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 180^o 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 24^th I will be flying back. I'm trying to surprise mom with my return so I've asked the family not to tell her...

TGIT...

The last day of the week and the weekend is here... but seems this weekend is going to be interrupted with work somehow after my boss asking me to be available, if possible, in the work place on Saturday to help on some exerperiment. Despite the fact that I always prefer to stay awake all night on weekend days and sleep till almost or past the midday, I don't really have any problem with being in the work place on a Saturday and doing some work. The only thing that bothers me, something else would and should be with us to do the experiment, and I'm sure it won't go without complications.
I had a go with my camera today around the place, and, I snapped some garbage dumbed near our building... you might ask what a garbage has of beauty, well, in HDR composition everything can be made into something... trust me!
This time, I shot 6 shots of RAW keeping almost 1 stop between each exposure set. It is a tiresome work and of course I won't be using it always specially if ghosting (shades of moving objects in the final image) would be a must. The process was to put a bracketing for the exposure with +/- 1 gap, and then with the AV control I moved the 3 cursors of bracketing to the far left and made 3 shots, and then move them back to the far right and made another 3 shots, and thus the final result was 6 images with -/+ 2, -/+ 1, and two 0 which after canceling one of them, we settle with 5 images. I don't know how the results would be, anyway, I read before that 3 images with +/- 2 gap is enough to make a fine HDR image, but the more bracketing you have, the smoother colors you would have as well.
The brochure is amost settled down for now and my boss gave me the permission to add my credit on it. Of course you might think it is natural since I'm the designer but well, I didn't feel like it until my boss announced it for me. Since it is a brochure that would be given to people and I didn't want to corrupt the facade with a little name in the margin! The next move is convert everything into JPG and tell the stupidos in the press to print it as it is with no addition or edition and fix it in a 3-fold brochure as we want. Still, I'm expecting problems in that way.


Continuing my work with some photos from Ireland again, and as I expected, Canstockphoto refused the HDR tone-mapped images. It wasn't a surprise really. However, I will try Exposure fusion more this time if I'm planning to get softer gradients of colors with more natural look.





These two images were taken almost at same location around the Waterfront, the place where I stayed in Ireland. I hope they look more natural here than others made before!
Now, with my camera with me... I'm planning to shoot The Dome again, but I need to come here earlier than I used to be. No need for parasites in my way as usual or people who greet me all the time. This time, I'm planning to keep my camera low as much as possible and try to revolve it (while it is flipped in 90 degrees) in a full circle. The previous shots were taken at each column holding the dome up, but the result was, of course, disastrous.
The yield for today is 3 verses, and I'm approaching the end of this torture to being another torture later on!