Auckland (New Zealand) Night Pano

[nathanbarlow]

Bit on the small side, as flickr limits to 1024px wide.

Taken with Canon D60 with 50mm.

Apart from the off-focus of the left half, I'm reasonably happy with it.

Critique and comments welcomed

[ohfour]

I'd actually be strongly tempted to crop the whole left side out, from just past the half-way mark, since it's pretty boring and out of focus. The right side has some nice detail in it and I think that's where most people are going to spend their time looking.

My other suggestion would be to take the photos a little earlier, in future, so that there's still a little bit colour left in the sky.

I like how you've put the wharf in the right hand side though, it's a really nice detail. Is that Bayswater?

[nathanbarlow]

thanks for the reply.

I thought about cropping - but really like the moon and its reflection, and having that on the extreme left hand side really disrupts the balance IMO . . . so I left it as it was, and chalked it up to experience - need to remember to refocus each individual shot, or use a wider aperture for larger DoF

Taken from the yacht club carpark just under the bridge.

This shoot was initially a sunset shoot of the bridge (from another area), and by the time I got to here it was dark. Planning on going back for a retake as soon as I get the time, plus a clear sky or mild clouds - might be an idea to try at sunset/dawn as you suggested

cheers.

[Nicole]

Although Flickr lets you post a 1024px image, we limit the image size to 800px on the longest side (I've resized for you). It makes sharing panoramas a bit of a pain, but you can always link to the larger size.

I probably wouldn't go so far as to cut off the entire left side, but I'd try cropping it from just past the moon on the left because there's really no detail there. When I look at it that way, I see kind of a contrast between the bright Skytower on the right extending up into the frame and the reflection of the moon extending down into the frame. It creates kind of a balance.

Another suggestion would actually be walking further to the left and putting more of the city and wharf into the pano to see how that works for you.

Also agree with the going out a little earlier to get some of the dark blues instead of the pitch black.

I haven't tried doing a night pano so I'd expect that could have additional issues with light levels and other things not matching up, so nicely done there

[nathanbarlow]

apologies for the size - and thanks for fixing for me

I'll hae a play with cropping when I get some time to do properly.Good point about the verticla balance - didnt think of that, was purely thinking horizontal.

Couldnt go any further left, as if memory serves, there was a fugly boat-petrol-pump-dock-thing to the right of the wharf. As it was, the wharf was a gamble - it looked really mingy to my eyes, but the exposure (slight -ve) looked alot better. Might be because of the orangey streetlamp.

In terms of light levels matching up, not really a problem - light was very static .. just have to be methodical with overlapping and ofcourse a tripod! Spent about 10mins getting these (like a 1min exposure). Was one of the easiest pano's I've done. Just realised pano of sunset/dawn would be much harder (very rapid light change) - need to work faster?

Thanks for the comments

[kencaleno]

Just added some contrast to show light reflections better on the water-Ken

[nathanbarlow]

hi ken - thanks for taking the time to make that suggestion. The water looks better, but I prefer the original sky. Might have a go at that sometime.

Cheers

[candleman]

i'd agree with cropping more of the left of the image off.. its quite bland,
not much more to say other than that