Silicon Valley from the bottom

[GoneFission]

Took this pano from Santa Teresa County Park on the south side of San Jose. It's my first attempt at panoramic, and I like the result so much I'm probably going to have a poster made of it, hence the border and title.
http://www.gonefission.us/photos/albums/userpics/10001/pano4-poster_small.jpg
If anyone has a fast connection and some patience, the full image is here (http://www.gonefission.us/Uploads/pano4-poster.jpg) (4.3M).

Five photos taken hand-held with 300D 18-55mm, stitched together using hugin with enblend, editing done with the GIMP (all fantastic open-source programs).

[Meerkat17]

Nice image with a lot of detail in the full version - what ISO? Seems to be a lot of noise...
Regards
David

[Rob612]

Agree, the pic is awesome, but it seems too much grainy. suppose you used high ISO ?

[GoneFission]

Hmmm... I had noticed the noise, but kinda shrugged it off. The photos were shot ISO400. The originals aren't nearly as noisy, now that I look closely. Guess somewhere along the line my PP messed it up. I ran USM on the whole image, bumped up the saturation a tad, and adjusted the levels on the bottom to lighten it up (this is all after stitching). Perhaps I need a higher threshhold for the USM?

Well, I'll play around with it some more. Thanks for the comments!

<< 15 minutes later... >>

Yep, that's the problem. Had the USM threshold too low. Darn, wish I hadn't just shrugged off the noise earlier, 'cause wouldn't you know it, I already took it to the printers. Oh well, live and learn.

I was planning on giving one away anyways. :)

[GoneFission]

The detail is really what made me decide to have a large print made - there's no other way to present the photo that allows both the overall scale and the fine detail to be appreciated, which is necessary for what I'm trying to convey.

Here's a couple examples of that detail (100% crops):

The huge airship hangers at Moffett Federal Airfield (about 20 miles away):
http://www.gonefission.us/Uploads/pano4-hangers.jpg

That's from the version I posted above - definitely noisy. Here's a better version:
http://www.gonefission.us/Uploads/pano4A-hangers.jpg

Downtown San Jose (hidden behind the hill):
http://www.gonefission.us/Uploads/pano4A-downtown.jpg

[Titus213]

The detail in the large version is really amazing - and with the kit lens...

I noticed the noise but the detail was so good it didn't matter.

Never seen hugin or enblend but will give them a try (I'm a cheap software junkie). GIMP is also new and will require some checking out first...thanks for the image and the info.

[Belmondo]

Boy, do I know that view. My wife and I worked in the Blossom Valley/Santa Teresa area for many years, and we often drove up to the park to have our brown bag lunches.

Beautifully done. Thanks for the nostalgic trip.

[GoneFission]

Thanks for the kind comments!

Titus - I'm running Linux at home and work, so really the only choice is to use freeware. The GIMP is an excellent program, and has many of the features of PS, but I do find it lacking in a few areas. It keeps getting better and better, though! Hugin is really just a GUI frontend for the panorama tools library, which appears to be used by quite a few programs.

belmondo - It's a great park... I just moved here from the midwest a couple months ago, and even though I live and work just a mile or two from it, seems not many people know of it. I found it when I was browsing a map, and figured it could make for a good hike. Saw some nice wildlife (a couple deer, and a few of nature's roto-tiller, the wild pig), which really surprised me given its proximity to suburbia. I'll definitely be heading there again.



I got the print back, and it looks GREAT! The noise is visible, but you have to look pretty darn close. The price was really good... $30 for a 48"x14.4" print at Kinko's. Now I just need to figure out how to frame it...:confused: