oops haha, suddenly realise that even if your email can tahan, i also cannot send that big a file. i'm uploading to yousendit.com now
the small file looks ok, but i think the big file still needs a bit of post-processing. i think you'd probably prefer to do it yourself, so i just pass you the tiff. i think need to apply a slight reverse-S-shape curve to reduce the contrast a little more, plus some shadow highlight to recover details in the darker part of the picture. and of course, will need to sharpen before you print. also have to crop away the top and bottom.
er hehe actually i just anyhow whack one:
the first things i did were to look at the exif and to run the pictures thru panorama factory. from the exif you can see that the shutter speeds fall roughly into three groups. the pix on the right are around 1/500 to 1/640. the ones in the middle are about 1/200 to 1/250. the ones on the left (shaded part) are about 1/80 to 1/100. the trial stitching showed that the transitions were ok within these sections, but when stitching a 1/640 frame to a 1/200 one (larger than 1 stop difference), the stitch lines could be seen.
so next part quite obvious lah. i took the middle exposure as correct, opened a 1/640 shot side by side with the 1/250 one that it was supposed to be stitched with. then i applied a curve layer to the 1/640 shot and tweaked the curve until the joining parts looked as similar in exposure as possible. save the curve, then apply it to all the right side pix. then do the same or a 1/200 and 1/100 shot - create a new curve to match two shots, then save and apply to all the others. actually for the best results i should have made a curve for every single different shutter speed. but er... i lazy lah.
(if we had the raw files, even easier, just process all of them the same way, but use the exposure slider to reverse any difference in exposure.)
so now that we have a set of files all roughly the same exposure, run it thru pano factory again, and get the final file. i was really too lazy to place all the stitch points, so i ran it on fully auto stitching (with the exposure compensation and correction settings off). if you want to give it a try, and would like better results than what i've produced, you can:
a) do a more refined exposure compensation for the individual pix, especially the part in the shade
b) do semi-auto or manual stitching in pano factory, to reduce ghosting and improve alignment
sorry, hope that was clear and not too longwinded.
as for printing the pano... i have no idea man. depends on how big you wanna print. if you create a giant file and stack 3 of these one on top of the other, you can print it 12x18, then cut, and get three panos, each 4 inches high on the short side, for maybe about $10 total?
if you want it any bigger, hehe try to find someone with a big pro inkjet that uses roll paper?
hmm type so much, the file still loading. will pm you the download address when done. good luck, really hope it turns out well.
Thanks!
