Panorama processing question: my panorama frames are exposed unevenly

[Ligament]

Howdy,

I'm new to shooting panoramas.

I shot the attached panorama of Seattle last night. D800e, Zeiss 135 f2 APO, 30seconds at f6.3 on manual mode. I did have auto WB on (but synced WB settings to all be the same later in ACR).

I opened all RAW images in ACR, synchronized all settings, and photo merged in Photoshop.

Clearly the exposures are different, but I'm not sure why. What did I do wrong? Is this sensor heating from many 30 sec. exposures?

Any tips for me on nighttime panos?

Thank you!

[Kevin Raber]

I'd first look at your meta data for each image.  Reset everything and start again. Run a pano merge without any adjustments. If it comes out OK I'd look to make sure your sync is set correctly when you do it. Are you going right into photoshop from LR?  Try outputting to JPEG or Tiff file and work with those.  Also, if you used photo merge normally you make sure you select blend as one of the options.  Do auto to start with for type.  Photoshop normally won't merge images to make straight edges. What do your layers look like? 

I have a pano done from the same spot you are shooting from.  It's a great skyline.  I bet you jet need to do a process of elimination.  I just posted an article last week on this.

Kevin Raber

[Paul2660]

What mode did you use?  I would start with Auto as it does the best exposure blending.  You can also line up the frames in CS and try to get them closer in exposure. If that still doesnt work move to PTGUI or Autopano. Both programs are more involved than CC OR CS but may do a better job with tricky exposure blending.

Paul

[Ligament]

Would the mode I choose affect the (perceived or actual) exposure of each frame, as seen in the pic I attached? thanks!

[Paul2660]

With CC or CS it can from my experience as if the frames are not close in exposure certain modes will not blend as well as the auto mode.

It's most likely not from sensor heating as I regularly shoot the D800e during night time shoots for 2 to 4 minute exposure stacks for hours. You will see what I call digital reticulation (very fine white dots which appear over time). 

Paul

[BernardLanguillier]

Auto ISO?

Cheers,
Bernard

[jerryrock]

Aperture priority works best with a cap on the auto iso. Try bringing your RAW images straight from Bridge to Photoshop (Tools - Photoshop - Automerge). I believe the error is trying to manually adjust in ACR yourself with synchronize. Photoshop will evaluate each RAW image individually in terms of exposure and color and make the appropriate adjustments. It does it faster and more accurately than I am able to do.

[Ligament]

Aperture priority works best with a cap on the auto iso. Try bringing your RAW images straight from Bridge to Photoshop (Tools - Photoshop - Automerge). I believe the error is trying to manually adjust in ACR yourself with synchronize. Photoshop will evaluate each RAW image individually in terms of exposure and color and make the appropriate adjustments. It does it faster and more accurately than I am able to do.

OH...interesting. I'll try that.

How does one then make adjustments? Cannot make RAW adjustments after auto merge I assume?

[Ligament]

Aperture priority works best with a cap on the auto iso. Try bringing your RAW images straight from Bridge to Photoshop (Tools - Photoshop - Automerge). I believe the error is trying to manually adjust in ACR yourself with synchronize. Photoshop will evaluate each RAW image individually in terms of exposure and color and make the appropriate adjustments. It does it faster and more accurately than I am able to do.

Ok, you saved the day! Worked GREAT. Thanks!

[sniper]

I've always shot panos with manual on everything (even focus) that way nothing changes between frames.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I've always shot panos with manual on everything (even focus) that way nothing changes between frames.

I prefer to adjust the actual camera exposure to optimize image capture data, then compensate for some of the exposure differences with Raw conversion, and leave the final frame to frame blend to the blending engine of e.g. PTGUI, or SmartBlend (which also allows to influence the transition slope). Also on very wide daylight panos, the White balance across the scene can change from cool backlit, to warm frontlit. I prefer to adjust that transition a bit more to a smaller color temperature difference, all possible in Raw conversion, before handing off the files to the stitcher.

Cheers,
Bart

[Paul2660]

I work as Bart suggested.

"Auto" Is one of modes you pick when running the pano stitching in CC. There are 5 different modes. Depending on you images and lens used many times 1 mode will give a better solution than the rest. It has nothing to do with the camera setup. I also never send the files straight from ACR as raws instead work them up as I like then export to tif, them use Photoshop to create the pano.   That is what has always worked for me over the years. I only use LR for the raw conversion as that's my workflow. Glad to see you got it to work.

Paul