A Bridge too far

[matt34 (Matt)]

Here is a 7 stitch pano of the old rail bridge at scarsdale taken with the 24mm lens. Light painting is still new to me and something I still need a bit of work on. All the frames are from the back of the camera no adjustments done (I might be able to help even out the light more across the pano)

The right side of the pano was further away so I probably should have left the light on longer, however it was tough to balance the light on the grass in the foreground.

The technique I used was to use a 96 LED light and applied a warm filter to it. I like the warmth it adds to the scene esp the grass in the summer plus I find the camera struggles with white balance with the cool white and it never looks as natural to me (even with correction) I put the light on an old tripod which I used to hold over my head and on a slight skyward facing angle (must have looked really weird to the nearby farmers) That was my attempt to light the bridge without burning out the foreground. The light has a dimmer so it was on its lowest setting and after the shutter was opened I counted to 5 (approx 5 sec of the 15 sec exposures) before turning the light around away from the field of view.

Also attached is a 5 panel shot taken with my 14mm lens again a quick stitch in ICE and no processing done on the shot

All comments, critic, tips are welcome as I said light painting is still new to me and something I'm working on. I hope to spend a bit of time editing the first shot and checking the stitching etc in more detail when some time permits.

Thanks

Matt

[gregbradley]

That's a very nice composition Matt. The right hand panel though has a bit of an obviois diagonal stitching. The background of the right hand panel has more green in it. I would suggest running HLVG Photoshop plugin to get rid of the excess green (its not airglow) and see if that balances the background. Or simply use levels and curves and work on the green channel - that perhaps could work.

PTGui Pro seems to do a good job of matching backgrounds so I wonder if another stitching program would have balanced that out?

Greg.

[Dennis]

A very impressive view Matt; great job on setting up and executing the pano.

Cheers

Dennis

[matt34 (Matt)]

Thanks for the comments Dennis.

I agree and had noticed the stitching error Greg, it was one of the things I was going to look at and perhaps try PTGui to resolve. I think I need to invest in a nodal ninja or something one of these days to help.

Thanks for the tip on the right hand side, I agree it looks a little green, it could be I need to check and update the WB settings on all frames to be the same, it could be that as those frames on the right didnt have the warmth from the light there is some tweaking needed. I'll look into HLVG plugin I hadnt heard of it before.

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice work Matt! I think I prefer the silhouette version but it's close!

[matt34 (Matt)]

Thanks for the comment Mike, I think the thing that appeals to me about the light painted version is you can see some of the old structure in the bridge so its added a little more interest, just need to see if I can do some post to improve the right side or wait for the next clear night and try a reshoot