Wikipedia:Picture peer review/PanoramaOfDouglasBay

Douglas Bay Panorama

A panoramic image of the Douglas bay

Restitched edit with low-res originals by jjron

This is a photograph of the Douglas bay on a nice bright day. It is a very large photograph and clearly shows a number of buildings on the Harris Promenade and The Tower of Refuge.

Nominated by

Ganeshrg (talk) 14:24, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Zoomed out, it looks amazing. When I look at it full size, it could be me, but it seems a tad grainy. I like the bird off to the left side of the picture, though. Preceding unsigned comment by Elephantissimo 00:34, 10 April 2008
• Thanks for your nomination. This is a good photo and useful for Wikipedia, but even at image page size I can see some problems that would prevent it succeeding at FPC (I haven't opened it fullsize, so correct me if I'm wrong). Clear stitching joins are evident between images, mainly visible as the brightness changes from section to section across the image - this happens continually and is possibly due to using auto settings on the camera while you took the originals. I also think I see stitching errors in the clouds, particularly about 1/6 way in from the left. The horizon has a funny uneven look to it, and looks to tilt downwards to the right - again this could be due to stitching errors. I wonder if it would be worth trying to adjust the originals so brightness was more consistent and trying a restitch. --jjron (talk) 10:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Hi, I have all the original images. They are all large 5MP images. I used a fairly basic photo stitching software to stitch the panorama. If any of you experts here can use a better stitching process to come up with a better panorama, I would be glad to provide them with the source images. I would be grateful is somebody could take this up or refer me to someone who who could.

Thanks.--194.72.110.12 (talk) 15:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• There's better at it than me, but if the originals have been done well I can usually get good results. And I have tried doing it when the originals have that inconsistent lighting by adjusting them first, but honestly haven't had a lot of success in doing so. I would have a try if the originals weren't too big (unfortunately I'm on a limited internet connection so can't handle, what, say 12, really big files - 1/2 a megabyte each I might be able to deal with), but I honestly don't know that the results will come out much better. Can I be so impertinent as to ask what equipment and settings you used to take the photos, and the conditions on the day (e.g., sun going in and out behind the clouds)? --jjron (talk) 10:08, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

• I have put up the originals now. They are all 1280x960 resolution so should be small enough to download while being large enough to preserve detail. I would be grateful with anything that you can come up with. I used a Panasonic Lumix FZ20 and the EXIF info on the source photos has been retained so you can see the settings that I have used for each photo on the image description page under the "Metadata" section. The day was quite cloudy yet bright. I hope this helps. If you need any more info, feel free to ask away. Thanks.--Ganeshrg (talk) 11:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
  • OK, I'll take a look and tell you what I think. --jjron (talk) 16:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Have had a go at the restitch. The originals were pretty low res, so the restitch is considerably smaller and lacks some detail, but it is a bit better. I checked the original pano fullsize, and it was full of stitching errors, some pretty bad, and it was pretty noisy.
    The restitch is better (I noticed one stitching error which I didn't fix), and it still tilts a bit, mainly where the water goes across the horizon, but the really bad stitching faults are basically gone. I also did a noise reduction to take out some of the grain, but as I said one negative is it is a bit lower in detail than your pano. I'd suggest trying again with the full res originals if I thought it was worthwhile, but if you're mainly thinking FPC I'm quite confident it wouldn't make it anyway, working off these originals, I'm afraid. There are some problems in how they've been taken which kind of limits what you can do.
    Can I just make some suggestions for next time you shoot a pano, or if you have a chance to reshoot this one. I'll assume some of the problems in the originals, such as jpeg artifacting, were more a result of the downsize you did than the camera itself. This camera should be able to take decent images, despite it being a few years old now. Having said which these Panasonics are notoriously noisy, though at ISO 80, which these were taken at, that shouldn't usually be an issue. Where possible set controls manually (some of these settings may have been manually done?); however the exif suggested it was auto exposure and some of the settings altered slightly in different images. This really all seems a bit dull and if you were setting it manually you could have upped the shutter speed to probably half of what it was (or changed the ISO, but with this camera probably better to keep that as low as possible). Also one of the big problems here is that a number of the images are badly tilted. It is best if you can use a tripod and just rotate that across the scene, instead of taking the shots handheld where you get inconsistencies. The different tilts from image to image is probably the biggest reason your stitching software has struggled so much, and why we get the horizon tilting even in my edit. I actually straightened the originals before stitching, but it still wasn't enough to avoid the bit of a tilt, and has probably cost a bit of height. You could also try shooting in portrait orientation rather than landscape to get more height. I'll leave it there. It can be tricky getting things right for these panos but it can be fun to keep trying. Cheers, --jjron (talk) 14:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
• Thanks a real lot for your effort. I am really pleased and pleasantly surprised that there really are such dedicated and well-meaning people out in the world and on Wikipedia. I am sure good work never goes unpaid.

I understand most of your concerns and you are right on most of them too. The JPEG artifacting is mostly due to the compression. I put up smaller source files to make it easier for you/anyone else to download them and work on them. I could re-upload the large sized originals if anyone wants to do anyhing with them. A tripod is a necessity, I know. I was at this place and happened to notice a brilliant panorama in my mind so I did the best I could hand-held. I keep trying to challenge myself on doing better panos and longer shutter speeds hand-held and will definitely keep trying. I will though get a tripod everytime I want to shoot a pano for something useful or for Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ganeshrg (talk • contribs) 18:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

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