For last night, I set up the macro rig and took some pictures of a little bug. If you haven't seen the macro rig, I've got a lot of post on it, so it shouldn't be too hard to find.
For lighting, I used just one soft box with a 560 in it. The super big surface area compared to the bug made some incredibly soft lighting, which I really liked. A ring light would have been cool, but I just thought of that now. So maybe next time I'll set up the ring flash and do something with it!
I've made another video, and I explain the whole process of the photo in that. May have forgotten to mention the lighting, so that's why I mention it now. Check out the video though, and it will fill you in for the rest.
I went up the ridge on the M trail in hopes that there would be a good sunset like there was last night. Unfortunately, there was not that great of a sunset. It was decent, but nothing like the glory that was last nights golden hour.
I still shot it though, since you can do a lot with editing, and it would probably look pretty awesome anyway.
First things first, I made sure I got up there at least 45 minutes before sunset so that I could make sure I was set up and ready. There's been so many times that I've just rushed and missed some little thing that really affected the photos quality. The big thing that I sometimes miss is to get the tripod level. When making panorama, it really really helps to have a level tripod. This makes blending everything so much easier, and you will get a taller pano out of it too.
After you get the tripod set up, figure out if you want to get a taller pano and shoot portrait, or just go with landscape. Landscape makes shooting quicker, but you won't get as much vertical coverage. I was shooting with a fairly wide lens, so I went with a landscape approach.
Now that you have the camera set up on the tripod, focus the thing. Use live view and digital zoom in 10x to make sure it's spot on. Auto focus often gets screwed up, and you can't really tell looking through the view finder. Switch to manual mode after so that you don't screw up the focus later.
I added a polarizer in this step, and made sure it was rotated the right way before I focused. Basically, a polarizer will make the colors richer and the sky darker. Make sure you have everything done on the lens before you start messing with the camera.
Settings depend on the location and light levels, but for tonight I shot a bracketed sequence at -2.0.and +2 EV. This gave me all the tonal data I needed. The setting were based off of a reading from 45 degree to the sun. This is a balanced area, so that you don't meter off the sun or the shadows to much. You'll get right in the middle so everything looks proper.
Set your self timer to 2 sec so that the camera takes the bracketed sequence automatically, and that start shooting! I usually use 30-40% overlap, 50% is better, but with such a wide lens it's okay to do less. Shooting from a Phantom or with a tele I would want to have more.
Now for editing, start off by choosing your shots. I liked the last sequence I shot just as the sun was dipping down. I selected three shots that were taken 45 degrees to the sun. So again the middle exposure. I did an HDR edit on those in Photomatix, which was actually just using the natural preset. If the 45 degree shot looked okay, then that ensures that the shots into the sun and the ones off to the side also will be okay. If I edited ones looking into the sun or off to the side, then the other shots would be very off exposure, or color, or some combination of the two. And with a panoramic every shot has be have the same metadata for it to stitch together nicely, so you want to meter and base your initial edits off a neutral photo.
Batched all the photos, then went into Ps and made the panorama. Cropped and then exported to Lr.
In Lr, I raised the shadows and clarity just a tad. Then I raise the saturation of the greens and yellows to make the grass pop out more in the valley. Finally, a little vignette. I kept this one as natural looking as I could. With color HDR's, you can overdo it realllllly easily.
See you tomorrow!
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