Well, what a wonderful day today to be out in the countryside … and what a glorious countryside to be in! South of Auckland, on the way to Kawakawa Bay, is a newish Regioanl Park called Waitawa. This ex-ICI explosives storage and manufacturing plant has been transformed into a park where people can enjoy spectacular views across to Waiheke and the Coromandel Peninsular as well as enjoy walking track, mountain bike trails, fishing and swimming. Well worth a visit if you get the chance.
The views are superb. However, to get the whole scene in a shot requires taking multiple images with the camera turned slightly and then stitching all the images together to get a nice panorama. You need to be a little careful with exposure with shots like this. I usually examine the scene and select the frame I want to expose for, then set the camera to manual exposure such that all images are exposed at the same settings. Using an automatic mode may result in a variety of exposures and difficulty matching brightness levels in the sky, sea and land. It’s also a good idea to use a tripod … which I’m a little embarrassed to say I failed to do today!
I usually use PTGUI Pro to stitch my images, but today thought I’d try the Panorama Photomerge option in Lightroom CC. This seems to do a reasonable job … what do you think? The image you see below is constructed from 12 separate images (obviously with a reasonable overlap to assist with stitching). Click on the image to see an enlarged view … and click again to zoom in even further!
