I even envy you your clouds,here on the east coast we just get a flat grey blanket
Both are really good. I think the church image would make a nice postcard.
Day 12
Didn't do much shooting today. As a matter of fact I only snapped 2 shots this evening while waiting at the can...
Lately I can't get anything to show up sharp on the forums. I even export from LR with High sharpen for screen at a 1000PX long side. Here is the shot at Flickr. Much better IMO.
Day 10.
All kind of lines. from the bleachers ,the yard lines and everything else. I learned that shooting lots of images for stitching to panorama, one must be really careful to be steady and precise. A tripod is needed in my opinion. No matter what I tried I just could not line up the yard lines perfectly.
Some keys to think about when shooting panos....
I've absolutely given up on exporting from LR. Their resize algorithm just strips away the hard work of getting a decent, sharp image. There are some convoluted methods for reducing images and sharpening for the web and ultimately I wound up just using one that someone else perfected, Jimmy McIntyre. His Raya Pro Photoshop panel has an amazing number of tools (actions) for image editing and the most valuable for me has been the Sharpen and Resize for the Web buttons. One click and it gives me a resized image at any one of 20 long side sizes, with a base layer and then a sharpening layer that I can adjust to taste before flattening and saving. World of difference. $40 well spent.
Oh, and yes, Flickr's resize algorithms are way better than what Lr seems to do.
Some keys to think about when shooting panos...
1. The front of the lens is the pivot point, not your body. You need to move, not the camera (there are pano heads for tripods - if you shoot with a normal head you'll have the same problem). On a 9 shot pano I'll find the center point and then take a half step my right and back instead of rotating left. Shoot 3 shots while rotating my body, concentrating on keeping the front of the lens in approx the same spot and the camera square to the horizon, take my step back for the center 3 shots, and then step back-left for the last 3.
2. Overlap by 1/3. I always tend to leave enough overlap on horizontal panos but with the camera rotated to vertical for a horizontal I tend not to leave as much. Shoot more images if necessary but make sure you have at least 1/3 overlay, particularly when you have lines that will diverge quickly like this.
3. Shoot wider than you need to for the short dimension. Panos will almost always have some bow distortion to them after stitching so leave room for that. It's better to crop out than to have to worry about whether or not Content Aware Fill can fix it.
With all that said, the horizontal came out fine.