Friday, November 5, 2010

Heron Pond, HDR Stitched Panorama Test


This late afternoon view of Heron Pond is a four HDR shots stitched as a panorama.  For each position I processed five one stop brackets processed in Nik HDR Efex using a custom preset I developed for Fall Landscapes.  Then I stitched the HDR pictures in Photoshop CS5 and tweaked the levels.  Next, I adjusted brightness, contrast and structure in Nik Vivenza, the applied my "CSI: Miami" preset in Nik Color Efex Pro. So it took 20 shots and 11 processing steps to make the picture.  The resolution is equivalent to approximately 140 mega pixels.


This is a bit off subject, I've been working for a couple of months to get the look of an albumen print made from a wet plate negative.  I think output from Nik Silver Efex Pro using a custom preset I call "Wet Plate" comes pretty close.


This is my more usual split tone from Nik Silver Efex Pro from a custom preset I made for landscapes.


This posting fell a little shot because this is the full panorama I made at Heron Pond, stitching six, five one stop bracket HDR shots together, or 30 shots total.  I was able to process the 210 mega-byte panorama file in Nik Vivenza, but Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro both threw errors trying to write out updated files.  I plan to reboot and try again.  If the applications still throw errors, I'll contact Nik Support.

Lens: Nikkor AF-S 50mm f1.4 G 
Camera: Nikon D700
Exposure: ISO 200, five brackets around f/11.0 @ 1/20s, Auto WB, tripod
Lighting: Daylight
Location: Cache River Natural Area, Heron Pond GPS
Dates: Capture - October 29, 2010, Processing - November 5, 2010
Processing: RAW file in Lightroom 3, Nik HDR Efex, Photoshop CS5 and Nik Silver Efex Pro 

2 comments:

Mira Cope said...

Preston, really enjoying this series -- spent a lot of my early childhood walking woods, so these shots really make me feel at home. The blues on the trees in the bottom shot are a nice touch, but I think for this I really was drawn into the second one most -- seems to have the greatest depth on the alley at the left side. Thanks for sharing!

Preston Page Photography said...

Thank you for commenting, Mira. The last picture in this series is the composition I had in mind as I was shooting. The file size is so large that it chokes some of the Photoshop plug-ins I use. I wish I could take extra credit, but the blue is accurate color for the bark in the shade, not something I made up.
The second shot is my best effort to emulate the look of landscape photography circa 1860.