Here is a panoramic image of Bahrain fort I got land night around sunset.
View attachment 1154
On my way to pick up my wife, I saw this and luckily I had my camera gear in the car with me
I quite liked the way the sky looked and the lights shining around the fort, so I took like ½ a second to decide to stop the car at a suitable location, I could have got closer but didn’t want to waste too much time and possibly miss the chance; there are not often clouds in Bahrain.
One lesson for me is to transport my camera gear around with me more often, for these chance shots.
Below I will try to detail the methods and thought process I used when attaining these shot’s, so that you guys with a lot more experience will hopefully share their knowledge and experience to aid me to improve my landscape photography techniques and possibly some editing too.
I also find that by writing this down or going over and over the process in my head, i can see things I should have done differently but got caught up in “the moment”, so by picking up these flaws and going over and over the technique I think It helps to reinforce the process in my mind and becomes more natural.
I feel that sometimes when out and about taking photos I try out some techniques, drift off on a tangent, get trigger happy and subsequently fill up memory cards with crap.
Equipment used:
· MeFoto Roadrunner travel tripod
· Nikon D800
· Sigma 28-300mm (at 250mm due to distance)
Technique:
A) The tripod was set-up at around 1m high, I didn’t see the need to mount the camera too low down as I was using a telephoto lens, the fort was quite far away and as I was not picking up any foreground interest I didn’t think I would benefit from any lower angle. Plus I didn’t have a lot of time to think about the shot as the light was disappearing quickly.
B) As the plan was to create a panorama, the Camera was mounted to the tripod in portrait orientation to give maximum image height.
C) The camera was straightened out on the tripod using the D800’s “Virtual horizon” on live view.
D) Composition wise I wanted to capture more of the sky than the plain boring desert in front of the fort, so composed with the “Horizon” around the bottom 1/3rd of the frame.
E) The focus was set to manual and using the live view zoomed in, I manually adjusted the focus to a point where I thought the fort and trees looked ok.
F) A few test shots were taken to check the focus and to adjust the exposure against the histogram (In hindsight I could have pushed the histogram a bit further to the right).
G) To keep the exposure consistent through my shots I set the camera to full manual mode and used the following settings: 1 sec @ f/11 with ISO-100.
H) As I have not got my cable release in Bahrain with me :bang: (MUPPET) and i can’t get a hold of one over here for a D800, I used the 10 sec self-timer function to minimise camera shake from pressing the shutter button.
I) I continued to take around 7-8 shots in RAW for the panorama, with each shot overlapping the previous by around 40-50%.
Editing:
Once I got home later on, I was quite eager to find out how it looked and decided to have a play in Photoshop Elements (not done very much editing before), so the tweaks are minimal.
A) I used the Photoshop elements 11 photomerge function to stitch the 7 photos together
B) Once the images were stitched, the horizon looked very slightly off horizontal so I straightened it.
C) The empty edges from the stitch/straighten were cropped out.
D) Afterwards some minor brightness, contrast and saturation tweaks were applied.
E) Oh and getting rid of some dust bunnies (Doh), must remember to clean my sensor when I get home.
Self-critique:
A) The lighting on the image had change a lot from left to right of the image. I think that the time taken to go from the first to last image was a little too long because I had to use the self-timer. The process of capturing these 7-8 images took around an extra 1.5 minute. Try not to leave the shutter release cable at home. I will go through the merging process again, firstly processing the photos slightly in lightroom first.
B) I am not sure I used the best technique for focusing on the scene.
C) I could have increased the exposure a bit more pushing further to the right of the histogram.
D) Check the image sensor more often to ensure it is clean and free of dust bunnies :bonk:.
E) I didn’t process the photos through Lightroom first before merging in elements. The photos require lens correction before merging to ensure the dark edges are removed. There are a few dark patches apparent in the sky :bonk:.
Thanks in advance
View attachment 1154
On my way to pick up my wife, I saw this and luckily I had my camera gear in the car with me
I quite liked the way the sky looked and the lights shining around the fort, so I took like ½ a second to decide to stop the car at a suitable location, I could have got closer but didn’t want to waste too much time and possibly miss the chance; there are not often clouds in Bahrain.
One lesson for me is to transport my camera gear around with me more often, for these chance shots.
Below I will try to detail the methods and thought process I used when attaining these shot’s, so that you guys with a lot more experience will hopefully share their knowledge and experience to aid me to improve my landscape photography techniques and possibly some editing too.
I also find that by writing this down or going over and over the process in my head, i can see things I should have done differently but got caught up in “the moment”, so by picking up these flaws and going over and over the technique I think It helps to reinforce the process in my mind and becomes more natural.
I feel that sometimes when out and about taking photos I try out some techniques, drift off on a tangent, get trigger happy and subsequently fill up memory cards with crap.
Equipment used:
· MeFoto Roadrunner travel tripod
· Nikon D800
· Sigma 28-300mm (at 250mm due to distance)
Technique:
A) The tripod was set-up at around 1m high, I didn’t see the need to mount the camera too low down as I was using a telephoto lens, the fort was quite far away and as I was not picking up any foreground interest I didn’t think I would benefit from any lower angle. Plus I didn’t have a lot of time to think about the shot as the light was disappearing quickly.
B) As the plan was to create a panorama, the Camera was mounted to the tripod in portrait orientation to give maximum image height.
C) The camera was straightened out on the tripod using the D800’s “Virtual horizon” on live view.
D) Composition wise I wanted to capture more of the sky than the plain boring desert in front of the fort, so composed with the “Horizon” around the bottom 1/3rd of the frame.
E) The focus was set to manual and using the live view zoomed in, I manually adjusted the focus to a point where I thought the fort and trees looked ok.
F) A few test shots were taken to check the focus and to adjust the exposure against the histogram (In hindsight I could have pushed the histogram a bit further to the right).
G) To keep the exposure consistent through my shots I set the camera to full manual mode and used the following settings: 1 sec @ f/11 with ISO-100.
H) As I have not got my cable release in Bahrain with me :bang: (MUPPET) and i can’t get a hold of one over here for a D800, I used the 10 sec self-timer function to minimise camera shake from pressing the shutter button.
I) I continued to take around 7-8 shots in RAW for the panorama, with each shot overlapping the previous by around 40-50%.
Editing:
Once I got home later on, I was quite eager to find out how it looked and decided to have a play in Photoshop Elements (not done very much editing before), so the tweaks are minimal.
A) I used the Photoshop elements 11 photomerge function to stitch the 7 photos together
B) Once the images were stitched, the horizon looked very slightly off horizontal so I straightened it.
C) The empty edges from the stitch/straighten were cropped out.
D) Afterwards some minor brightness, contrast and saturation tweaks were applied.
E)
Oh and getting rid of some dust bunnies (Doh), must remember to clean my sensor when I get home.Self-critique:
A) The lighting on the image had change a lot from left to right of the image. I think that the time taken to go from the first to last image was a little too long because I had to use the self-timer. The process of capturing these 7-8 images took around an extra 1.5 minute. Try not to leave the shutter release cable at home. I will go through the merging process again, firstly processing the photos slightly in lightroom first.
B) I am not sure I used the best technique for focusing on the scene.
C) I could have increased the exposure a bit more pushing further to the right of the histogram.
D) Check the image sensor more often to ensure it is clean and free of dust bunnies :bonk:.
E) I didn’t process the photos through Lightroom first before merging in elements. The photos require lens correction before merging to ensure the dark edges are removed. There are a few dark patches apparent in the sky :bonk:.
Thanks in advance
