Ottawa, 2007

[eob]

This is a panorama stitched from 4 frames, hand-held. The scene is a view of Ottawa, across the river, from the Museum of Civilization.

[habakuk]

Sorry, eob. This shot doesn't display for me. If I try to open the linked file I get a err404 from your server.

cheers
®

[eob]

How about now? I think, I had wrong URL to this photo.

[Ernest]

I see it properly. Great pano, specially if you did it "manually". I love the sky, modern element on the right and old stuff in the background

[eob]

Thanks, Ernie. I shot the scene without any tripod or monopod support, but the stitching was done totally automatically in CS3. I just tweaked usual stuff: white balance, contrast, and luminosity.

[aprilS]

The first thing that caught my eye were the curving ripples in the lake. I love that long perspective there, echoed by the curving road on the right.

Here's what amazes me: The water ripples are seamless![1]

Then I notice the (presumably moving) clouds are also seamless.

So, I'm thinking...must have been a fast burst of exposures as you panned?

I'm actually tempted to crop out the museum on the right, to focus on the arcs and then the background spires. It seems a bit like two stories to me now.

--
[1] Ok. Maybe I can see one little seam in the ripples, but that's still an amazing capture.

[eob]

PS CS3 does an amazing job at automatic stitching and blending. Sometimes there are some artificial elements left, but in most situations I can live with the result. The series of 4 frames was taken over a period of at least 22 seconds (my old Digilux 2 takes its time writing RAW images to a card - 5,5 sec/frame). Lens was set to 28 mm, BTW.

Originally, I had a 5-frame panorama with much more of the Museum Of Civilization building on the right. I decided to eliminate that fifth frame for the reasons you mentioned above. But I left a little fragment because I wanted to "anchor" the scene in real surroundings and frankly, without that building, the pathway on the right would ruin the visuals, IMHO, so I would have to eliminate it, too. Besides, as Ernest observed, the modern element is a nice contrast to the old town Ottawa on the other bank of the river.

[aprilS]

The series of 4 frames was taken over a period of at least 22 seconds (my old Digilux 2 takes its time writing RAW images to a card - 5,5 sec/frame). Lens was set to 28 mm, BTW.

Ah-hah. I get it now. Thanks for the technical explanation. It helps me re-consider other options for shooting a long view. (My previous attempts at a wide-angle panorama are...still in the works and maybe can't be salvaged. So I probably wouldn't have tried it again!)