I was down at Hillarys Boat Harbour with some guys (& girls) from the Northern Exposure Photographers Club last night and did a bit more experimenting with stitching.
This image is my first stab at processing a 27 image stitch, including a bit of manual HDR work. The images were taken with my EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens at 70mm.
The files were put together by Photoshop CS3’s Photomerge and it has done a pretty good job though I did tweak the file a bit after PS had finished.
In case anyone is interested the following image shows a 100% crop of the image from the area marked with a white border, giving you an idea just how much detail is in these stitched images.
Considering this is just an experiment taken without a proper panoramic head and pretty sloppy processing I’m pretty happy with how it came out 🙂
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Dave Catley
Maggie Catley
Dave Catley - Fine Art Photography 
Nice images Dave, I love that cloudAll my HDR attempts have turned out quite with a greyish blue cast. I’m trying to do it all in PTgui which is probably not a great idea. Longer focal length lenses and bigger stitch topics are quite prolific on blogs today!
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Massive stitch job Dave , 27 images wow .
Nice job with out a pan head and using PS photomerge .
Like the perspective here
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Thanks Mattew, not the best shot from the night but playing around with the stitching is fun.
If you really want to get some good HDR images then I suggest doing some manually first, you’ll get a better idea of what you like and what you can achieve.
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27 images! bloody hell, thats big!
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Yeh, that’s what my PC said 😯
The final image was 26,000 pixels wide and the photoshop file was 960MB.
I think I need to do 3 rows of images though, or end up with the widest prints on the earth.
Looks like I’m going to have to seriously think about getting a panoramic head (I hope the wife’s not reading this blog) …
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well I still need a pano head. maybe not a 360 precision head, but I think the nodal ninja.
cheers
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nice one Dave, the 70mm focal length is a good one I think, yes you will probably need to stack it 3 high, check the file size then, over 1gb I bet. Got to love how much detail you get. Try it next time at 200!!
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Nice one, but 27 images? your machine must have died.
Stuff large format, you have now created a new type of print, the extra large format.:)
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Time to go shopping for a new hard disk, more RAM and upgrade to 64bit Vista I think 😯
200mm stitches would be awesome, mmm maybe I should add new printer to the above list …
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By the way, for my mind, you don’t need a pano head, just the ability to rotate at the same level.
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Strangely enough James my PC survived the experience relatively well 🙂
What really screws my machine up is when I run Lightroom, Photoshop CS3, Bridge, Outlook and IE7 (with multiple tabs) simultaneously all day and it suddenly decides it has no resources to redraw windows anymore …
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Yes, that’s why I do like my Panosaurus, but it’s a step in the way to the GOOD stuff (I.e. nodal ninja, 360 Precision). Shooting in forests most of the time I couldn’t be without it. In slender tree’d Wandoo gullies you’ll get a lot of ghosting (weirdness) without a panoramic head.
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@ Dave … get a mac you wont have that problem 😉 Great image by the way.
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Never thought I’d even contemplate saying this but I have started to wonder if a MAC would be better suited to this kind of work.
The main problem I have with Windows is it’s 4GB hard limit on addressable RAM and even that is not all available after all the components in the PC have registered their RAM.
I’m going to give 64bit Vista a go and if that doesn’t solve my problem then I may have to start looking at MACS.
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MACs are the way to go mate. Unfortunatley I still have to work on a pc cause I haven’t got the programs I need for a mac.
Did you see last nights sunset? I got some pics from Cott on the blog.
cheers
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If you are in the market for a mac contact me …. I have a connection to a owner of a mac store that can set you up nicely. Just bought the wife a mac book pro lap top or under $1k …. Now she can surf facebook till her hearts content 😉
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Thanks Neal, it would be an enormous step to go from a PC to a MAC but the option of buying a macbook could be a good option and would be good to have out in the field.
Do you MAC users ever run out of memory running PS with large files and other stuff in the background?
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Mac run out of memory LOL you PC user 😉
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Does anyone know of any good web tutorials available on HDR creation?
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I bought my wife a mac book and she’s never had to ask me an IT question so I reckon they rock. I’m Looking at getting a Mac Pro.
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Jamie send us an email of your mobile number and I’ll see what I can do in the mac pro department.
send it to spool1968 ( @ ) yahoo dot com
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Will do.
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I have a MacBook Pro, and it’s simply the best!
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You can swap the software with adobe and it will just cost you postage. I did it last year when I switched.
And who the heck got a mac book pro for under $1000. Thats insane.
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that is insane. I got mine pretty cheap from the states with a student discount on top of that.
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Sorry Kirk youre post got marked as spam by the blog software and I’ve only just noticed, I’ve de-spammed it now 🙂
Thanks for your comments, I was pretty amazed at how the shots came out without the pano head too. I suspect it would require a bit more work to get it to a printable state though.
I also think I could have got away with fewer shots and less overlap, something else the head would help with.
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Hi Dave,
I was on the first Christian course with you. Picked up my new Mac when I got back. Been a PC user forever, but so glad I changed the Mac’s are pretty impressive.
I did get a bit of beast, Mac Pro 8-Core 3.0Ghz, 4Tb Storage, 18Gb RAM, but it has handled everything thrown at it. Stitching is fast!
I also need to run Windows (development) apps, so use VMWare for that (take a look Dylan if you still need window apps).
Everything is a dream to use.
It’s a great solution, if you want to see it all working with Lightroom, Photoshop, PTGui + Vista let me know and more than happy for you to have a play.
Cheers
Alex
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The detail is amazing when you look at it at actual pixles, almost unbelievable at first when you do your first stitch.
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Hi Alex, welcome to the blog 🙂
Thanks for the info on your new MAC, it sure sounds like a beast. Must have set you back a fair bit for specs like that.
I’m still on the fence regarding the whole PC/MAC issue but It’s always good to hear what others are doing. At some point I’ll get around to seriously looking at MACS but that will have to wait until I’m a little less busy.
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Thanks Dave.
Been reading everyone’s blogs recently, great community and some very inspirational work!
Hopefully get to catch-up with a few people for some shoots in the future.
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