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John Chardine
06-20-2008, 02:47 PM
Here's a panorama of four images created at the Bonaventure Island gannet colony last weekend using the Photomerge action within Photoshop CS3. Bonaventure is now probably the largest gannetry in the world and this image, which only shows a small portion of the colony, attempts to give a sense of this.

D40, 17-40 mm @ 17mm
capture date: Monday, June 16, 2008 3:09:30 PM
exposure program: Manual
ISO speed: 400
shutter speed: 1/320
aperture: f11.0
exposure bias: +0.0
metering: Pattern

Brian Wong
06-20-2008, 04:26 PM
Hi John!

I love the repeating patterns of the birds in this panorama! There is also a nice left to right diagonal flow.

My only comment is with how CS3 handles some types of panoramas (of which it gives the operator very little control). In looking at the far horizon, I can see the tell-tail "hills" and "valleys" of each of your stitched frames.

The colony must have been amazing to witness, and yes, your panorama definitely gives that impression!

David Kennedy
06-21-2008, 12:51 PM
John,
Brian makes some very good observations about your images. I agree that the stitch is not seamless the way one would expect it to be--this can happen with handheld stitches and tripod-mounted stitches alike when the lens is not rotated along the entrance pupil. It can also occur in CS3 for no "real" reason--CS3's automerge is very good, but it occasionally falls short of my own gold standard, AutoPano Pro.

As for the composition, I worry that there are no clear "start" and "end" points on the edges. The left edge ends abruptly in the forested area, the top ends too quickly, cutting off the treeline and leaving too little buffer between the top and the horizon line of the ocean, and the right and bottom edges are cutting birds in half. It would be nice to have a little more separation among the birds on the latter two edges--you might consider cropping in to find a new, more "suitable" edge.
I would be tempted to crop inwards (to the right) on the left edge to eliminate some of the distracting trees. I would also think about adding canvas at the top to restore some of the sky. All of this, followed by a boost in contrast, would improve this image in my opinion. Thanks for sharing with us!

Arthur Morris
06-21-2008, 02:03 PM
I like the framing that includes the single bird on the bottom left. I did the same thing with a similar fish-eye image. I will leave the rest to my expert friends above.

John Chardine
06-21-2008, 08:18 PM
Many thanks for all the very valuable comments. I'm not too experienced with panos. I did hand hold and I suspected that the stitch might be tough because there was so much rotation involved in capturing the four images. I'm going to work on this one.

Arthur Morris
06-22-2008, 05:41 AM
I have been doing lots of handheld stitching and use CS3's Photomerge and have not had a problem with horizons (at least as far as I can see...) Sometimes, after I merge the images, there are tiny vertical gaps, but when I flatten the layers they disappear.

Robert Amoruso
06-22-2008, 07:32 AM
Interesting image and problem John on how to capture this as a pano that the moderators and contributors are discussing. I understand David's comments on the starting and stopping edges but think that given the subject, finding an ending on the right is going to be problematic and on the left including more forest is anti-climatic as it is not the subject of the image. I do agree with Brian that the diagonal is a good compositional element. The image could use a contrast boast.

If it was possible, I think moving right might have allowed you to get the left forest edge parallel to the frame edge - giving a nice framing terminus to the image. I find the slanted - left to right from bottom to top - distracting. I would then have continued to pan right to get the colony right to its edge and let the diagonal slope of the shore terminate closer to the bottom edge.

Would this have resulted in a better image - perhaps. It would have given you more cropping options. As far as the top of the frame, the sky is pretty drab looking so the less of it the better. Crop out the uneven horizon line.

Arthur Morris
06-22-2008, 07:55 AM
For a different (fish-eye) interpretation of the same scene, click here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?p=100541#post100541