Panoramas. A collection. A collaboration.

[visovm]

more from the collection:

Brooklyn Bridge


Jersey City & Statue of Liberty


NYC Skyline


Barber, enough said


Rockey MTN National Park


Arches National Park


Route 77, CO


Bryce Canyon National Park


Bryce Canyon National Park (looking the other direction...forest fire. Im guessing this was a controlled burn)

[VietHorse]

View from Tabcat, end of Tail of Dragon (TN)

[Rapid Dog]

[James Adams]

[Ohio_Danimal]

Originally Posted by motocopter

That curve looks full of challenges! Elevation change. A little off camber. Blind. Is this near the 555 by chance?

No, the triple nickle runs south out of Zanesville down to the Ohio River.
If you take 800 south out of Dover all the way to the Ohio River at Fly, and head northeast along the river, you'll come to 536 (some call it the Baby Dragon). Ride 536 northwest and it ends at Rt. 78, another killer road.

[GSteve]

Botswana

[Heckmann]

Arriving in Urubici - SC Brasil

[Dualthing]

[dave6253]

This was sunset today in Phoenix, Arizona.
A 360 degree HDR panorama comprised of 135 exposures.
Click for larger size.

[mikegc]

Originally Posted by dave6253

This was sunset today in Phoenix, Arizona.
A 360 degree HDR panorama comprised of 135 exposures.
Click for larger size.

Wow, Dave! That's just another one of your typically great shots! Thank you for sharing.

Mike

[GSteve]

Dave, just OUTSTANDING!

If you mind my asking, what software are you using to assemble your panoramas? Also, care to share your recipe for sharpening? Again, excellent capture and processing, I am humbled!

[dave6253]

Thanks Mike and Steve.

The individual images were not very sharp. I think I actually locked in a slight focus error and shot 135 images that way. Doh! I used my flimsy tripod and shot vertically at 34mm @ f11 iso100. I overlapped much more that I should have and ended up in 27 different positions to complete the 360 degree circle. I was shooting 5 exposure brackets at 1 EV apart; 27x5=135 RAW files! This took quite awhile to work all the way around. I almost ran out of sunlight before I got to the sun. I ended up getting a nice sunstar, but the overlapping shot wiped it out when I stitched them. I am contemplating redoing the processing to fix that and some of the white balance, but that will be a ton of work.

I first lightly processed the RAWs in Lightroom 3.6 with no sharpening. I sent 5 at a time to Photomatix Pro 4.2 to merge into HDRs. Here is where most of the sharpening effect took place. I like to set the "Details Contrast" slider near the max. All 27 images got the exact same HDR process and were sent back to Lightroom as JPEGs. I then applied mild sharpening at level 40 and processed them for the final look I wanted.

The 27 JPEGs were then stitched into a 360 degree panorama using Microsoft ICE (freeware). I prefer this software over ArcSoft Panorama Maker. The single JPEG was now over 42MB! I sent this back into Lightroom where I sharpened it slightly at level 18 and completed the final processing, including cropping some of the foreground. I had to re-size it for uploading. Since such a large file is compressed into a smaller size it probably helps it appear sharper.

This took me about 1.5 hours, which is why I'll probably leave it alone, for now.

[GSteve]

Dave,

Thanks for taking the time for the detailed explanation. The sharpening on the displayed capture really looks great and not over done (as I sometimes do). I appreciate the heads up on the Microsoft ICE as an alternative to the Adobe product I've been using. Again, very nicely done and i can only imagine what this shot would like printed LARGE!

Steve

[dave6253]

I said I wouldn't do it, but several things bugged me about that previous version.
I started over and spent another grueling 2 hours processing this.
It now looks a little more natural and has the sunstar.
Click me:

[scootac]

Originally Posted by GSteve

Dave,

Thanks for taking the time for the detailed explanation.

Steve

+100

Somebody already MADE me get the Photomatix,,,now you'll MAKE me get the Microsoft ICE!