I've been busy with computer chores lately, but I did get out long enough on Tuesday the 19th to make this panorama of the reservoir just a few miles from my home.
This image is "stitched" from 54 individual captures using the "Photomerge" automation in Photoshop CS2. I set the exposure using the manual mode on my Pentax K10D and left it alone to prevent the camera's metering system from providing me with an impossible collection of various exposures. All captures were made with the kit lens at 35mm focal length (approximately the "normal" angle of view) @ f/8 and 1/60" shutter speed. The ISO was set to 500 to allow that combination of aperture and shutter speed since I used my B+W S03 circular polarizing filter. Usually that ISO would be a bit too noisy for my taste, but the huge amount of data from 54 captures seems to have solved that to an acceptable degree. I spent quite awhile removing as meaning artifacts as I could and even creating a bit of the far bottom right hand corner. I know this magnification doesn't offer much to really see any problems, but I'd love hear about how much you detect the manipulation whether you're a novice or expert.
My five o'clock class is rapidly approaching. Special thanks to Jeremy and his blog, Jezza's Photography Blog for helping inspire this exploration.
He is doing an even more advanced version of this using long primes to achieve narrow depth of field in the final image. If you get bored with what you're shooting and want to break out of the edges of your viewfinders frame, check out what Jeremy's been doing and feel free to contact me if you need some help getting started. I'll write more here about photo stitching once I feel I has learned enough to contribute a decent basic overview.
Out of time for now. Please let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll try to address them either here or in person.
Al
