Old and New

[dubaiphil]

Here's a contrast - old 1980's single story villas which are now quite run down with grafitti. Two blocks behind are the modern skyscrapers and the Burj Khalifa.

It's an Exposure Fusion stitched panorama (using PTGui software) so the forum resolution probably doesn't do it any justice, but I'll post anyway - original picture dimensions are 10000 x 3000 pixels

[NLAlston]

Looks really good to me. I like this. Nicely done.

[AB26]

Hi Phil,
Think the two dark blots caused by the trees spoil a bit of the impact. Maybe I am overly critical but this is a pano by dubaiphil. Only you to blame for spoiling viewers with excellent work.

[dubaiphil]

Hehe - I was on a tight schedule to get home for baby's "dream bottle" so I could not bracket enough across the panorama to get the details out of the trees.

This was at -2, -1 and 0EV. 10 'images' for the pano, with 3 exposures per image.

Generally my process for nightscape panos is to let PTGui do the work with bracketed images. i.e. the software recognises that I have taken the same image with different exposures and then automatically blends the individual scenes while stitching. There is an element of user input but it's not the best.

To get that shadow data out of the RAW files I'll have to blend each image individually before stitching, using Photomatix Pro. So if I pick a image from the pano with the greatest dynamic range, blend to suit, then repeat with the same settings for the next 9 bracketed images, then upload into PTGui and stitch, I'll get a better result.

At least I'm not dealing with D800 files!

Now after all that the question is "can I be bothered?!?"

[Bobobird]

Of course you should be bothered.
To nudge you along will just say "I find the dark spots bothersome to an otherwise stellar image".

(But really I'm not, shadows like that are expected for a natural night scene). haha.