Panorama Images With And Without HDR

The four images used in making the panoramas

(Left to right, Top to bottom)

Standard Panorama

HDR Panorama

Nikon 16mm f2.8 Fisheye Lens - HDR

These images of the atrium at my office were taken while teaching my class on Panoramas. The individual images were stitched together using Photoshop from four images taken with the Nikon D3 camera and a Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens on a tripod. For the HDR version, each of the four images had 5 exposures each and were first created with the HDR technique before being stitched together in Photoshop. Essentially, the resulting HDR panorama is a photo using 20 images to make the final image. When all the images were combined, the image measured roughly 37 inches by 7 inches in size! These have been downsized for web use of course.

As a comparison, a Nikon 16mm fisheye lens was used to see how a panorama image stitched together with Photoshop looks against the fisheye. The HDR technique was also utilized. The fisheye doesn't quite cover the full 180 degree view as Nikon claims. It's close, but not exactly 180 degrees. It does show more of the image above and below, but it also makes the distortion of a fisheye lens more noticeable as well. The panoramas do not show the extra top and bottom space, but it does show the full 180 degrees. However, if the fisheye lens version were to have the top and bottom cropped off to similar aspect ratio dimensions as the panoramas, it would look extremely similar to the real panorama images.

Which do you like better? And do you like the HDR version or the standard, "Non-HDR" version better? Be sure to click on each image to get a closer look.