Grand Canyon: panoramas

lukexcom · Post by **lukexcom** » 2008-03-14 01:14am

I was looking through some of my picture collections. When I was looking at the Grand Canyon trip, I was reminded of how I purposefully took some pictures over there in a way that would allow them to be stitched into panoramas.

I took them with a Canon Digital Rebel EOS-300D, using just the stock 18-55mm lens, no filters or polarizers were on the lens that day.

I liked how they turned out. The images are inlined because I don't want to stretch out this page out to never-never land.

This image is a merge of 4 pictures taken on March 6th, 2007. It was around 8am then, with the rising sun behind my back and strong clouds rolling in from the west. This image is scaled down to 1500x436 at 173KB, from 6225x2087.

This one is perhaps a half-hour later. The clouds have already rolled in, and were about to choke out the sun. Curiously enough there was almost no precipitation whatsoever. This image is scaled down to 1500x552 and 153KB, out of 5283x2619.

Here's the 3rd picture. This was taken the evening before, at about 5pm or so. I merged it from 8 images. The PSD file weighs in at 221MB. I didn't bother to try to crop this one perfectly, so I just saved the output of the merge more or less as it was. It's at 4500x552 and 412KB, so watch your scroll-bar when you click on it. The original PSD image is 17964x2718.

I found the Grand Canyon to be amazing during the evening and morning hours. The photographer's rule-of-thumb of "best lighting conditions when your shadow is longer than you" can yield very good results here.

One day I would like to go back there, this time with a DSLR that can do 12mpx or better. That way I can get 3,000 pixels vertical, so I can scale and resize any panoramic pictures to 1/2 size, and still have them fit on triple monitor setups (3x 1600x1200 or 3x 1900x1200). That way I can compensate for some imperfections in the pictures that are bound to come up.

Argosh · Post by **Argosh** » 2008-03-14 11:46am

Wow, those are very beautiful pictures.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2008-03-14 12:58pm

That first photo is spectacular. What did you use for the stitching, photoshop?

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2008-03-14 04:23pm

I am awed by the beauty of the Grand Canyon every time I see it. The first photo alone made me "holy shit" out loud. Very nice stuff!

Darth Mall · Post by **Darth Mall** » 2008-03-15 12:25pm

Great panoramas! What fstop were you taking them at?

I hope that I can take some over the summer. I was actually just reading about them yesterday.

lukexcom · Post by **lukexcom** » 2008-03-15 12:51pm

Darth Mall wrote:Great panoramas! What fstop were you taking them at?

The first image's 4 pics started out at 1/160s and f/8, then dropped to 1/125 and f/7.1. All at 18mm focal length (x 1.6 for APS-sized sensor).

The second image's 3 pics were at 1/200s and f/9, also at 18mm (x 1.6).

The third image's 8 pics were each at 1/200s exposure and f/5.6, at 80mm (x 1.6).

DEATH wrote:That first photo is spectacular. What did you use for the stitching, photoshop?

Yes, the photomerge option in Photoshop.

The third image I didn't really touch, but for the first two, once I reduced them in size, I merged the components into 1 layer, and duplicated it. That gave me two identical layers. I applied a sharpening mask to the top-most layer, and then set it's opacity to about 40%. That gave me a gentle sharpening effect, not too much (the sharpening mask itself is overly strong), but just subtly enough to make it look a tad bit clearer.