C&C on these 2 stiched panas Please

[stevecim]

It was a bit too windy, so I had a lot of cloud movement, not sure if either pana works. Comments please.







Cheers Stephen

[01af]

The moving clouds are no problem; I cannot detect the borderlines between the single frames. But the clouds are too dark, and the forefrounds are completely black ... which looks just bad. Obviously you wanted to show the colours of the sky---but it doesn't really work this way. Maybe you should combine both panorama stitching and HDR techniques here. Did you shoot in raw format? If so then maybe you can do some pseudo-HDR (i. e. develop two images from the same raw file, one for the highlights and another for the shadows, and then merge them). Real HDR would require two or more exposures for each frame.

-- Olaf

[KevinBarrett]

I agree with Olaf. The colors are great, but the deep impenetrable shadows detract from the image. I'd like to see some definition in there. Sunsets are a popular subject, and they're spectacular enough on their own, but they are ver demanding to shoot spectacularly simply because so many have done it...we all have a picture of an ideal sunset in our imaginations.

That said, this is gorgeous and well-stitched. I wouldn't have though it was stitched if you hadn't said so. It's hard to be in the right place at the right time for a sunset, and clearly you were. This is very well captured! I like the first for all the definition in the clouds, but the intense reds and contrast of the second are good, too.

[stevecim]

Here is the first one again, but I've tried to get has much details out of the bottom third

[Javelin]

I liked the first version of it better. the subject is the sky, if there wasn't anything interesting on the ground that could add to the picture then to me it doens;t mtter that you can't see it.

[bossel]

I like the first shot - yes there is some darkness, but the colours are great. Why not crop a bit on the top and bottom. Or make the bottom completely black, like a silhouette!

[harveyzone]

Here is the first one again, but I've tried to get has much details out of the bottom third

There is actually a lot more detail in the shadows that you think. Hope you don't mind me having a tinker, and excuse the poor masking, but here is another version...



[Edit - D'oh! why didn't that embed? I just get "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image."]
[2nd Edit - Corrected. For some reason my web forwarding broke it! Not sure how Olaf got it to work using my forwarded domain!]

[01af]

D'oh! Why didn't that embed?

You mean, like so?



Yes, that's better ... of course, it's rather poor technically, but that's just because you had to work from a small JPEG. Anyway, now the definition in the foreground is right---dark, as it's a back-light situation, but not near pitch-black. When processed properly from the raw files, and in full size, it must be a gorgeous image to look at! However the clouds in the upper part of the frame are too dark still. I guess there's a lot more of tones, colours, and definition hiding in there.

-- Olaf

[KevinBarrett]

The new version looks great!