Posts in Category: panorama
Evening at Back Creek
Back Creek is a tidal creek that flows into the Mousam River a few hundred yards from its mouth in Kennebunk Maine. The beach homes you see are on Great Head, across the Mousam. It had been a day of rain, heavy at times, and the front was still moving off the coast…but the sun broke through just for an hour or so before setting. Great light. Great sky. Landscapes are never better, I think, than when the sun breaks through under a stormy sky. You have drama on the land and drama in the sky. What is not to like?
This is a sweep panorama from the Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. I really like the fact that you can hold the camera vertically and sweep it around horizontally…producing a panorama that is fully as wide as a conventional panorama (this one is about 200 degrees), but much taller…not nearly so “pinched”. These tall panoramas also fit computer displays much better…if you click the image above on any computer with a reasonably sized display, it should fill your screen.
As I say, Samsung Smart Camera WB250F in Panorama mode. f4.6 @ ISO 100. I discovered a Panorama trick for these cameras that have sweep pano modes. You pick the part of the view that has either 1) average brightness for your planned sweep, or 2) the brightness you want for the whole sweep (you might, for instance, want to expose for the sky rather than the land), point the camera at that section of the sweep and half press the shutter release to lock in exposure, then swing the camera, holding the shutter half pressed, to the where you want your pano to begin, and fully press the shutter. That way the whole sweep has the exposure you intend, and not the exposure that happened to be at the start of the sweep. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.
On the shore of the Mousam
I went out on my scooter on several photoprowls yesterday, covering the compass points so to speak. It was one of those days when the sky was irresistible. This is a sweep panorama from the shore of the Mousam River, below the new bridge they are building on Route 9, in Kennebunk.
Samsung Smart Camera WB250F. Panorama mode. f4.6 @ 1/500th (nominal since it was a sweep), ISO 100. 24mm equivalent field of view, swept around with the camera vertical 270 degrees. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4. The image is linked to a larger version for your viewing pleasure.
Mind-bending in Kennebunk
Sweep Panorama is a very strange thing. This is a about a 180 degree view of the dam on the Mousam River in Kennebunk Maine, taken from the middle of the bridge over the river. The dam is, of course, a straight line in reality, and the railing is both straight and continuous. I have attempted this pano with conventional stitched panorama techniques and it is next to impossible. The buildings on the left, in particular, never match up in any two shots. Sweep panorama renders what is perpendicular to the motion of the camera very well, as it records one thin line at a time…and the distortions in the other dimension are interesting. On the camera itself, you can view the panorama as a sweep, which is also interesting. Someone needs to create a panorama viewer for the computer. 🙂
Samsung WB250F in Panorama Mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4.
The tallness of birches.
Panoramas are difficult at the best of times to display on a computer monitor or screen…just not enough real estate…and vertical panoramas are especially cramped. Still, when faced with a tall tree, what do you do? This is a vertical sweep panorama of an impressive pair of intertwined Paper Birch trees at Laudholm Farm and Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. It is along the boardwalk through the wet forest behind the dunes and the marsh. The panorama certainly does not do the trees justice, but it captures the tall grace of them better than a normal shot ever could.
Samsung WB250F in Panorama Mode. Processed in PicSay Pro on the Samsung Galaxy S4. (If you have never used “sweep panorama” on a camera, it is actually very impressive. Unlike a normal panorama, which is several “flat” images stitched together, a sweep panorama is “painted” onto the sensor one thin line at a time as you move the camera. It produces a unique and interesting effect. And it dead easy!)
Branch Brook Sweep Panorama
I have done several panoramas in different seasons here at the “S” curves in Branch Brook at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. It is a tempting scene in any season. This is spring coming on…and it is my first “sweep” panorama at the spot. I generally build panoramas one shot at time, and stitch the shots later in PhotoShop Elements. For this shot I used my Samsung Galaxy S4’s Sweep Panorama mode. You just open the camera app, set it for Panorama, point at one edge of the scene, touch the shutter button, and slowly sweep the phone around however many degrees you want in a continuous motion. The screen displays a little track and gives you pointer arrows to correct when you drift too far off a horizontal line (or a vertical line if you are shooting a vertirama). It is easy, fast, and it works. And with the Galaxy, unlike some smartphone sweep panorama apps which automatically downsize the sweep, you capture the full resolution of the sensor times however long your sweep is. Holding the phone in portrait mode gives you relatively tall and and as wide as you want panorama. Once you touch the shutter button a second time, the processor in the phone “stitches” the panorama. If you look closely here you will see that it could not quite handle the rail that is parallel to the motion of the sweep. There are some jaggies there where the image was stitched. But in general, and with less challenging lines, the app does amazingly well!
With a little tweaking, either right on the phone in Snapseed, or in Lightroom on my laptop, the results can be pretty amazing. (Though Snapseed is an amazingly capable editing app it does downsize the results…this is a Lightroom version. You can see it as wide as your screen will allow by clicking the image to open it in the lightbox on my WideEyedInWonder galleries.) This is about 200 degrees of sweep.
And from a phone camera!
Magee Marsh Wide with Clouds
Taking a break from birds for a day, here is the scene on the way into Magee Marsh on Sunday Morning. This is a sweep panorama using the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone camera. I have experimented with sweep panoramas on Sony cameras a few generations ago, and found the results disappointing, but the technology, at least as implemented by Samsung, has come a long way. I did this with the phone in vertical position, to capture maximum pixels. The full shot is 10840×2776 (cropped slightly when straightening the horizon) and covers, as you see by the road, close to 180 degrees. You can see the image at your full screen resolution by clicking HERE.
But of course, it is more than a technical exercise. I love the clouds, the blue of the water, the sweep of the early sun across the marsh. And the phone has captured it all very well. And in one long slow steady sweep. Not about the technology, but the technology is amazing just the same.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Beach Panorama with Runner
This is one you have to view as large as your monitor or screen will allow, though, unlike some panoramas I have done, it works well at this size too. (Click on the image to open it auto-sized for your machine.) This is, of course, all about the drama of the sky. When the runner walked into the 4th frame, I thought, “ah! I will have to start over.” But I took the image anyway, and I am glad I did. It would not work nearly as well as a pano without his anchor…without the sense of absolute scale the runner provides.
I generally produce flat panos, by just putting the images side by side and overlapping and blending. All the lines are straight, but the effect is like standing much further back and using a superwide angle lens. This pano was stitched in PhotoShop Elements as though the images were wrapped around a cylinder. Then in Lightroom I cropped the edges straight and used the distortion tools to pull the horizon more or less level. The effect is to produce a pano that mimics the sweep of the eyes as you turn your head to take in the full length of the beach. Try it. Sweep your eyes from left to right. In may ways it is a more natural view than most of my panoramas. And, as I say, with the runner in the foreground, there is no way you can fool yourself into thinking this is only a stretched out view of the world. I am not sure I could produce the effect again if I tried, but I certainly like it!
Canon SX50HS. 5 in-camera HDR shots from my Fat Gecko carbon fiber, shock corded tripod. Stitched in PhotoMerge in PSE. Final processing for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom, as well as some distortion work.
San Diego from Cabrillo NM
![Cabrillo-XL[1]](https://i0.wp.com/psnp.info/p4td_/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Cabrillo-XL1.jpg)
I always try to get out to Cabrillo National Monument on the tip of Point Loma on every visit to San Diego. There are birds there, but it is not the birds so much as the view that attracts. You are high above San Diego Bay, looking over the whole city, and deep into Mexico behind. Awesome.
This is a two shot panorama…an accidental panorama as I took the two shots with no thought of combining them. Yet it works.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. -1EV exposure compensation (not needed for this shot). 2 50mm equivalent shots stitched in PhotoShop Elements PhotoMerge tool. f4 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Processed for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom.
Winter Kennebunk Plains
As promised, I got out a bit yesterday to see if I could find some images to catch what Nemo did to Southern Maine. Not that it did much…damage wise. We got a lot of snow and potentially damaging winds but the timing of both snow and wind was such that we are left with a windswept snowy landscape and very few bad memories (unless you count the sore muscles from shoveling).
This is the Kennebunk Plains, which you have seen here in other seasons and other lights. It is also a three shot panorama, in Snow Mode. You should be able to see it full width on your screen or monitor by clicking on the image.
It does not look very deep here, but I was standing in a hole the wind made swirling around one of the Conservation signs, and I can testify that you are looking at between 2 and 3 feet of snow. I like the way the wind has sculpted the surface, and I like the radiating cloud mass.
Canon SX50HS, as I said, in Snow Mode. There overlapping 24mm exposures. f5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Florida Sky. Viera Wetlands
Viera Wetlands, as I have mentioned before, is a municipal sewage treatment plant that has been converted to attract wildlife and bird watchers. There are many such facilities around the country today, but Viera is a particularly good example of the class. It includes miles of dyke roads…some of which are permanently open…and some of which are closed to vehicles except on special occasions (like the Space Coast Birding Festival). There are two observation towers overlooking ponds. But the general attractiveness comes from it just being Florida. Natural growths of palms and native grasses and reeds make the treatment ponds look like any wet section of Florida. It is very easy to forget where you are.
This is a two frame HDR panorama, using In-camera HDR Mode. I shot two overlapping HDR images from my tiny Fat Gecko carbon fiber tripod and stitched them together in PhotoShop Elements’ PhotoMerge tool. Florida, on days with clouds, has magnificent clouds!
Canon SX50HS. As above. Recorded exif: 24mm equivalent field of view (for each exposure). f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.