Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Pano Day

Well, it was a busy day. I've been taking the panoramas around the B&B and some of them were done more than once just to check for the luminance level and if the HDR got them right. I've ended up doing most of them onISO 800, meaning a lot of work is waiting for me when I get back home. However, I think I need to take a couple more of panoramas from some locations in and out of the B&B.

Corridor

After each session I would try out the HDR merging and/or stitching just to see the potential for these panoramas. The panorama for Corridor is not a full panorama though but around 180o degrees, and just for fun, I've included myself in the mirror; I was thinking of cropping that out in fact.
One of the lessons learned today is, away from the metering struggles, I could simple settle with a definite limit for the bracketing (for HDR) simply by checking the brightest area in the scene, and check at what shutter speed the details show nicely in the spot. Then, consider this shutter speed as the -2EV or -3EV point, and 2- or 3-stops to that shutter speed and make that point as the 0EV, and simply spread the bracket 2 or 3 stops around the 0EV (by default as it is in Canon).
Example: Fixing the aperture at f/8, and checking the some bright spot (in manual mode), the details of the bright spot appear to be nice (using the live view mode or the histogram, or both) appear to be at 50-1sec shutter speed. If we want to bracket as -2,0,2EV, then we can consider this 50-1sec as the -2EV point and add two stops to make up for the 0EV point, and that is 13-1sec (2 stops). From there, just set the bracket on -2,0,2, and the HDR shot sequence should be running at: 50-1, 13-1, 0"3sec. Of course this method won't be useful for any situation, but it is just a thought when the details of such bright spots are important, like taking a panorama for the interior with bright windows.  

Yesterday was also a busy day driving with my friends around the island and tried to take as much shots as possible for historical places, bad though I didn't take my panorama tools with me (and it would take lot of time to shoot a panorama). I got myself satisfied with some shots and been experiencing with some of them already.

Basket Maker

The Basket Maker house was shot with Rokinon 8mm, probably at f/8, and of course it is a bracketed shot, and I've decided to do the HDR and convert it into B&W while tone-mapping, and of course some workflow followed in Photoshop. It is one of the shots that I like and I would work on it again back home, hopefully.

I've managed to change my schedule for flying back home and I've made it early and hopefully by October 24th I will be flying back. I'm trying to surprise mom with my return so I've asked the family not to tell her...


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