I have done some further testing of panoramas, using a compact camera and home-made panoramic head, this time with plum blossom as the subject:
In this set of tests I was trying out different views and different methods of taking and processing the images. With this image I was trying out the view through the tree but from inside the canopy of branches. Unlike some of the other views, the background is reasonable without any major distractions. This particular image is stitched together from 5 different images, each an HDR blend from 3 separate exposures. So 15 images made this panorama.
Not everything works though:
The stitching software choked on this one: Here, a single raw file for each segment was processed in the HDR software which was then fed into the panoramic stitching software which gave this result. However, using the individual raw images was fine. Some information required by the software must have got lost in the process…
In this view, I wanted to show more of the tree but less of the ground so I tried angling the camera up a bit:
This improved the view of the tree but distorted both the house and the horizon. I don’t feel that this distracts much as the tree with its blossom is the main subject. This was stitched from 5 segments, each comprising of 3 photos HDR blended.
One of the problems was movement of the finer branches and blossom in the almost imperceptible breeze. Most of the panoramas has some small motion errors in the HDR blends. So I tried using the raw files. Due to the high contrast of the scene, simple processing gave this type of image:
A lot of the blossom has blown out to plain white. In the gallery there is a version taken 2 stops underexposed which shows the blossom better.
This has been a useful learning exercise and, as soon as the breeze is still enough, I intend to take a ‘proper’ set. More of these tests can be seen in the panorama testing gallery.