Below a superwide capture I shot recently after we had our first snow of the season. Before I go on, take a look good look at it and see if you can find the paradox, something that just looks wrong but actually makes sense, then read the last paragraph.

I anxiously wait for a good conditions after a snowfall since that is rare where I live. This is the Delaware Water Gap which is about 2 hours away. More specifically, this is part of the Appalachian trail. I had been trying for two years to get a shot from the mountaintop with both snow and clear sky with the sun in the compositionally balanced position. Last year it all attempts failed due to rapidly changing conditions in the area. I hoped I had it this time but again I was foiled due to weather changes but overall it was far from a bad shoot as there are two great vantage points, the first along the trail to the top which is posted below. I shot the first image at that vantage point, a handheld, fisheye, HDR panorama, and then proceeded to hike up the mountain to top for another shoot. This is the 1/3 point, another hour to the top. Anyway, within 10 minutes of so getting that shot moisture in the air began to haze up the sky to the point where I knew I wasn’t going to get what I wanted - I already have the snowy landscape from the top in overcast conditions. So I turned back and as I past the first vantage point on the way down I reshot it, second picture, only 35 minutes later. Amazing how fast these things change. The moral is always go for the sure shot first.

What I really was going for in this shot (first one) was exactly what I ended up with. I wanted to use the trail as a leading line and also use the snow covered ledge to frame the bottom of the composition. It’s everything I love about going wide as it lets you capture pictures that require imagination to see the final result in the minds eye. Normal focal lengths capture what everyone sees but wide angle work is great if you enjoy more dramatic pictures.

So, did you notice the paradox? If not, then look at the lower left side and you will see my shadow which is not 180 degrees away from the sun. If you look a little further back you will also notice the long shadow of a tree. This is the cool Escher type result you can achieve with superwide images and this one which is about 270 degrees of so around.

D300 handheld
Nikon 10.5mm fisheye f/19



F/19, White Balance - Sunlight to preserve the blue sky and white snow
Software: PTGui Pro to create HDR panorama using 35 verticals: 7 bracketed sets of 5 exposures 1 stop apart




35 minutes later
F/11, slightly warmer than Sunlight WB
PTGui using 7 verticals

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

Attachment #1, (jpg file)
Attachment #2, (jpg file)

Impressive work, Albert, and a very nice winter scene. So, when you process your HDR panos, do you first process the seven, 5-exposure HDR images and then stitch those? Or do you first stitch each set of the five EVs and then HDR process the seven stitched photos? I'm assuming you use different software to process the HDR images and then PTGui to stitch the pano. Either way, it would seem to take quite a bit of time, not to mention processing horsepower.

Russ

Russ,

Thanks, this is now my favorite from that lookout point on the trail. Doing an HDR Panorama is easy with PTGui Pro. The Pro version differs from the regular version in two main things, 1) it does HDR and 2) it has a masking option within the program making it really easy to mask out something moving or a bad slice. I have done a few HDR panos long ago by creating an LDR from bracketed images then stitching a pano from those but that is a pain. PTGui Pro does all this including processing the RAW’s. I just select my photos from anywhere and drop them into the software and it processes the raws.

For this set that might be one of the few pieces of software that can do this efficiently meaning both HDR and Pano in one big step. It’s great software, even if this was not a also an HDR, since something like Photoshop stitching just falls short in blending ability, working with wide lenses, and other things. Photoshop works great for ideal textbook stuff but falls short many areas.

Anyway, all this was done in one program but needed a little help. I have a very practiced hand and know how to hold and turn my body fluidly with wide lenses to avoid parallax problems. But for this one there was another problem, the wind. The tree branches did move and bend here and there between shots so I did have to add a few control points or in some cases just mask out a bad area. The software lets you easily mask out any part of a single file or force a part to be used or prioritized, and then blends using the remaining images. So I basically dropped in my selected images, had it align which it does very fast. Then it shows me exactly where the problem areas area so I add control points or mask in or out problem areas. The next step is working the projection which is does interactively which is very nice. Then I optimize the image with the HDR function. The HDR function has two options, I used the fusion option which only needed a few pulls of the slider which went very quickly. The final step is selecting the size and type of file...then you hit Create button. That can take long or short based on whether you want to use the advanced function which can use a fast transform or the longer algorithm. 95% of the time the fast is best and moves along quickly, depending on your computer. For the final result I deselected the fast transform because of tricky tree branches. You can also save the project so I can come back to it without loading images or fix something or change the projection.

In terms of processing horsepower it did take a lot but any computer with the newer Intel iX CPU’s can handle this with little problems especially if you have enough RAM. Fortunately it is now 64-bit so I can through plenty of ram at it. I set up the Preferences to use all the aviable ram which was 6gb of 8gb - see the attached screen shot of my activity monitor when it was processing the final result. The fans did rev up for the last step. If you want to do HDR Panoramas I can highly recommend this - you can download a free trial.

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

Attachment #1, (jpg file)

Thanks for the detailed reply, Albert. PTGui Pro sounds very interesting. I'll look into it further. Very impressive that it combines the stitching and HDR functions into a single process. Even more so that it will process directly from the NEF files. Did it also deal with the fish-eye lens and correct for that as well?

Russ

Did it also deal with the fish-eye lens and correct for that as well?

It can handle all types of lenses but I never defish anything as that defeats the purpose of using the lens. For this shot, I did have my 10-24mm with me but that was now the right lens to get this type of composition since I wanted the snowy ledge in the picture as a framing element and I also wanted the horizon to be in the center to avoid any 'curvature of the earth' (I do want curvature when I an shooting from a mountaintop which was the next shot on my trek but the weather turned).

The software also handles multilayers with no problem and can do 360 or completely spherical panoramas. You can play with different types of projections interactively in the editor as well as reposition - this is a extremely useful feature. The Pro version also lets you play with white balance in addition to masking.

If you just want pano software this is one of the best. You really don't need the Pro version unless you want to do 'HDR panos' and you can always upgrade. As a matter of fact I used the regular version for years but after I shot this I knew the work would be massive and knowing me the files might have just sat in a folder for years (I have many shoots I haven't got to). I knew that the Pro version might make life simpler so I downloaded the trial version and tested with this set. I liked it a lot so I upgraded.

Here is a list of what the differences are
http://www.ptgui.com/features.html
This link described the HDR part
http://www.ptgui.com/hdrtutorial.html

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

Cool shot. It took me a half-minute but I did find the paradox. Peter

My gallery (a work in progress): http://peterstokes.net/Exhibit

beautiful images!!

Great work Albert.

Thanks for posting with the technical details.

John

Thanks everyone for the comments

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

Hi Albert,
This is wonderful, and colors are exactly true to what I see in Colorado.

I've yet to try pano stitching. Very intriguing!

I'm impressed with your ability to accomplish this handheld. Also curious about needing to take 35 verticals with the fisheye?

http://kathycavallaro.smugmug.com/

Thanks. I have a practiced hand and in this case also a practiced body for panoramas. By this I mean that it is important to keep a single point of rotation for such a wide pano (over 270 degrees for the original which includes even more in the right side). So one much pivot about a single axis in a fluid motion when shooting without displacing his/her feet. So how one placed their feet and legs before shooting can make a difference - not too much different than learning the art of panning when shooting moving wildlife.

As far as fisheye verticals, a fisheye lens includes a 180 degree field of view at the widest end. For a shot like this I needed to center the horizon in the composition to avoid a curve of the earth, this leaves plenty of room above and below to include the foreground since that was critical to this overall composition for framing purpose. 5 bracketed sets allow for the extreme brightness of the sun and the side to side shoots let me take in the entire width.

This composition can't be done any other way but below is an example of a regular shot taken with my 10-24mm lens at 12mm - not bad but certainly different as there is no real context or framing without the lower part which requires a vertical with plenty of space below the horizon line.


12mm DX

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

Attachment #1, (jpg file)

Al thats an excellent shot. I've hiked that area before
but don't have any winter shots. I like that area.

Tom MILLS
af4nc@msn.com
www.tommills.zenfolio.com
D3S, D800, D300, D2X
600mm f4
400mm f2.8
200-400mm f4
300mm f2.8,

Thanks Tom. Opportunities for winter shots here are few - so far only one day this winter with the right conditions. I did plan on hiking to the top and shoot but the weather changed very quickly so that shot, on a clear day with snow and the sun, is still on my short list of captures to complete my collection of this area.

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

This shot is interesting to me as I have one very similar from a trek up that trail back in the spring of 2010 (with Tom, a/k/a Af4nc). Similar that is, except for the fact that I didn't take a pano and so everything to the left of the river is missing from my shot. And of course it was a different time of day and different season. But aside from that the shots are practically identical!

But anyway, that's a steep trail and quite tiring on a mild spring day. It's about 1,000 feet up in roughly a mile of hiking if I recall correctly. I can imagine how much more difficult it is in the snow. Do you use any special equipment to make that climb in those conditions?

Pete

PS And thanks for all of the info on PT Gui Pro.

Thanks Pete - you can see a non-pano shot in post #12 taken at 12mm.

That vantage point is about 30-40% of the way to the top of Mt Tammany. The loop trail (red and blue dot) are 3.5 miles long with the top being 1,500 feet, 1,200 above the Delaware river.

As for special equipment for the snow, that was critical. I wore a pair of Kamik Nationplus Boots for this trek with wool socks. Regular hiking boots are not useful as the snow is too deep and would get into my socks and end up with wet feet... I learned my lesson in the past. I also have in my pack a pair of 'ICEtrekkers Shoe Diamond Grip', purchased from Amazon, that slip over my boots or hiking shoes in case of ice. Although I did not need them that day I learned last year how important it is to have a pair. I did that hike 3x last winter in the snow and/or ice. The last trek, about a year ago, on a very cold, clear day with snow/ice on the ground, with a goal to shoot the same shot and also one from the tippy top failed miserably. It had been warm the day before and snow partially melted and then froze over during the frigid night and morning to create a sheet of almost solid ice. I hiked almost to the point where I took the shot above but just couldn't make it since it was so stressful to hike up the steep part on a near sheet of ice without grips/spikes. As a matter of fact I had to abandon the trek and found it much, much easier to make my way down most of the trail on my butt - intentionally. I sat with my legs extended and pushed myself along the ice - much faster and much safer than trying to walk downhill on the ice - also a lot of fun! When I got home I researched ice spikes for boots so this would not happen to me again. Not having ice spikes killed a total of 3 winter hikes in various locations but now I have all the right winter gear. A good pair of tall Kamik boots or similar brand, is critical for hiking in deep snow, and ice spikes are also worth the investment since they are lightweight and slip on/off easily - just make sure you get the right size.

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography

Stunning scene. Love the crispness of the snow and the deep blue sky over the meandering road and river.

The paradox you pointed is quite interesting. Another aspect of this paradox is the shadow of the tree on the slope (just off-center to the right): it is perpendicular to the tree shadow you mentioned.

Your images are always an inspiration!

Cheers,
Zevi

Visit my Nikonians gallery.

Thanks Zevi!

Albert J Valentino
Nikonian Team Member
Vantage Point Images
Mastery of Composition is the Key to Great Photography