360 Panorama Help

[ExPat2B]

I have planned a trip to Scotland next month, and want to create some 360 degree Panoramas approx. 150 million pixels to remember the scenery. I would like to shoot quite few, so want to automate as much as possible.

I did some test shots today, and ran into some problems.

Weapon of choice is a Tokina 12-24 DXII. Happy with the lens, it is sharp, distortion is easy to correct ( and nonexistant at 24mm ) and it shoots into the light without too many problems.

The problem is the post processing and the dynamic range and exposure. I can shoot 180 degrees pano away from the sun easily enough, results are fairly good.

The problems come when I try to shoot 360. As soon as I am pointed towards the sun, I am blowing the sky, or underexposing the ground, as I can't expose for both in a full 360 degree range.

My usual tricks would be either to HDR it by shooting one exposure for the sky, and one for the ground, or make multiple exposures from the same RAW file and blend in Photoshop. This works fine for single images, but starts to become really unwieldy when you are trying to stich 20-25 images together.

The other option of a graduated filter works fine as long at the horizon is flat...but it is Scotland and I am hoping the horizon won't be flat !

Anyone know of any good tricks to solve the problem ?

[thegreenhell]

I just usually shoot in manual, getting the best compromise exposure for the largest portion of the shot that I can if the light is even enough, although I have also done some in aperture-priority or even full auto. I use Microsoft ICE to stitch, and I find that it usually does a good enough job of balancing the exposure over the whole image that I don't tend to worry about it. For me, a small portion of blown-out sky or one small area of too-dark shadow is hardly noticed within the context of a full 360. I guess it depends on your own standards and what you intend to use the shots for. As a memento of a trip that will only ever be viewed on a computer screen, I think this is good enough for me.

The following examples were all shot hand-held with my old D50, and stitched in MS ICE:

http://thegreenhell.com/360/Louise01.html
http://thegreenhell.com/360/Louise02.html
http://thegreenhell.com/360/Louise03.html
http://thegreenhell.com/360/Hwy11.html

[ExPat2B]

Those are really nice panoramas, very impressive how the snow and sky and tress are all well exposed...