A few examples of what I'm working on.

[fuzzybabybunny]

More to come sometime.

Hawai'i Pali Lookout:

http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168149127-L.jpg

LARGE
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168149127-O.jpg

Meh:

http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168146699-L.jpg

LARGE
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168146699-O.jpg

Shanghai Bund:

http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168146300-L.jpg

LARGE
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168146300-O.jpg

UPDATE #1

Shanghai Bund:

LARGE
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/168294612-O.jpg

Shanghai Pudong New Area:

http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/169982753-L.jpg

LARGE
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/169982753-O.jpg

More Shanghai Pudong New Area

http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/170199383-L.jpg
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/170199738-L.jpg
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/170199977-L.jpg

LARGE
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/170199383-O.jpg
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/170199738-O.jpg
http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/170199977-O.jpg

Tokyo:

http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....lery/3112334#170317483

 

[troytime]

Very nice!!

Best multi-monitor wallpaper EVER

 

[jpeyton]

WOW!

Those shots are spectacular.

 

[pennylane]

Wow those look great!

What software did you use to stitch the pictures (I'm assuming that's what you did)?

 

[bigrash]

nice!

 

[ProfJohn]

How much of the lookout shot is real and how much is photoshop?

Or were you just lucky to get a clear day.
Both times I went there it was very cloudy and wet.

Did you take the H-4 through the tunnel from Dry side to wet side? Amazing experience.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: fanerman91
Wow those look great!

What software did you use to stitch the pictures (I'm assuming that's what you did)?

Thanks!

I used Hugin and AutoPano-SIFT for automatic keypoint generation. I output to TIFF with the Enblend option checked and it gets me a 300-700MB file.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
How much of the lookout shot is real and how much is photoshop?

Or were you just lucky to get a clear day.
Both times I went there it was very cloudy and wet.

Did you take the H-4 through the tunnel from Dry side to wet side? Amazing experience.

I was lucky and got there on a great day. I upped the saturation of the sky and greenery, and brought out detail in the shadows with the Shadow/Highlight tool in CS2. Then sharpened it up with Smart Sharpen and that was it.

I wasn't going for a faithful representation of the scenery. Unfortunately, a lot of the time with landscape photography what you get isn't optimal because of weather conditions, so you gotta jazz it up a little bit. Going for a faithful representation would just result in a blah photo.

And yeah, we took a tour from the dry side to the wet side. Awesome. Wish I wasn't with a group so that I could rent a scooter or something and go off on my own in Hawaii.

 

[Jawo]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fanerman91
Wow those look great!

What software did you use to stitch the pictures (I'm assuming that's what you did)?</end quote></div>

Thanks!

I used Hugin and AutoPano-SIFT for automatic keypoint generation. I output to TIFF with the Enblend option checked and it gets me a 300-700MB file.</end quote></div>

Once again, simply incredible photography. I was looking around on the sites you provided and am I correct in my understanding that all the software you use is donation-ware?

Besides CS2 of course....

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Jawo
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fanerman91
Wow those look great!

What software did you use to stitch the pictures (I'm assuming that's what you did)?</end quote></div>

Thanks!

I used Hugin and AutoPano-SIFT for automatic keypoint generation. I output to TIFF with the Enblend option checked and it gets me a 300-700MB file.</end quote></div>

Once again, simply incredible photography. I was looking around on the sites you provided and am I correct in my understanding that all the software you use is donation-ware?

Besides CS2 of course....

yup yup

 

[Jawo]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Jawo
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fanerman91
Wow those look great!

What software did you use to stitch the pictures (I'm assuming that's what you did)?</end quote></div>

Thanks!

I used Hugin and AutoPano-SIFT for automatic keypoint generation. I output to TIFF with the Enblend option checked and it gets me a 300-700MB file.</end quote></div>

Once again, simply incredible photography. I was looking around on the sites you provided and am I correct in my understanding that all the software you use is donation-ware?

Besides CS2 of course....</end quote></div>

yup yup

Awesome...I'll have to check it out....Canon's PhotoStich has been really disappointing lately

 

[ProfJohn]

How are you taking the panoramic? Using a tripod and just rotating a bit?

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: ProfJohn
How are you taking the panoramic? Using a tripod and just rotating a bit?</end quote></div>

All the daytime ones are handheld and basically just panning the camera.

The nighttime ones are on a tripod and rotating.

It is often kind of tricky. You often have to time each shot right if there are moving objects in the picture.

For example, in my Shanghai night pano, you'll notice two moving ships in the river. I had to time my shots so that the ships would only show up in one of my shots, and not show up in a second shot or only have half of it show up in one shot. In actuality there where LOTS of boats moving around along the river, so I had to wait for them to move out of my shot before taking it.

For another example, look at the tallest building in the picture, the one with the greenish top. Directly below it and to the right is a shorter building with two red Chinese characters on the top. When you do panos, you've got to make sure that the overlaps between your shots stay the same. Well, every 15 seconds or so those two red Chinese characters would change into a big red RICOH sign, so I had to time my shots so that only the red Chinese characters would show. Combine this with trying to dodge numerous moving ships, and it's little wonder that this pano took 20 minutes to do.

There were also time constraints. Every night around midnight many of these lights along the bank actually turn off, so if I'm in the middle of taking a pano and suddenly the lights shut off, the pano fails.

When taking a wide pano, you've also gotta factor in the curvature of the earth when trying to level each of your shots. You've also gotta be very careful in lining up your shots as precisely as possible. If the most right side wasn't lined up correctly (say, not enough sky) with the most left side, the tip of the tallest building might have to be cut off, or more sky would have to be added into the right side using a clone tool. In this example it would have been easy to add in more sky, considering it's mostly black and detail-less, but in more complex scenes this is not always possible.

I also try to shoot at least 30mm (50mm on FF), because below 30mm the distortion introduced by the wide angle will make the shots impossible to line up correctly.

You've also gotta shoot every shot with the same exposure. So a shot in the middle should be shot with the same aperture, shutter speed, white balance, ISO, etc, as a shot anywhere else in the pano. If you fail to do this, the parts of the pano will have differing brightnesses throughout the picture, which most times cannot be fixed by simply adjusting the brightness controls.

Lastly, because you have to shoot with the same exposure in each shot, scenes with a wide dynamic range don't always work too well. The settings for a perfect exposure for a shot of the middle might be severely underexposing a shot of the left end, and severely overexposing a shot of the right end. When this happens you need to carefully decide your exposure to keep the most detail you can across all shots.

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: Jawo
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Jawo
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: fanerman91
Wow those look great!

What software did you use to stitch the pictures (I'm assuming that's what you did)?</end quote></div>

Thanks!

I used Hugin and AutoPano-SIFT for automatic keypoint generation. I output to TIFF with the Enblend option checked and it gets me a 300-700MB file.</end quote></div>

Once again, simply incredible photography. I was looking around on the sites you provided and am I correct in my understanding that all the software you use is donation-ware?

Besides CS2 of course....</end quote></div>

yup yup</end quote></div>

Awesome...I'll have to check it out....Canon's PhotoStich has been really disappointing lately

i use autopano-sift+hugin+enblend as well. Although its more complex, it really puts canon's photostitch to shame

 

[Aharami]

here is a good tutorial on them
http://exolucere.ca/articles/create-panorama

 

[Aharami]

btw, awesome panos fuzzy!

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Thanks guys. I'm currently having problems with making my panoramas because they're just too big and Hugin's giving me "not enough memory" errors even though I have lots of free space for the swap file and 2GB of RAM. It seems that Hugin/Panotools craps out somewhere above 100MP. Not sure if this can get better using a 64-bit system though, or if the software is simply not designed to handle such large files. I'm really confused though because I'm pretty sure I've seen photos that are 100MP+ and made using Hugin...

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

updated

 

[AmpedSilence]

Those pictures of Tokyo are just amazing. How do you get your pictures so crisp and sharp? Were they taken that way or do you so something special in post processing?

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: AmpedSilence
Those pictures of Tokyo are just amazing. How do you get your pictures so crisp and sharp? Were they taken that way or do you so something special in post processing?

Yay! When I took the pictures I was on a tripod, ISO100, and f/8 for maximum sharpness. I also use my prime lenses for maximum sharpness. ALL of the Tokyo shots are panoramas, so they're really high resolution, like 48MP for some, etc.

When I sharpen the pictures I first use Smart Sharpen with a radius of 1.1px and a strength of around 150. Then I add some punch to the details with unsharp mask with a threshold of 10, radius at 20px, and amount anywhere from 20 to 50.

The vertical panoramas are pretty interesting when you sharpen them. The top half of the pictures have a lot of tiny details because that's where the city goes off into the distance. The bottom half has a lot of large details because that's where the city is in your face. Because of the difference in details, each half of the picture requires different sharpness treatments.

USM at 50%, 20px, and 10 levels might work quite well for the bottom half of the picture, but it oversharpens the fine details in the top part of the picture, so you need to apply something like USM 20%, 20px, and 10lvls for the top half and USM 50%, 20px, and 10lvls for the bottom half.

 

[Jawo]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: AmpedSilence
Those pictures of Tokyo are just amazing. How do you get your pictures so crisp and sharp? Were they taken that way or do you so something special in post processing?

Yay! When I took the pictures I was on a tripod, ISO100, and f/8 for maximum sharpness. I also use my prime lenses for maximum sharpness. ALL of the Tokyo shots are panoramas, so they're really high resolution, like 48MP for some, etc.

When I sharpen the pictures I first use Smart Sharpen with a radius of 1.1px and a strength of around 150. Then I add some punch to the details with unsharp mask with a threshold of 10, radius at 20px, and amount anywhere from 20 to 50.

The vertical panoramas are pretty interesting when you sharpen them. The top half of the pictures have a lot of tiny details because that's where the city goes off into the distance. The bottom half has a lot of large details because that's where the city is in your face. Because of the difference in details, each half of the picture requires different sharpness treatments.

USM at 50%, 20px, and 10 levels might work quite well for the bottom half of the picture, but it oversharpens the fine details in the top part of the picture, so you need to apply something like USM 20%, 20px, and 10lvls for the top half and USM 50%, 20px, and 10lvls for the bottom half.

Whoa...once again amazing. I always knew there was a reason why I should learn how to use CS2!

 

[AmpedSilence]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: AmpedSilence
Those pictures of Tokyo are just amazing. How do you get your pictures so crisp and sharp? Were they taken that way or do you so something special in post processing?

Yay! When I took the pictures I was on a tripod, ISO100, and f/8 for maximum sharpness. I also use my prime lenses for maximum sharpness. ALL of the Tokyo shots are panoramas, so they're really high resolution, like 48MP for some, etc.

When I sharpen the pictures I first use Smart Sharpen with a radius of 1.1px and a strength of around 150. Then I add some punch to the details with unsharp mask with a threshold of 10, radius at 20px, and amount anywhere from 20 to 50.

The vertical panoramas are pretty interesting when you sharpen them. The top half of the pictures have a lot of tiny details because that's where the city goes off into the distance. The bottom half has a lot of large details because that's where the city is in your face. Because of the difference in details, each half of the picture requires different sharpness treatments.

USM at 50%, 20px, and 10 levels might work quite well for the bottom half of the picture, but it oversharpens the fine details in the top part of the picture, so you need to apply something like USM 20%, 20px, and 10lvls for the top half and USM 50%, 20px, and 10lvls for the bottom half.

amazing, just simply amazing