Into the Distance and Montana Sunsets (HDR)

jamesl

Hi All,

I'm still slowly working my way through my pictures from my recent trip to Montana. Here's another one that I was pretty happy with:



I shot this while waiting for the sun to get lower for my next shot below. A bunch of storms had just blown through, and these beautiful clouds were left behind. The lighting was really tricky, with lots of range, so I decided to bracket my exposures with the intent of doing an HDR. This shot is made up of 5 pano frames, with each being a 5 exposure bracket. I combined each frame in Photomatix, then stitched the shot in Panorama Factory (Canon 30D, 20 mm prime lens, F16):



I was really starting to lose hope that I would get the sunset I was looking for. There were a lot of clouds in the way (the sun was behind me). However, just at the last minute, the sun burst through the low clouds behind me and lit up the cliffs ahead. This is Fort Benton, and the Missouri River Canyon (the river is back in the trees). This one is tough to appreciate without seeing it in full size. I think that if I have an opportunity to shoot this scene again, I'm going to find a spot down on the cayon floor to create a better composition and forground. This is a 12 vertical frame stiched pano stitched using Panorama Factory. Each frame of the pano is a 3 bracket exposure combined in Photomatix. (Canon 30D, Canon 28-135 IS lens, F16):



I thought I was done for the night, but I was wrong. When I came up out of the canyon, I saw the most amazing sunset ahead. The sun was shooting out and hitting a storm cloud far to the North. I only had a few minutes to find a place to pull off and shoot this. I wish I could have put together a better forground, but I didn't have time ((Canon 30D, Canon 20mm prime lens, F16):



Thanks for looking.

James

schmoo

James, as usual...

Wow!!!

That last one in particular is so unbelievably dramatic. And I'm looking at it on my work monitor which is pretty bad. I can't wait to see it on my cinema display at home!

Dante

All three great shots James! I really like #1

jamesl

schmooo wrote:

James, as usual...

Wow!!!

That last one in particular is so unbelievably dramatic. And I'm looking at it on my work monitor which is pretty bad. I can't wait to see it on my cinema display at home!

Thanks Schmoo! It was pretty amazing to see it in person. I stopped off on the side of the road so fast a police officer came up to see if I was ok. Hope it still looks good on the apple display!

James

jamesl

Dante wrote:

All three great shots James! I really like #1

Thanks Dante! I appreciate you stopping by.

James

denisegoldberg

Beautiful. That first shot is my favorite - it just took my breath away.

--- Denise

USAIR

There all good
Nice work

Fred

hamster

The first one is my favorite - all spectacular, though!

jamesl

Thanks all for your comments.

James

Miguel Delinquento

Very rich shots. I like the first one best too. The rails grab the eyes and you just take off in the shot--HDR or not.
I love Montana.

kriyababaji

Beautiful Shots!

I love the sky in the last one.

shane

Awais Yaqub

Beautiful work
loved them

chopsky

Hey man

#1 is fantastic. And yeh, a grad nd filter would've done #3 some serious justice, but you already knew that

David_S85

Really nice stuff, James. Are you using Pano Factory's new HDR stitching feature? When I last downloaded the update, I was surprised to discover it.

jamesl

Miguel Delinquento wrote:

Very rich shots. I like the first one best too. The rails grab the eyes and you just take off in the shot--HDR or not.
I love Montana.

Thanks Miguel! I'm glad you enjoyed the visit. There is no place I like traveling to more than Montana in the summertime. Now winter, that is another story. ;-)

James

jamesl

kriyababaji wrote:

Beautiful Shots!

I love the sky in the last one.

shane

Thanks! It was pretty amazing to see in person.

James

jamesl

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Beautiful work
loved them

Hi Awais,

Thanks for the comments!

James

jamesl

chopsky wrote:

Hey man

#1 is fantastic. And yeh, a grad nd filter would've done #3 some serious justice, but you already knew that

Thanks! Yeah, you are right. One day, I am going to invest in a set of nice Cokin filters, but I haven't wanted to shell out the $$s for them yet. For now, I'll have to settle for multiple exposures and HDR compositions.

Thanks for the advice,

James

jamesl

David_S85 wrote:

Really nice stuff, James. Are you using Pano Factory's new HDR stitching feature? When I last downloaded the update, I was surprised to discover it.

Hi David,

No, I wasn't aware of the new version of PFactory (I was running 4.1). I've downloaded it now, though! Thanks for letting me know. That would have really helped here, as getting the same sized panos is a huge pain. I was creating an HDR of each frame, and then stitching them. This also causes problems with consistant luminosity throughout the image. Hopefully the new HDR feature will help.

James

David_S85

jamesl wrote:

Hi David,
No, I wasn't aware of the new version of PFactory (I was running 4.1). I've downloaded it now, though! Thanks for letting me know. That would have really helped here, as getting the same sized panos is a huge pain. I was creating an HDR of each frame, and then stitching them. This also causes problems with consistant luminosity throughout the image. Hopefully the new HDR feature will help.
James

I've done a couple panos with the new feature. I use PF in the manual mode with custom profiles for each lens and approx. focal length. I was stunned when PF stitched a 2nd version of a pano which originally took 4 minutes on a 2.4Ghz dual core in 1/10th the time. Wow.

Whatever stitching rules it retains in memory, it works great. Worth the upgrade price alone (free ). I haven't DL'd PhotoMatrix yet, but based on what I've seen and read, it has many advantages to the HDR functionality in CS2 or CS3, if used with relative restraint to avoid garish images.

Strav

You nailed that first shot - quite beatiful!

thegridrunner

Those shots are just too good, I am not worthy to view them...bow

MYSTICA

simply amazing!
I like the pp too...
bravo!

hawkeye978

All beautiful shots but I love the lighting on #2

jamesl

David_S85 wrote:

I've done a couple panos with the new feature. I use PF in the manual mode with custom profiles for each lens and approx. focal length. I was stunned when PF stitched a 2nd version of a pano which originally took 4 minutes on a 2.4Ghz dual core in 1/10th the time. Wow.

Whatever stitching rules it retains in memory, it works great. Worth the upgrade price alone (free ). I haven't DL'd PhotoMatrix yet, but based on what I've seen and read, it has many advantages to the HDR functionality in CS2 or CS3, if used with relative restraint to avoid garish images.

Howdy David. I just used the new HDR feature yesterday, and it worked great! The interface into it was a little clunky, though, and took me a bit to figure it out. That may just be because I am slow, though.

I agree on the speed. Every release that I have moved up to (I've been using them for 4 or 5 years) has been noticably faster. Hopefully the trend continues.

I'm not a big fan of creating HDR images with photoshop. It's very picky about what it will and want combine. For example, it won't combine images created from one RAW file (at least I can't get it to work). Give Photomatix a try. You'll like it!

James

jamesl

Tom, Rosella, Patrick and Strav,

Thanks for the comments! Glad you all like the pictures.

Take care,

James