Mendocino Village and Big River by James Turley

Canon 50D

This is my first successful GigaPan with the Epic Pro, using Canon 50D. The resulting file was 4.3G which proved quite a challenge on my 8G iMac using PS CS5. Post processing was slow, and tedious. Note many blending errors and bad masking on the horizon.

I learned a lot from this effort:

1. Do NOT use s Polarizing filter. Bad idea. Because the angle of the lens to the sun changes with each column, making blending very difficult. Thank god for Content Aware Fill in CS5!

2. If you must do a seascape, be sure the water is calm. Water is constantly in motion. Next time I think I will do a HORIZONTAL Pan, instead of the default vertical pan. The time between adjacent tiles would be less, and probably result in easier stitching. Another option is VERY long exposure so all the water features are on big blurr.

3. I use a very sharp Canon 200mm f/2.8L pro prime telephoto lens, giving 4 degrees,column to column. This seems to be the perfect lens for the Epic Pro head. The Pro handled the prime zoom and the 50d body perfectly.