Heart Lake panorama

[Billy]

blaze inspired me (with his recent thread) to try a panorama. I used the photomerge feature in PSE7 to stitch three photos together. These photos are taken at Heart Lake in the southern section of Yellowstone National Park. We did a two day backpack and our campsite was right on the lake. Mt Sheridan is a beautiful mountian.

I often use a polarizing filter on my lens, but for these shots I intentionally rotated the filter to its minimum effect, in order to maximize the water reflection. One thing I didn't expect, and still don't understand, is that it had the effect of turning the sky's reflection in the water to (almost) black and white.

Anyway, here are the three original unedited JPEGs and the final product made from the RAW files. Editing of the RAW and pano files included white balance, contrast, sharpening, straightening, and cropping.

 

[Tom Rankin]

Looks right purdy!

 

[JohnL]

Billy,

Very nice pano. I have found that reflections in water are about a full stop underexposed from the actual scene. So you will have some natural darkening from the effect of the water consuming some of the light. It also appears that in your scene, the water near the shore appears to be very shallow and in fact, it appears that you can see the bottom. I am guessing that the lack of water depth and the light brown color of the lake bottom would have something to do with the desaturation of the colors in the reflection.

JohnL

 

[blaze]

Beautiful! Nicely exposed. I envy you your shot and your backpack in Yellowstone. =)

You probably know this already, but I get better results with panoramics if I lock the exposure for all of the component shots. Some cameras (like my Canon 450d) have an exposure lock button that locks for multiple shots if you press and hold; others (like my Samsung TL500) either don't have that button, or the button only works for a single shot. So I use manual exposure instead after metering for the brightest part of the panoramic.

I typically use "Arcsoft Panorama Maker" which was included with one of the many digital cameras that have passed through this house. It works pretty well.

 

[Woody]

Nice shots and pano. I think it came out just right!

 

[DougPaul]

Nice pics/pic.

Re: the reduction in sky color in the reflection off the water:
You have several polarized light sources on this scene and several polarizers: partially polarized blue skylight (blue light scattered off air molecules), polarized haze (white light scattered off particulates), and partially polarized slightly redder direct light. http://www.polarization.com/sky/sky.html The reflection off the surface of the water acts as a polarizing filter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster's_angle), and of course you have a polarizing filter on the camera. Perhaps the filters interact with coloration of the sources to reduce the overall color saturation of the reflection off the water.


BTW, using a polarizer on a wide angle filter results in an uneven effect because the polarization caused by scattering (blue sky and haze) depends on the scattering angle. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/polarizers.shtml This effect is visible in all three of your original photos. If you like the effect, fine but if you don't you will have to forgo the filter. I wouldn't be surprised if it makes the stitching process harder.

Doug