Friday, August 10, 2012

Panoramic Photos Stitching using Hugin



I have always had an interesting in shooting panoramic images for a long time.  In the past I shot using a Horizon 202 film camera, but have not used it for a while.  Now shooting digital it is easier than ever to stitch panoramic images.  Earlier this year, I shot a panoramic fashion shoot using a panoramic head.  Here an image from this shoot.

While working away in the US for 4 weeks, I had the opportunities to see some amazing sights and wanted to them using panoramic.  I did not have my pano head with me and shot the images hand held and used a free software called Hugin to stitched them together.  I was very surprised at it ability to stitch multiple hand held images together.  It has a lot of options to do fine adjustments and the results are very good, especially for a free software.  Here are my favorite images from my trip.

Pikes Peak, Colorado

Pikes Peak, Colorado

Dillon Lake, Colorado

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Loveland Pass, Colorado
I highly recommend this software for stitching panoramic images together.  It has served me very well on this trip.


Saturday, August 4, 2012

Shooting on The Rock


I am working in the US at the moment and managed to shoot Neil (a co-working) in Dillon Colorado.  He wants some photos of him standing a rock.  This is a business trip so I did not carry a lot of stuff with me.  I fitted my Nikon SB26 a monopod and it was held by hand with a helper.  I use on my PT04 radio trigger to trigger the flash.  For this shoot, I used my 50mm f1.8 lens on my Canon 550D.



One evening after work, we went to a couple of rocks I saw a few days before with Neil and our assistant Peter.  The location is steep and full of rocks.  There was no way a light stand can be used.  Peter will have to had hold the flash attached to a monopod.

Peter holding flash attached to monopod
The condition was overcast which made it easy to under expose the ambient condition.  I shot at 1/200s at f8 and had the flash zoomed to 24mm at 1/2 power.  IThe shoot was very short and only lasted 30 minutes, but we got some great shots.  I am very happy with the results.