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Michael Pancier
01-15-2008, 06:09 AM
I used Photomerge in Photoshop CS 3 to combine these six images and it did a decent job me thinks.

The images were taken in manual mode;

5d w/17-40L with Singh Ray 2 stop NDGF
ISO 200
32mm
f/16
1/10

David Kennedy
01-15-2008, 01:38 PM
This image has a nice feel to it, although I feel that it might have benefited from a touch more foreground and a hair less sky. Also, it might be good to try tweaking a little more brightness out of it with Curves--I feel like some details are being lost in the shadows. There might be some vignetting in the URH corner--I cannot tell at this size.

I like the control of the edges, and while it might have been nice to have a little bit more of the left and less of the right side of the frame, that would have shifted Zabriskie Point itself to the center, so I think you did the right thing here.

Michael Pancier
01-15-2008, 02:04 PM
This image has a nice feel to it, although I feel that it might have benefited from a touch more foreground and a hair less sky. Also, it might be good to try tweaking a little more brightness out of it with Curves--I feel like some details are being lost in the shadows. There might be some vignetting in the URH corner--I cannot tell at this size.

I like the control of the edges, and while it might have been nice to have a little bit more of the left and less of the right side of the frame, that would have shifted Zabriskie Point itself to the center, so I think you did the right thing here.

I always lose a lot of foreground when I do the pano crop.

I'm just thinking whether for shooting pano, I need to overcompensate by adding additional foreground? thanks for the suggestions.

David Kennedy
01-15-2008, 05:28 PM
I always lose a lot of foreground when I do the pano crop.

Keeping everything independently level (your tripod legs, as well as your panning platform/ball head) has a dramatic effect on the amount of foreground that might be "lost" in the stitching process. Everyone keeps telling me that Photomerge has improved but I've not yet tried it, even though I have CS3 (it's on my to-do list, really! :)), but in Autopano, my software of choice, I tend to stitch with either a spherical or cylindrical projection. Both of these can help save foreground more so than "flat" projections. If Photomerge has those options, they would be worth exploring.

Michael Pancier
01-15-2008, 06:44 PM
Keeping everything independently level (your tripod legs, as well as your panning platform/ball head) has a dramatic effect on the amount of foreground that might be "lost" in the stitching process. Everyone keeps telling me that Photomerge has improved but I've not yet tried it, even though I have CS3 (it's on my to-do list, really! :)), but in Autopano, my software of choice, I tend to stitch with either a spherical or cylindrical projection. Both of these can help save foreground more so than "flat" projections. If Photomerge has those options, they would be worth exploring.

Photomerge does have various options. I just started using it; guess it's time to play ....

I have a leveling base on my tripod and use a bubble level on the hot shoe, so i'm pretty straight in that dept. :D

Robert Amoruso
01-16-2008, 01:35 PM
Michael,

When I was doing my landscape workshop at Bosque I told everyone to frame looser to accommodate the eventual cropping required in the pano. Leveling is essential as you already know but I don't bother finding the nodal point on my Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS which I use a lot for panos since I am zooming and the nodal point is changing and I am lazy.

So frame loser and give yourself room to crop.

I agree with the comments for more room on the bottom and a curves correct to bring up the brightness in the image. Beautiful scene.