(cheap) Options for Panoramic Photography?

[cls]

No CPL this time, but I used a 72mm Canon-brand ND8 ($25 from ebay) to try to slow the shutter down and blur the waves. But in this bright sunlight it didn't do much, I think I'll need another ND8 or ND 15-20 total to get to the 1-2second exposure mark (or I can try stacking my 2 CPLs, although IQ is going to suffer).

Really nice attempt! Makes me want to try some panoramas too. One thing about your idea though, if you use a CPL during panoramic shooting you will likely run into trouble - the CPL effect depends a lot of the shooting direction and if you use it in a panorma, you will likely see big differences in sky color etc.

By the way, I've also considered the cheap option for the macro tripod ring - what's the "brand" of yours?

[Dr Croubie]

Really nice attempt! Makes me want to try some panoramas too. One thing about your idea though, if you use a CPL during panoramic shooting you will likely run into trouble - the CPL effect depends a lot of the shooting direction and if you use it in a panorma, you will likely see big differences in sky color etc.

By the way, I've also considered the cheap option for the macro tripod ring - what's the "brand" of yours?

Yeah, my first attempt a few weeks ago I had a CPL on, I re-tuned it every time I moved the camera around. Didn't turn out that badly once I'd run it through the exposure optimiser on the HDR ones, but on the single-exposure panoramas there were definite lines at the joins.
Also, unintended consequence of using the CPL, far away from the sun the sky was fairly dark, but pointed almost at the sun the sky was bright (but not blown out), CPL just doesn't work as well pointing near the sun. So there was a massive difference between the bright and dark areas of the sky. Looked better without methinks.

The ring I bought was http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Tripod-Mo...-/110723896521 , uWinKa brand or something (a lot of the ones I searched for were this brand). Plastic, but metal foot-thread and ring-tightening screw. Not sure how it fits the 100L macro, but on the samyang it's a good tight fit, a bit hard to rotate around itself so i'll probably end up taking paint off the lens barrel (if I don't fully disconnect to change orientation), but I don't mind. It even came in a nice printed carboard box. I fail to see how they can make any profit off these for $10 including shipping.

[Kayaker72]

Nice shot Dr. I am with CLS.....it makes me want to go out and try panoramic shoots.

[Dr Croubie]

Thanks guys.
Here's the result of many many hours using Hugin and Luminance HDR (sometimes Hugin just brain-farts and doesn't make a usable image, then run it again and it's fine).
DPP-processed raw files as monochrome (red filter), 1/1 NR and everything else defaults.
Then jam them all into Hugin, mask out the flying seagull in 2 of the shots, add 273 of my own control points (4 per overlap or near enough). Creating .EXR didn't exactly work, so I changed to .TIFF (which created a lovely 1.1GB file, thank god for 30GB of SSD-swap-space).
Then open in Luminance, and tonemap about 50 different ways until i find one i like. (then forget where I saved it).
I gotta find a quicker way...

[Epphoto]

If you shooting Pano the worst thing to do is use CPL
try to get ND grand filters to do your job
I'm taking pano pictures for many years now and the only gear you need is a nice tripod with leveling base, nice ball-head ,PTGui,and ND grand filters
you can check my pano work here and if you have any more questions i bee glad to help
http://emmanuel-panagiotakis.artistw...com/index.html