Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

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Archive 2009 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

phil hawkins
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p.1 #1 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Went up to shoot the sunset at Glacier Point, which was a bust (too much smoke and no clouds) but on the way down I caught a great view of the Grouse Fire at dusk. I had my pano bracket, shot 15 exposures, cooked them in Photoshop (no need to get PTGui) and this is the result.

The inset shot reveals the amazing, incredible detail you can get from stitched images done correctly. The resulting finished pano at full size was a 28.9 meg TIF. Think what this will look like as a printed wall-sized gallery wrap or some such thing.

Who needs a 5D MKII or even a Hasselblad? These were shot with a trusty 1D MKII!! I paid $500 for the bracket and VOILA! I'm hi res! The only thing I'm missing is 14 bit, which I would dearly like to have.

2012 © phil hawkins

Jul 01, 2009 at 03:00 PM

z06jim
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p.1 #2 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Great job on the pano...

..that's a wicked looking forest fire...

Jul 01, 2009 at 03:07 PM

JimFox
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p.1 #3 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Hey Phil,

That is a cool shot and the stitching looks good.

But you don't even need a bracket to shoot shots like that. Many of us do it all the time, so you could have saved the $500...

I will disagree about the lack of importance of higher resolution camera's, because one can stitch with a lower resolution camera. Try doing a 15 shot pano, or even a 2 shot pano of wave breaks at the ocean for example...

Jim

Jul 01, 2009 at 06:13 PM

phil hawkins
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p.1 #4 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Excellent point, Jim, and the other caveat is when doing portraits or sports... yes, there are benefits for going to a hi-res camera, but for a vast majority of landscapes, it can be done going pano.

I use the brackets because it's far easier, faster and the post is more predictable. I can capture the pans and have very little change in cloud patterns, or sun movement, etc.

I have done them w/o the bracket, but it was time-consuming and the results were not always what I anticipated.

Jul 01, 2009 at 06:21 PM

dasams
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p.1 #5 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

phil hawkins wrote:
I use the brackets because it's far easier, faster and the post is more predictable.

I'm not sure I agree. I've shot panos handheld and with RRS pano gear and the former is easier and much faster. The only time I use the latter is if I have foreground objects that might introduce parallax errors. Dave

Jul 02, 2009 at 02:11 AM

alichty
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p.1 #6 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Very nice stitch job and good eye on collecting the set of exposures. I will stay out of the debate for camera resolution and pano brackets beyond noting that current stitching software and my 5D MkII sure make this task a breeze compared to what I was doing just a couple of years ago trying to accomplish the same task.

Your results here certainly attest to how well your solution is working.

Thanks for sharing - nice image.

Alan

Jul 02, 2009 at 03:15 AM

phil hawkins
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p.1 #7 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

I cannot imagine how great a pano would look with your MKII. wow! And thanks for the kind words.

Jul 02, 2009 at 05:50 AM

hfillmore
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p.1 #8 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Quite amazing details and colors Phil. I'm surprised that stitching worked with the dynamics of flames and smoke. Did you focus on trying to include the flames in a given portion to be all in a single shot? Mind telling us what pano gear you used?

Harvey

Jul 02, 2009 at 03:45 PM

phil hawkins
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p.1 #9 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Each of these exposures was 30 seconds at f/2.8 at 400iso. The flames kind of blended in due to the long exposure, and the smoke doesn't move that quickly, so the pano went fast.

I use a Nodal Ninja 5 bracket and it works to perfection.

Jul 02, 2009 at 04:16 PM

tach18k
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p.1 #10 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

Very nice Phil

Jul 02, 2009 at 07:23 PM

hfillmore
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p.1 #11 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

phil hawkins wrote:
Each of these exposures was 30 seconds at f/2.8 at 400iso. The flames kind of blended in due to the long exposure, and the smoke doesn't move that quickly, so the pano went fast.

I use a Nodal Ninja 5 bracket and it works to perfection.

Thanks Phil. Nice to know the NN 5 works well with the 1 series.

Once again, great colors, exposure, detail, and comp on the pano.

Harvey

Jul 02, 2009 at 09:37 PM

Iron_Dreamer
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p.1 #12 · Yosemite Grouse Fire shot

You know, for having missed out on the much more common "touristy" shots obscured by smoke, you picked up a much more unique photo, and experience from your Yosemite trip. So don't go away sad.

Jul 03, 2009 at 05:43 AM


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