Hey all,

My photographer took a few practice panos that we will be using for a demo tour.  If you have time, could you please offer some feedback and possibly pointers that will improve these shots, and future ones as well.  I am pretty happy with most of them, except it seems the color in the basketball court could be better balanced.  Also, the lights seem to cause a pretty harsh "burnout" that I would like to get rid of somehow.  We have photoshop, so feel free to offer PS-friendly advice if you want.  All images are in 3000 x 1500 jpg (about 3 - 400K apiece) but will be viewed at 1400 x 700.

http://panos.connectedtech.net

Thanks a million to anyone who has time to help.

Sometimes you can get rid of window burnout in two ways.

1.  Take the image in the "Golden Hour" (1 hour before sunrise and 1 hour before sunset or on a cloudy day) when the exterior light is not as contrasty.  The car interior was taken about 7:30am.  Click on the small thumbnail "Inside the Acura 2004" when visiting this page:

http://360texas.com/services/om/omcar.htm

Click on the thumbnail below "Pontiac Montana Van" and look at the windows all burned out because the sun was directly overhead.

2. Brute force approach: http://360texas.com/tips/window.htm

Hope this helps

Dave

they look good to me. perhaps some minor ghosting effect on a coffee table i saw , on some picture frames, and red floor. 

what set up are you using mate?

thanks for the suggestions Dave.  I checked out your tips...hindsight though.  The acura tour is awesome!  I see your point on shooting at the right time.  thanks VT, the manual stitching was giving fits on those scenes.  The coffee table was an easier stitch though, i'll look at it again.  Using a CP 5000, agnos rotator and kaiden leveler - they seem to do a pretty good job.  Are there any photoshop techniques that you guys use to lessen the harshness of the window burnouts?

I'm by no means a PS photoshop expert, buy Dave's explanation is really good.  http://360texas.com/tips/window.htm

With that set up you should be getting close to zero stitching errors. Level the first shot and do not level the other 2. Then try auto stitching. Let us know if the results are better.

I remember Agnos and a few other people saying it was not necessary to level the remaining shots.

Hey Steve,

Mate, they have come up a treat!

I have only just found the time to download and make a viewer to view your work! (Why didn't you post them in an applet?) You make me do the work??????

All look great! I would just adjust the "Curves" in Photoshop just to brighten them up a little (Dark one's only) apart from some very minor stitching error's these are very good and enough to put you in business.

So the question needs to be asked: Are you happy with the set up you ended up buying?

As for the window blowouts, I take three sets of images for each pano Normal - Underexposed and Over exposed and blend with Photoshop or Photomatix. See examples.

Great work and thanks for sharing with us.

Regards, Smooth

Hey guys,

I liked Dave's tip on the window burnout.  Unfortunately, can't take advantage of it this time, but definitely will become standard practice in the future.  We are making sure to only level for the first shot and then leave the other two in place.  Auto-stitching does a fair job, but there is normally too much ghosting to be completely happy.

Smooth, I was wondering when you were gonna show up   You were a HUGE help with picking everything out, thanks again!  Sorry about not putting in the applet, but they look a lot better in the viewer and I wanted a more judgemental eye (with the higher resolution and full panorama it seems easier to spot errors).  Thanks for the tips, I will make sure we brighten them up a bit more.  The Photomatrix examples are quite impressive, do you find it easier to use when blending the images than photoshop?

I'm really happy with the equipment, and would definitely reccommend it to others.  Hopefully, as we expand a bit more we can replicate the same setup with all of our photographers.

You guys don't know how helpful you are.  Thanks!