[Peted]

From a caving trip last weekend.



Used Autostitch, the ground looks okay but it has stuffed up the sky, are there better free programs?

[Don Schaeffer]

I really enjoyed this. The people at the right of the photo came as a surprise and I scanned to the right.

[shuttertalk]

Hey cool! You really appreciate the openness of the wilderness...

I think I tried Panorama Factory before... there's a freeware and paid version:
http://www.panoramafactory.com/

result here:
http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewto...=9989#9989

[Peted]

LOL, that was the plan Don, glad you liked it, wish I had gone all the way around.

Thanks Jules i will give it a try, how many shots was that one you did? I had six separate shots in mine.

[shuttertalk]

Can't quite remember - must have been about 4 or 5...

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Peted,

Nice shot. As Don said, the people on the right really reward the viewer for scanning the length of the shot.

As far as the sky being stuffed up.. well I suspect it wasn't autostitch that stuffed it up, but simply a difference in the skies of the source shots (and autostitch balanced for the land, not the sky). Personally I've found autostitch to be light years ahead of the few other clumsy stitching offerings I've tried.

But... it certainly isn't perfect. And there are steps you can take to make things easier for it and hopefully end up with a more satisfactory result.

Did you use a polarising filter when shooting? If so, then the polariser behaves differently according to its angle relative to the sun... so when you use an ultra-wide angle lens or do panoramas such as this, you tend to get lighter and darker bands of sky where the polariser is having less or more of an effect. I'd suggest not using a polariser unless it's necessary (or at least doing a 2nd version of the panorama without a polariser)... but if you do need to use a polariser then be aware of this characteristic and adjust it to best suit (and make sure it doesn't rotate between shots in your panorama)... and perhaps use PS to lessen the effects of the banding afterwards.

Secondly, did you shoot these shots in Manual mode using identical settings? If not then the camera will re-evaluate the exposure based on each one of the shots that comprise the panorama. This might affect much more than simply aperture and shutter speed, but also things such as white balance and colour correcting.
I *always* use full manual settings (aperture, shutter, white balance, AND focus) and keep the settings the same for all shots. Ideally you'll also be using a nice level tripod. You need to treat all the shots as a single large shot, as that's how it will end up. It makes it tricky to meter correctly when you are covering such a wide angle, but that's the challenge!

Finally... if this shot were mine I'd simply open the final panorama up in PS, mask out the sky and manually correct it. This might mean "painting" the dark areas a bit lighter (or vice versa), cloning in a similar sky from another shot or another part of the same sky elsewhere in that shot.

I've been doing a bit of playing with autostich and trying to use it for atypical panorama shots... like a 100 degrees panorama of my whole sofa with my cat sitting on one end... but using a 50mm prime lens at f/1.8! It can give quite unusual results - I'm unaware of any ultra-wide angle lens that can give such shallow DOF... I'm sure it would be an amazingly useful little trick if I ever find a good use for it!

[Peted]

Hi Kombi,

I think your second point hit it on the head, I would have been using aperture priority, I did think of this afterwards but was actually pretty busy looking after the people coming out of the hole as I was the leader for this expedition. I am going to another good area for panoramas thins weekend so I will have another go and see what I come up with.

Cheers.

Pete

[Petographer]

I like this shot Pete. Just as the others have said, the people on the right are the reward. I'd like to add that this shot seems like it would be quite simple to replace the sky entirely.