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Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Sun 31 May, 2009 7:35 pm
by the_camera_poser
This may be useless, but I'll give it a go anyhow. This is a stitched shot composed of 8 shots taken of Pencil Pine Falls at CM NP. It's pretty skinny at 800 pixels- the original is over 9999 pixels wide!

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Sun 31 May, 2009 10:22 pm
by walkinTas
Nice picture CP. What did you use to stitch it together?

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Sun 31 May, 2009 10:53 pm
by the_camera_poser
I used Photoshop CS3 for this one, but I also use Hugin with Emblend, which is a free stitching program. I was surprised it came out so well. I'd love to be able to print it out at a size to do it justice.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Sun 31 May, 2009 11:32 pm
by walkinTas
the_camera_poser wrote:I'd love to be able to print it out at a size to do it justice.
There are a couple of shops in Devonport that can do that for you, but I have no idea about the quality of their work (PM sent).

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 01 Jun, 2009 9:42 am
by the_camera_poser
Walking- there's a print shop around the corner of the High School I might try.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 01 Jun, 2009 11:05 am
by Mickeymoo
Very nice looking shot, but as you say a little hard to appreciate all the detail at this size.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 01 Jun, 2009 1:26 pm
by Nick S
Nice shot tcp
For anyone around Launceston where would be the best places to print out long panos like this?
I haven't looked around at all yet, maybe submitting the photo online is the way to go, but I'd be interested to hear what other people do.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 01 Jun, 2009 7:17 pm
by north-north-west
Very impressive. It's hard to get moving water blended well in composites.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 01 Jun, 2009 8:24 pm
by the_camera_poser
Nick- I'm be blasted if I can remember the name of the place, but there's a spot on the way to Bell Bay- still in Launny, just down the road from the art school and from B+W printers, who does really good work. It's just a little shop front place, but they are the only people I've found locally to date that do a pro-job of printing. A chinese family run it- very affordable and great service.

There's a place in Devonport with a giant Epson continuous paper printer, if you want I can find their name for you.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Wed 03 Jun, 2009 12:55 am
by lexharris
Not useless at all camera_poser, quite a tidy result. Did you use a pano head on your tripod?

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Wed 03 Jun, 2009 10:01 am
by tas-man
the_camera_poser wrote:This may be useless, but I'll give it a go anyhow. This is a stitched shot composed of 8 shots taken of Pencil Pine Falls at CM NP. It's pretty skinny at 800 pixels- the original is over 9999 pixels wide!]

You can post a larger image that will be scaled back to 800 pixels wide for the forum display, but when clicked on will reveal the full size image. The limit is that the original needs to be under 1mb or it will be rejected as too big. I would like to see your pano at a larger size.
Check out this one I posted as an example in my Lake McCoy thread. download/file.php?id=1427&mode=view

. . . . and this one from the Lake Sydney/Mt Bobs thread download/file.php?id=1390&mode=view

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Wed 03 Jun, 2009 7:02 pm
by the_camera_poser
Here's a reduced-size version. It's been downsized twice, and so it's lost a fiar bit of resolution, but you can see a bit more detail.

No, I didn't use a pano head- I only used my standard 3-way head. It was a pain in the butt. The total view is around 270 degrees, so I had to run through the whole series of shots a number of times to make sure that the series would have a somewhat horizontal horizon in them. Also, trying to find a happy focus that would put everything important into decent sharpness was a bit tricky. Finally, I shot it all in manual, otherwise the camera would have varied it's settings, which would have thrown the stitching. I metered off the waterfall- and exposed as far to the right as I could on the waterfall without totally blowing the highlights. I then relied on photoshop to pull the detail out of the shadows.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Wed 03 Jun, 2009 8:14 pm
by lexharris
I then relied on photoshop to pull the detail out of the shadows.


Nothing wrong with that but why not try some Portra or Ektar to ease the pain - 12 to 14 stops dynamic range :wink: Might be a bit tricky to load in the digicam though...

Seriously, you've done well to cover the range in the picture, shadow detail holds up quite well and water highlights a bit blown but well controlled. Overall a nice piece of work and one to be proud of :D
Cheers, Lex

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Wed 03 Jun, 2009 10:02 pm
by the_camera_poser
Man I'd love to shot medium format, but it's just not cost effective. For that matter, I'd love to shoot large format- but that's definitely out of the realm of practicality.

I almost bought a Pentax MF last time we discussed it, but in the end I figured I'd be better to eventually invest in a 21 mp camera- get roughly the same reolution with the added benefits of digital. Not as much dynamic range, but flexible ISO, no negative scanning and total control of the development process outweighed the benefits in my mind.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Thu 04 Jun, 2009 8:20 pm
by lexharris
Man I'd love to shot medium format, but it's just not cost effective.


Yeah, it's true that buying and processing film is an ongoing cost that you don't have with digital. But when I see the 65+MP scans I get from 120 film, well it kind of makes it worth it. And a projected MF transparency, oh man that's something else, you have to see it to believe it. I know what you mean though and for most people it's too hard and too expensive. But heck, you can now buy a Hasselblad or Rollieflex or Pentax or Mamiya outfit for less than a D5II or A900 or whatever. I know which one I'd go for :wink:

BTW on a recent trip around the SW Cape circuit I was at Window Pane Bay and ran into a young guy with - surprise - a big Rollie TLR slung over his shoulder. He was shooting only HP5 B&W. Cool! :D

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Thu 04 Jun, 2009 9:50 pm
by walkinTas
When you guys take panorama's do you worry about the "Nodal Point"? Do you use / have you ever used a nodal rail?

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Thu 04 Jun, 2009 10:19 pm
by the_camera_poser
naw....... never seems to matter

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Fri 05 Jun, 2009 12:08 am
by lexharris
When you guys take panorama's do you worry about the "Nodal Point"? Do you use / have you ever used a nodal rail?

Personally no, but then I don't shoot a lot of panoramas and I already carry too much weight anyway :( . But if I was serious about panoramas I would use one if was intending to stitch images, or better still use a dedicated panorama camera. For the few casual panoramas I shoot, I find a standard head or even handheld is usually OK, mainly due to the impressive align/blend capabilities of Photoshop which can correct for quite a lot of lack of technique on the part of the photographer :wink: . Another way of creating a perfectly aligned panorama sequence (albeit limited to 2 images) is to use a shift lens. Works very well.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 08 Jun, 2009 10:03 pm
by walkinTas
CP, I added a link to your photo in the Wiki List of Waterfalls.

Re: Pencil Pine Falls

PostPosted: Mon 08 Jun, 2009 11:45 pm
by the_camera_poser
walkinTas wrote:CP, I added a link to your photo in the Wiki List of Waterfalls.


ta!