How Stean Gorge

My first serious attempted at composing a panoramic shot in the field. I wanted to show the flow of the river and the gorge leading into the distance. I also wanted to include detail like the trailing ivy and include the lush vegetation cascading down the walls.

Here's the technical bit . . .

There was a huge dynamic range so I would have to bracket as well as stitch. Once Nick and Bex had moved their bags, I set up the tripod and camera in landscape mode. I use an L bracket and macro plates so the camera can rotate through the nodal point of the lens. This eliminates paralax and there's an excellent tutorial / explanation on the Really Right Stuff website.

I took 12 sets of three shots at ISO 100, f22, .5s, 2s and 8s. Between each shoot I moved the camera 15 degrees. I could have made bigger sweeps but because I was going to create an HDR image, I make sure that if one shot doesn't align, the whole series isn't lost.

Back at home I merged each set of three images using photomatix and then tone mapped. I then stitched with PTGui to create a single large 16bit tiff file. This was then cropped and processed in photoshop - levels, a bit of colour work and then resized and sharpened for upload.

Please fell free to comment on my composition or technique. Please view the large version!

Camera:	Canon EOS 1-D Mark II
Lens:	EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
Recording media:	RAW (digital)

Title:	How Stean Gorge
Username:	kit-monster
Uploaded:	15 May 2008 - 5:47 PM
Tags:	How stean gorge, Landscape / travel, Limestone, Nwmeet08, Panorama, Rocks, Water, Yorkshire
VS Mode Rating	Unrated These stats show the percentage of wins and the rating score that your photo has achieved. You can go to the VS Mode by clicking on this icon. Signup to e2 Signup to e2 to see which photo this has won or lost against in the vs mode
Votes:	19
Group Event:	NW Meet