Pano help! What to do now?

[tijoseph]

So, I thought I would try my first Panoramic. Well, I think I have discovered that doing something close up might be really challenging, vs a skyline or something of that nature.

So I have posted here what I did so far (Stitching in cs4) And now am at a loss. I Have two Problems.

1. Exposure is off from layer to layer. I try to adjust, but it still does not quite match. Is there a way to make it match?

2. Towards the center of the picture, lines don't quite match. is there a way to make it match?

Someone please help!! I have gone further into the realm of extreme baldness, for my hair is falling out as I type this!

P.S. I use manual settings in my camera to capture, and still got different exposures??????? weird huh?

http://tandjphoto.smugmug.com/photos/489659730_GdJBp-L.jpg

[Art Scott]

Cool idea.....wish I could help.....but have no idea.....

Pano-sperts where are ya!!!

[David_S85]

Looks as if exposures weren't the same. What do the exif's of each shot tell you? Was it full manual? By full manual I mean exact same shutter, f-stop, ISO, and white balance in every shot. Any of those where the camera makes its own decision, individual exposures could be off as you rotate around. In addition, same focal length should be used. Some zoom lenses can creep a bit.

The closer an object is in a pano, the easier it is to introduce parallax errors, that is, the relative object's position seems to change in relation to other objects in the foreground or background from picture to picture. Might be why the nearer tracks don't align up right. Here's a tutorial that demonstrates this (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/2114189).

Photoshop, while a great program, can't fully compensate for parallax problems.

A lens that is extreme wide angle can also create barrel distortion, which if left uncorrected can and most probably will cause stitching problems, since the edges of each shot are very different in neighboring shots.

Near objects in panos are why panoramic heads exist, and why aligning to each lens is so important.

[tijoseph]

I was sure I had it in full manual but I just checked the data like you suggested, and crapola! My shutter speed was changing.

Oh well. Back to the drawing board!

[cmason]

I was sure I had it in full manual but I just checked the data like you suggested, and crapola! My shutter speed was changing.

Oh well. Back to the drawing board!

may want to give Hugin a try, see if it can at least help with the parallax issues...not sure anything can help with the exposure, but since Hugin is free, doesn't hurt to try

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

[tijoseph]

may want to give Hugin a try, see if it can at least help with the parallax issues...not sure anything can help with the exposure, but since Hugin is free, doesn't hurt to try

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

awesome! I'll give it a try and maybe use in the future when my exposure is correct!

[BradfordBenn]

What I have done before when my WB is drifting (always) was I touched up each photo separately and then ran the Pano command on the newly white balanced/exposed image. It seems to help. I don't think it is unsaveable, it just might not be perfect.

Hope that helps.

[BobbyMarshall]

Did you shoot in RAW? If so, you could manually set the WB the same in each shot.

[bujubanton]

Try this:
http://www.autopano.net/
you will not be disappointed. I certainly wasn't.

[rustic]

Just a guess, but I'd say that your lines not meeting up might be due to the camera not being completely level on your tripod. If you've got a slight tilt at all when you're looking straight ahead at the rail (the center of the shot), then I'd think you would see what you're seeing there.

[dbd]

I've seen that pattern when my camera thought it was in bracketing mode and I didn't. In PTGui there is a mode that adjusts to a fixed exposure by reading the exif data for when you forget to set exposure to manual or your camera has no manual setting. YMMV

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.com