Kingston Lacy

[MrB]

A Country House and Gardens in Dorset.

Two views of the house, both are 4-shot composites to exercise the free software Microsoft ICE - Image Composite Editor:





The first set of images were shot with a 21mm prime, and the second set with a 35mm prime, using an APS-C DSLR, the Pentax K-5IIs. Image editing was done in PaintShop Pro X6.

Any comments welcome.

Cheers.
Philip

[Shadowman]

Nice compositions.

[chauncey]

Looks like the stitching went well.

[NorthernFocus]

A country house? What does that mean, was it it's own country back in the day? Or is it an example of why the poor folks sailed to America back before the unfortunate uprising?

At any rate, nicely captured and displayed.

[dje]

Nice house Philip and you've captured and processed it very well IMO. The geometry looks good ! Did you have "perspective distortion" to deal with, particularly in the second ?

Dave

[MrB]

Thank you to all above for viewing and commenting.

Dave - ICE seems quite magical to me in the way that it deals with the geometry! There was some 'leaning over backwards' distortion to correct, but more so in number 1, as I was much closer and viewing upwards with the 21mm lens.

As a helpful lesson for others who might try the technique, I admit to a careless error when shooting for number 2. Not until processing did I notice that I'd forgotten to use fixed exposure Manual Mode, and leaving the camera on my usual Aperture Priority Mode had given slightly different exposures. So there was the extra work during editing, to match up the appearance of the four images, before making the composite.

Cheers.
Philip

[John 2]

Nice result Phillip under difficult lighting conditions. Excellent record.

[bnnrcn]

Nice compositions

[Tom Barry]

Excellent results. I use ICE myself from time to time and find it effective and fairly easy to learn to use.

[Dave Humphries]

I can't say that I'd heard of ICE before, but the results do look good Philip.

Cheers, Dave

[MrB]

Thank you all for viewing and for your comments.

Dave H - as Tom has written, it is very effective and easy to use - it is certainly worth downloading and having a go:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/.../projects/ice/

Cheers.
Philip

[John 2]

A country house? What does that mean, was it it's own country back in the day? Or is it an example of why the poor folks sailed to America back before the unfortunate uprising?

Dan, I guess it's more to do with the latter in that people that could afford to own a pile like that generally also had a residence in London. The phrase probably differentiates between their "Town House" and their "Country House".

[IzzieK]

I really like what I saw here Philip...if I can process as good as I shoot, I'd be happy. These are both good. I will have to go back and look at this in the morning...especially #2. I like number 1 better at this time...

[deetheturk]

Very nice Philip, and well photographed!

[MrB]

Thank you John, Izzie and David. And Izzie I would be interested to read any 'next morning' thoughts!

Cheers.
Philip

[IzzieK]

I still like #1, Philip because it is a nicer image -- the cropping, the pp is excellent in both but the scene in #1 is more stronger especially with the inclusion of some clouds. You did very well there. I have ICE before but have to dump it because I seemed to have too much software and ICE fell in the culling to make room for some space. It seems that you had taken advantage of its capability.

[MrB]

Thank you Izzie. As you can see, I think ICE is great software so it will stay on my PC. However, if you ever think it would be useful again to stitch images for a particular scene, being free, it can always be downloaded anytime, applied to your images, and then deleted to regain the space on your drive.

Cheers.
Philip