HDR Pano: Shelter Bay Marina

DeVerm

I couldn't stop myself while testing my new 17-40L lens I used a total of 27 captures for this:



ciao!
Nick.

DonRicklin

I'm sorry, but I for one can't look at this. It's like looking at a 3D image without the 3D glasses!

Has a distinct feeling of being out of focus!

Sorry, not for me.

Don

DeVerm

DonRicklin wrote: »

I'm sorry, but I for one can't look at this. It's like looking at a 3D image without the 3D glasses!

Has a distinct feeling of being out of focus!

Sorry, not for me.

Don

Don't be sorry, I feel the same

There are two main problems with this:

1 - boats & clouds move while taking the captures so there is ghosting
2 - the pano is very big, compressing lots of info onto a small surface

These 2 points make this shot almost impossible. A big (wide) screen helps with point 2 but this look requires up to 9 captures for every shot of the pano which costs time so that something moves.

I got the regular pano's though and I'm enthusiastic enough that I will fabricate a panoramic bracket for the tripod so that I can include uninterrupted close-by items like the railing.

Here's a regular pano; I didn't get the red skies I was hoping for, so this is just some pano practise for me



ciao!
Nick.

DonRicklin

Way better!

Has the second Pano been tone mapped in Photomatrix? If not you could experiment with that!

I often tone map single shot images, especially where movement is an issue and with Rust!

Don

willard3

I like no 2, but the first thing I noticed about no 1 is the movement.........a problem with HDR.

dave.turley

I agree although if shot in RAW it's not difficult to produce a way more pleasing HDR than the ghosted one with 2 other copies with changed exposure. HDR Efex Pro has single shot HDR presets,Topaz has a tonemapped one and Silver Efex Pro " has some high dynamic range stuff also. There's lots of options.

DeVerm

Tnx for all the comments guys

The 2nd one isn't tone mapped but I did use a circular polarizing filter for the captures. I'm waiting for a much more drastic sky which will come soon enough here :-)

I use both PS CS5 and Photomatix pro and Photomatix can also tone map from one single raw capture. I did practise that before but I'm concentrating on panoramic captures now, which give me enough trouble. I need to find time to make a bracket so that I can rotate the camera around it's focal point. For now, when I have nearby items in view, I need to limit my pano to 3 captures with the center one composed in such a way that the nearby items are broken up in the center (the railing in this one).

When I get the right captures I'll create many versions of the pano, from plain standard all the way to grunge and everything in between

Edit: what I do like from the 1st one is the sky and the visible sea-bed in the foreground!

ciao!
Nick.

DeVerm

dave.turley wrote: »

I agree although if shot in RAW it's not difficult to produce a way more pleasing HDR than the ghosted one with 2 other copies with changed exposure. HDR Efex Pro has single shot HDR presets,Topaz has a tonemapped one and Silver Efex Pro " has some high dynamic range stuff also. There's lots of options.

The red skies I'm waiting for have not arrived yet. So I did what you suggested and rendered everything from 3 non-bracketed images. I used Photomatix Pro for the HDR and Photoshop for the pano.

I got way more noise this way (to be expected) so I toned the hdr down a bit (just a bit :-)

dave.turley

Well, that looks a lot different to your first one. I think toning down the HDR due to noise has helped. Although I personally like the vivid colour for this subject, I can see how it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. It looks like an Airport poster. Nice.
Dave

squirl033

that first one is WAY overcooked! this shot really doesn't need HDR, or anything like it. the original pano looks fine, if you want more color, you can bump the saturation, maybe up the contrast a smidge, but that's all it needs.

DeVerm

dave.turley wrote: »

Well, that looks a lot different to your first one. I think toning down the HDR due to noise has helped. Although I personally like the vivid colour for this subject, I can see how it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. It looks like an Airport poster. Nice.
Dave

The extra noise was caused by using just one exposure for the HDR rendering. The first version used 9 exposures for this and did not have the noise. I still want to do an extreme hdr but I'll find a static subject for that next time :-)

squirl033 wrote: »

that first one is WAY overcooked! this shot really doesn't need HDR, or anything like it. the original pano looks fine, if you want more color, you can bump the saturation, maybe up the contrast a smidge, but that's all it needs.

The normal pano I posted is made from a different series of shots. But the things you do not get are the deep blue sky (can be done with filters) and the see-through water. I think most photo's that show these features are hdr but toned down far enough that people don't notice that it's hdr.

What I find is that it is difficult to overcook an image with hdr software without introducing noise and other artifacts. I've seen the hdr's of old cars in that workshop and wanted to create the same look. Many think you just feed an image to some program to get it but there's way more to it than that... I'll keep trying :-)

theprincereturns

You second HDR (toned down) is definitly better! I like the sky and water detail much better in the HDR image (guess that is the point ;-) )