Panorama of QE2 in Circular Quay

[sydneywebcam]

Having seen Potatis' terrific shot of the Spit Bridge (POTW Jan 10th) I have been inspired to get out and shoot panoramas as much as possible. I took this shot last night (Thursday 16th Feb) of the QE2 berthed at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Circular Quay. It's made up of 12 images stitched together and shot with a 50mm lens. I have used the software Potatis recommended (The Panorama Factory) and found it much better than Photoshop's Photomerge. Please click image below for full version (400kb)



Cheers,
Paul.

http://www.sydneywebcam.com.au/
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[nito]

nice stitch, the highlights on the ship needs to be lessen. Other than that its a great pano. Has all the element I like in the sydney skyline.

[Matt. K]

Nice job Paul!
A lot of work can go into one of those. My only comment on the technical quality is that you need to take care you don't over-sharpen your image. It is one of the most common errors in post processing. Also, as mentioned, the whites on the boat are a little hot. Thanks for the stunning view.

[nito]

I should comment that your QEII and sydney opera house shot truely captures the size of the vessel. That is so cool.

[sydneywebcam]

Thanks for the helpful comments. The problem with the highlights on the deck of the ship is that they were using spotlights to light it and trying to balance those in the overall exposure is tricky, especially on a long exposure. I did burn them in on a separate layer in multilply mode, but there is a limit to what you can do before it starts going off.

Matt as for the sharpening I always seem to run into problems when resizing for the web. My files are normally huge and when they get reduced to web size they are very soft indeed. Any sort of sharpening (I use smart sharpen in CS2) seems to degrade the image. Any tips in this area would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Paul.

[Matt. K]

Paul
I often have the same problem...though I don't specifically save for the web. Many of my images lose their subtlety when posted and for that reason there are images that I simply won't post. I believe you can't beat a fine print for beauty.

[sydneywebcam]

Paul
I often have the same problem...though I don't specifically save for the web. Many of my images lose their subtlety when posted and for that reason there are images that I simply won't post. I believe you can't beat a fine print for beauty.

I am with you there Matt. There is a world of difference between a quality print and a web image. Still the only way many people will see any image is on a web page. I printed a full size section of that panorama on my Epson R1800 and the detail in it is terrific. I find that images with large amounts of detail suffer most from the resizing & subsequent sharpening.
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Cheers,
Paul.

[Glen]

Well captured Paul, you truly caught the size of it

[birddog114]

Paul,
Very nice.

[Killakoala]

Pretty good Pano. At first i thought the fence detracted from the image, but as i looked at the image as a whole, it decided it helps to add some foreground interest. Great work.

[Nikon boy]

Paul, i think that is a truly outstanding image it captures the size of the ship well, something not easy to do with liners

[MATT]

Wow, great Pano. It realy does show how big it is..

Thanks for sharing

MATT

[leek]

I saw this first on Paul's "webcam" site and thought it was great... It really captures the scale of the QE2... I saw the funnel sticking up above the deck of the Harbour Bridge yesterday morning when driving to work and only then realised how large the thing is...

[LostDingo]

I like the whole perspective of this pano, good work managing your images

I wish I had picked up on it being there earlier, would have liked to get a few shots myself

[gstark]

Paul,

One of things abou sharpening is that you shouldn't do it.

Too often, to the one image.

Hold off until you've finished all pp and resized it for presentation, and only then should you do the sharpening.

What method did you use?

I always take it to where it's just oversharpened, and then pull back from that point. In your image, looking at the fence in the foreground, look at the circles that block out the water aat the intersections of the fence's diagonals. Now look at the edges of these circles, at the water, and you can see quite clearly that there's a "halo" sort of effect around each of the circles, where a small section of the water appears a little lighter in its shading compared with the rest of the water as seen through the fence.

Now look at the horizontal and vertical parts of the fence, and you can see a similar effect there, but to a lesser degree.

If you saved a version of the image before sharpening, I'd go to that image and reattempt the sharpening, looking for these artefacts, and then reduce the sharpening to the point where they disappear, and then maybe a tad more, and see how that looks.

[thaddeus]

Excellent composition. I think the beauty of the QE2 is in the lines of its bow, and that seems to be captured very well!

[stubbsy]

Paul

A very good pano of a damn big boat.

And to amplify on Gary's point about sharpening Paul - do the sharpening once only and AFTER you've resized it for the web (having saved a full size copy separately for printing whcih you'll sharpen separately)

[sydneywebcam]

Thanks for the sharpening tips Gary. I normally optimise my images for printing and they are sharpened for that. Then I resize that one and that's where the problems creep in. I will do what has been suggested in future.

Those halos you see are not actually from the sharpening, but from a PS plugin called Velvia Vision from Fred Miranda. There is an option to increase dynamic range and this is a by product of that. Normally it's not noticable at full resolution, but of course when it's resized for the web it shows up.

There is always plenty to learn no matter how experienced you think you are! That's what I love about this forum, lots of helpful people to offer advice.
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Cheeers,
Paul.

[MHD]

I can only echo what other people have said, Compo and idea is excellent! Over PPed though...

Huge bloody boat....

[ozimax]

Cracking image here Paul, that's one big tinny for sure.

[blaize]

Excellent Image and great composition, and I echo what you say about all the help and suggestions of this great forum!!! Gary's comments on sharpening have been helpful tonight in my own PP efforts!!!

cheers

Tony