Another Bolsa Chica Sunset

[whaas2]

This susset photo was taken in Late June at the edge of the Bolsa Chica wetlands here in Orange County, California. This location was chosen because there is little obstruction of the horizon, there are few people, and it is easy form me to get to. I wish that we had this display every evening but this condition is somewhat rare.

[davidsl222]

Gorgeous photo!

[Mr P]

Have you done a lot of postprocessing on this?

Mr P

[whaas2]

The color was enhanced a little. Most of the processing was a matter of stitching together three photographs and then resizing.

[loeee]

The sky is on fire! Gorgeous sunset. I maybe wouldn't have enhanced the color on this one, looks like it had plenty to start with.

[whaas2]

Thank you all for viewing. Attached is what this photo looked after stitching but before resizing and color enhancement. You are probably right is saying that this photo did not need any color enhancement but I am a sucker for bright colors. I tried to brighten it just a tad.

[Mr P]

Originally Posted by whaas2

Thank you all for viewing. Attached is what this photo looked after stitching but before resizing and color enhancement. You are probably right is saying that this photo did not need any color enhancement but I am a sucker for bright colors. I tried to brighten it just a tad.

I prefer this one. I think I can also see evidence of the joins.

Mr P

[whaas2]

Originally Posted by Mr P

I prefer this one. I think I can also see evidence of the joins.

Mr P

This should be a learning experience. To begin with, this was a spur of the moment, less than perfect performance in taking the photos. As far as stitching the photos together I am dependent on a piece of software but since the input was not perfect It is not the entire fault of the software. The question is, can an untrained eye pick up the faults. I think that there is a more serious fault with this photo than evidence of joins. Would you like to see the individual component photos?

[Mr P]

Originally Posted by whaas2

This should be a learning experience. To begin with, this was a spur of the moment, less than perfect performance in taking the photos. As far as stitching the photos together I am dependent on a piece of software but since the input was not perfect It is not the entire fault of the software. The question is, can an untrained eye pick up the faults. I think that there is a more serious fault with this photo than evidence of joins. Would you like to see the individual component photos?

What software did you use? I've not had happy experiences with software-stitching and I presently sew my panos by hand. You may have come across a couple of them in other threads.

Would certainly like to have the opportunity to view the individual photos.

Mr P

[whaas2]

Decades ago I made up film print panos, cutting and pasting them together by hand. One must remember that you are taking photos at the center of a sphere.
To stitch the photos together I used Canon Utilities PhotoStitch 3.1. The price was right. This software came free with the camera.

Attached find the individual shots.

[sunway_ray]

that's amazing! this is the first time i have seen these scenes. thank you for your excellent work...just let me save them...

[lakejessup]

cool sunset maybe dante's inferno

[whaas2]

Thank you for the kind comment. Most ot the time the sunsets here are less than spactular but some times when conditions are just right we get what you see. Just over the horizon in these photos is a place called Sunset Beach. I think that reflection off of the ocean beyond, adds to the effect.

[Mr P]

I've used Photostitch myself but have had variable results. My preference is still to do it by hand as the software packages have difficulties with parallax errors.

Here I've put the photos together by hand; each photo cropped, copied in a separate layer and then aligned. You can see the horizon problem. The joins were fixed first by slight curves adjustment on each layer and after flattening the layers by cloning. (It's not too difficult to 'fake' clouds.) I didn't adjust colour balance, curves, levels -that's personal preference.

Observations:
1) I think you had a rather dirty sensor. The spots are fairly obvious. I've not removed them.
2) The horizon was not exactly horizontal. Tripod or hand-held? If tripod, was it exactly level? I tilted each photo 1º counter-clockwise before placing. They may need more. This is a major hint in making panos in my experience.
3) There seems to have been sufficient overlap although it was not very consistent between the photos. 50% overlap gives plenty of latitude. One of them was less. This hint is important for dealing with edge distortion.
4) I suspect the time lag between shots was just a little more than click, move, click, move, click! This is the third hint - constant light / exposure.
5) I think you could have done with a darker horizon throughout the pano, for a point of reference against the clouds.

Hoping this helps. The original is still a super sunset shot.

Mr P

[whaas2]

I agree with your analysis. I was not expectng to photograph a sunset that evening but when I saw near perfect conditions developing I rushed over to one of my favorite spots. There was no time to grab my tripod. As it was I missed the actual setting of the sun. I have quite a few more photos that I have to process from this shoot. The sky was lit up all over the place and not just in the direction of the sun.
The sensor definitely needs to be cleaned. The problem does not usually show up in my photos of kittens and flowers but it is unavoidable in landscapes and in videos.
In these sunset photos I think that it is difficult for the untrained eye to tell the difference between a spec of dirt on the sensor and part of the clutter of the background. I thank you for your efforts.

[garyosborne]

Wow i like this. I think any software is going to have a hard time with this as i think the controls points are hard to establish across the frames. 1 way would to include the horizon across all the images (you got nothing in the 1st 2) for reference. You can always crop it out of the end result. Personally i would of cropped out the tree silouette and viewed as a natural abstract sort of image. Nice

[Mr P]

Originally Posted by garyosborne

Wow i like this. I think any software is going to have a hard time with this as i think the controls points are hard to establish across the frames.

Agreed. When hand-stitching that example I could use the clouds as the human brain is still a better computer

Mr P

[GixxerKitten]

Oh my! Gorgeous!