O Canada!

[rowyn]

While I was in Canada back in April, one of places we went was to the top of Mt. Doug. From there, I took bunches of pictures. Many of these were of my friends. Some more were shots that I took by standing in one spot, snapping off a shot, then rotating slightly, snapping off another shot, and continuing until I had gone 180 or 360 degrees. My theory was that I could later splice these images together into a single panoramic shot, much the way I'd seen boingdragon do.

Me being who I am, I didn't get around to this for quite some time. When I finally did, I discovered that it was even trickier than I'd anticipated.

I had realized that, since I didn't have a tripod, I would be taking each picture at slightly different heights, and with a fair amount of overlap on each one. So I expected to have some trouble lining them up. What I hadn't realized is that I'd also be taking each picture as slightly different distances -- this picture might be a little closer to the horizon than the next one, and so on. So I'd have to shrink the closer one a bit to make the scales match.

Also ... the exposures varied. Wildly. Each shot would be noticeably and markedly brighter, darker, bluer, whatever, than the adjacent ones. At first, I didn't think that I could fix that -- then I realized that my paint program is called PHOTOpaint for a reason, and that it does have tools for adjusting hue, saturation, intensity, contrast, brightness, etc.

What it doesn't have, as far as I know, is any way to automate this process so that the computer will change picture alignment, scales, and colors for me. Kirzen said that he had software for this, but since I am me and therefore stubborn in stupid ways, I spent time eyeballing all of this on my own and putting it together.

This is the first one, and it was only a 180 or so shot; I think there were trees or something dull blocking the horizon on either side. I did a little airbrushing on the sky to try to smooth out the lines where the pictures overlapped. You can click the image to get a larger version if you want more detail.

Comments

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Wow! Nice picture!

For some odd reason, I'm imagining a ballerina with a camera trying to take pictures like that.

I think I must be very tired to think of something that silly. :)

Good night!

New! Ballet-Action Rowyn!

[rowyn]

Heeheehee! Thank you. I'm glad you like it. :)

Re: New! Ballet-Action Rowyn!

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

See, all you need is an autowinder and one twirling piroette...
SnappitySnappitySnappitySnap!

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

Aside from the smoky smudge in the middle, not bad at all!

[rowyn]

I may go back and try to do something about the smudge. Depends on whether or not I have a save from just before the smudge got introduced.

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

Try "lassoing" the area and reduce green levels in it.

[jamesb]

You really need a tripod to photograph shots to make panoramas (and a rotating tripod adapter with 15 degree click stops helps as well).

I've done some panoramas using a software package from PixAround. When I downloaded it about 5 years ago, the basic v1.0 package was free. It was magic. All you had to do was give it all the pictures in the panorama with the files numbered so they were in the correct order, tell it what angle the shots covered, and what focal length lens and/or camera type you used, and it did the joining automatically.

[rowyn]

Maybe I'll get a tripod one of these days. It'd be more of a nuisance to lug around, though, and I don't usually take many pictures. :)

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Wow, nice!

[rowyn]

Thank you! *beam*

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Now I feel the urge to be all copycat-ish.

It'd only be fair ...

[rowyn]

... since I was being all copy-cat-ish of Boingdragon when I did it. :) Go for it! I bet there're some cool panoramas you could do of your area.