Lord Howe - Panorama

[Wocka]

Gidday,

Here is a panorama of Lovers Bay on Lord Howe Island.

Please give you comments, be harsh if you need to. I want to have this printed once all is fine. The full size image is 73cm x 21 cm from 7 RAW files stitched with Panorama Factory.

Unfortunatly I did all wrong while taking the shots, but hopefully have managed to save it a little.

I think there maybe too many tree's / shrubs on the right hand side in the forground. Also you can see a merge on the water ( not sharp area that needs to be fixed before printing ).

Maybe I need to restitch and change the colours again.

[radar]

Hi Warwick,

for me, the left-hand side doesn't really add much to the photo. I'd cut the green bush off.

It's a really nice capture, been there, great spot. I have a picture of me and my wife sitting under the two pine trees. A local photog took our picture and gave us a copy, she was doing a postcard shoot at the time,

Cheers,

Radar

[Geoff]

Gday mate,
I think this is a pretty good pano, however may I ask how much in PS sharpening you did? There are parts of this image that look (to me) over sharpened, i.e the mountains in the background and parts of the water. As I said though, it's a good image but I know you can do better Remember you live close, and I now have the R1800

[big pix]

horizion police here..........could this be straighten to make it a better image........

[johnd]

Warwick, my 2 cents worth.

I think this is a good pano and a lovely location.

I think the trees, shrubs on right work well. Don't like the shrub on left side. Suggest cut off left hand quarter of shot. (leave first lot of white flowers and surf in, but take out whats on left of that). Straighten horizon in PS. I agree with Geoff, you can see the results of sharpening on mts, but the final result still looks a bit soft. I assume you used tripod, remote release, f8 or f11 or there abouts, manual mode, not aperture or shutter, AF to get the large trees sharp, then changed to manual for sequence of shots. I can't see any sign of the stitching either BTW. If you were to do it again, maybe not have that foreground yellow boat in the shot.

[Wocka]

John,

Here is a recropped image. Is this more the prospective you were suggesting? By correcting the horizon, the crop lost the boat. Killed two birds in one hit.

I think I may need to start again. I have applied some sharpening, but can't remember where, when and how much.

I spent a lot of time on the water ( lagoon ) selecting and changing the colour there. I also spend some time on the green shrubs in the forground.

I'm not overly happy with the sky, But don't know what can be done there. Maybe try making the blue a little deeper. But I'm wary of having too many blue's in the picture.

Now for my mistakes.
# Yes I used a tripod
# I didn't set the manual focus on the lens, so the camera changed each and every shot, Doh.
# No release used.

[johnd]

Hi Warwick, yes that's what I meant with the cropping. I think it improves the shot, not as much empty sea on LHS. I've found that sometimes you can get away with auto focus but sometimes you can't. Panorama Factory is pretty good, but I've had occasions where you just cannot get the stitching to look good with AF, but you've done a great job. I can't pick where the stitching is. The other issue with stitching is wind blowing trees etc around, sometimes tricks the stitching software, but if you have enough overlap you can usually get it tight. Maybe you don't need a remote release if the shutter speed is fast enough, but when I'm doing panos and it's all set up on the tripod, then using a remote is nothing extra and guarantees no camera movement.

All in all, a lovely shot, obviously a lovely place. Like to see more.