Another small planetoid body

Since the 4th is coming up, Victor thought it might be cool to go down to the docks and take a test (ish) shot. I thought it would be awesome to have a little planet with fireworks going in the sky, so why not get everything planned out ahead of time.

I wasn't sure what the correct exposure was going to be for the panorama. Since it was a 360 pano, the exposure range was going to be allllll over the place. There were lights from lamps and boats and who knows what. I knew that I wanted the main focus to be the water in front of me, which was pretty dark compared the dock. I exposed for that area and called it good. The highlights in the dock were a little bright, but that was okay.

For the sequences, I shot at f2.8, 6s, and ISO400. It's important to keep the setting consistent throughout the image so that there isn't a dark side and a light side. If you leave it on auto, there will be a distinct transition between dark and light in the panorama as the camera exposes for different tonal ranges.

Once in Lr, I exported the photos to jpeg, then ran them through PTGui. Again, there's tutorials on how to use that application. I pretty much just click a couple buttons and it does the rest. I could go through and set more control points, but I chose not for these first couple photos.

Back in Lr, I raised the shadows a bit and crushed the whites down. This just brought the tonal range out more so you could see more detail. Finally, I raised the clarity.

Then I started messing with the distortion and lens correction. I upped the scale and lens distortion a bit to make the planet bigger in the frame. And then I was done...

I can't decide on the orientation I like more... The bottom one was what I was after, but the top one is a big smiley face...

See you tomorrow!