind of guestimated the overlap.

This is something I'd really like to apply underwater but it would take more time and experimentation than I usually have on a trip.

Here's a little different version. It was shot a little later so the lighting is different and it doesn't have the same sweep but I did get the leveling right. It was shot with my 24-120VR lens at 110mm and was made from 9 images, again all shot in vertical format and stitched with Autostitch. I can't even tell where the images are stitched.

Portmouth NH 2

One trick I discovered: when I first created this one the sky was different tones so I went back and when I did my conversions from RAW I checked a piece of sky in the upper left hand corner and adjusted the exposure on each one to read a value of 211.

That is just totally awesome.