Another Panorama

This one was taken at the same place as yesterday's photo, but before I left, I went to the edge of the water and hand held a series of shots to try to make into a panorama.

I basically followed a few simple rules when trying my first panoramic shots.
1. I obtained the ideal exposure for the most important part of the photo, the sunny area in this one, and set my camera to manual and took ALL of the shots in the series at that SAME exposure. That gives the best chance for the images to merge smoothly.
2. I overlapped each photo in the series by at least 1/3 of the frame. This was to give the Elements program the best chance of lining up the different photos correctly.
3. Try to keep the camera as level as possible. I used my tripod mostly, but today's panorama is composed of shots that were all hand-held.

There are attachments that you can buy and use on your tripod to make taking the series of shots for a panorama more exact, but they cost a lot of money, so I didn't buy one.

Since we're on the east coast, we drive over to the beachside (barrier island) and watch sunsets over the Indian River Lagoon.

You get better changes of success by using a tripod, but I also wanted to see how successful a handheld series would turn out.

My Nikon D70s has optional grid lines within the viewfinder which I leave on all the time. They're invisible to me now except when I make a point of noticing and using them.

For this shot, I used one of the lines to line with the far side water line in each photo.

It turned out pretty well.

I'll have to go back one day when it's time for sunset and get one with the outrageous colors that can result.

My First Ever Panorama

You'll definitely have to click and enlarge this one.

I've always wanted to try my hand at doing a panorama.

Yesterday, with camera and tripod in tow, I headed for the beach. I listened to college football on the radio.

It was a tug of war because I like watching American football (college), but really wanted to get out and about after our usual afternoon Florida thunderstorms.

So I listened to the University of Central Florida come within a hair of beating the University of Texas, and also heard University of Florida totally shellac the University of Tennessee.

AND, I got to take a bunch of pictures. I ended up taking well over 200, but probably 80 of those were sequenced shots to attempt to stitch into panoramas.

The one I put on here today was the one that I liked best.

This is the beach at one of our favorite parks here on the Atlantic. The surf was really mild, almost like the Gulf of Mexico. The water had a gorgeous light green color in close, but you can't really tell that in this panorama.

Anyway, thanks to Photoshop Element's photomerge feature, and then a little touching up by your's truly to make the transitions between photos look smoother, I ended up with something I really love.

I can't remember for sure, but I think this was a stitching together of nine horizontal shots, taking in a full 180degrees of beach, from looking left to looking right.

It captures a bit of the feel of walking down the stairs to the beach, and standing there, gazing left and right to take in the scenery.

Hope y'all like it as much as I do. There'll be a few more in the future.

P.S. My new Slik 700DX tripod that I bought a couple of months ago is a dream. It's big, heavy, and solid as a rock. I took my time with it and carefully used the built-in bubble levels to make the series of shots as careful as I could.