Antrim coastline and Atlantic Ocean

[LadyhawkVA]

Very interesting panoramas. The first is especially well done. As far as the one that does not line up evenly (the handheld one) - I've seen some effective panoramas done with regular straight edges and tiled alignments. Maybe something like that could work here, with the whole thing superimposed on a plain background (black?). Just a thought - believe me, I'm no expert. Overall, the shots are lovely - stunning subjects.

[thkn777]

Thanks for the hint, am thinking in the same direction but all tries were rubbish so far... am no expert too and so I need lots of time and trial-and-error is my best friend.

Will post my findings (if I get any).

Have a nice weekend, Th.

[John Maddock]

Thanks for the hint, am thinking in the same direction but all tries were rubbish so far... am no expert too and so I need lots of time and trial-and-error is my best friend.

OK lets think this through, you basically need to go through a mental checklist before taking a [handheld] panorama:

1) Put everything onto manual settings that you can: white balance, aperture and shutter speed.
2) Scan over the scene and take a reading for your aperture and shutter speed that's a good balance for the scene as a whole.
3) Scan over the scene and mentally rehearse the shot you're about to take, look for any "must have" sections and check that you're going to fit everything in. In the scene above that didn't work out for you, the top of the hill on the right is one of those "must haves", so I'd have started the capture sequence from there and scanned to the left.
4) Take the shot. Make sure there is plenty of overlap between shots and try and take them as quickly as you can (in case the light changes or clouds move or whatever), but don't rush and DON'T PANIC!
5) Take all the shots in one sequence: don't take a few and then decide that it would be nice to have a bit more on the right after the afterwards, it rarely works out (hense step 3).
6) If the scene slopes in a particular direction as it does here, it's very easy for your capture to follow the slope rather than remain horizontal, often you can get weird optical illusions as well that cause you to stray from the horizonal. Take a mental note before hand which way the land slopes and be aware that you will tend to subconsciously follow it. Yes you can straighten in photoshop afterwards, but you will loose some of the scene.
7) If you're having trouble getting everything in, try taking two rows of images: effectively two overlapping panoramas one above the other, again, make sure there's lots of overlap, if you miss a bit you've had it! The one you had trouble with might have been a good candidate for this: there's a lot of hight difference between the sea on the left, and the hill on the right.
8) If in doubt capture a larger area than you need, and learn to be ruthless when cropping in photoshop (harder than it sounds, it hurts to throw stuff away, even when you know it helps the composition).
9) After stitching, if there are small areas missing, then you can sometimes fill them in with the clone stamp tool (for abstract patterns like grass, foliage etc), or even copy a similar section and then blend in the edges (works well for skies). But it only works for small areas, not like your example.
10) Practice lots. Try it on some scenes that may or may not work, and you will get better at it.
11) After following all of the above, your walking buddies will be about 3 miles ahead of you, so... learn to run like the wind as well :G

Hope this helps,

John.

[thkn777]

Eh!

Thanks John I'll print it out and put under my pillow.

I am used to step 11 already - so thankfully I only have 10 rules to learn :-)

Regards,
Th.