Panorama Landscape Photography At It's Finest 

We need more Hardcastle Towers! The church is looking GREAT!

Thank fototripper for being HONEST by disclosing this is a sponsored video. I love it when you demonstrate Luminar Neo panorama stitching is better than Photoshop.

Sponsored videos are fine, as long as you declared said videos are paid for and you give an honest opinion! Your videos are adventurous, educational and humorous, you deserve to be paid for your efforts!

So someone *finally* got in touch 🤣🤣🤣

You were being very modest when you described the pano of your house as beautiful. The composition brought me to tears. I would say it is not only the crown jewel of your career, but it is a feat that will inspire landscape photographers for centuries to come.

Most tutorial video’s I can’t watch to the end. They get soooo boring, and waaaay to technical, and you need to watch them fifty times to remember it all. This one is straight to the point, without the boring stuff, and even adds some brilliant humor. Luminar can be happy!

Amanda is very helpful in her cameo appearances 😆

still waiting for the next instalment of Hardcastle Towers.... 👀

You could do the shooting a lot better. If you look at your panning rotation in the video, then you may see that the angular speed of rotation in the image in the foreground is different than in the background. This is caused by not rotating the camera-lens combination in the so-called "nodal point" of the lens. You need one simple accessory to be able to fix that and a simple procedure to find the nodal point of your lens. The accessory. It seems you have an Arca Swiss compatible L-bracket on the camera and the matching Arca Swiss compatible quick release on the tripod head. You only need one extra piece of kit: a nodal slide. With this slide or rail between the ball head and the camera, you can slide the camera fore and aft and with that you can set the nodal point precisely over the rotating point in the ball head. I presume you have a ball head on your tripod that has a rotating top plate. If not, you need more. The procedure to find the nodal point. You need two thin sticks for this. I would use two studio light stands for it. Place one of these near the camera and the other one a couple meters farther away. Make sure the farthest one is out of sight in the camera because the nearest one covers its view. Now when you rotate the camera and the two sticks become independently visible, you are not rotating in the nodal point. Use the nodal rail to find the nodal point now. The farthest must not become visible in rotating the camera/lens. Make sure to document the numeric markings with that specific lens. Modern lenses may have floating (zoom) elements and internal focusing (floating elements too) and it is good to verify that the nodal point is, or isn't, the same for each focal length and focusing distance. (Note that a "prime" that has no focus breathing is a zoom lens.) What's the point? A better alignment in the foreground that makes for easier stitching. You have a fast workstation in the 98th performance percentile, like I have and don't care about faster or whatever, as the software solves the problem very fast. Well, the software needs to figure loads of details out of how to correct foreground mismatches and there's no guarantees that it will work out fine. Preventing at shoot time is better than fixing in post.

The single hair on the pop filter was the star of the show! 🤣

Not ever getting sick of waterfalls...we need a new Hardcastle Towers episode! Luminar Neo is interesting for sure!

I these less-then-joyful times, I love your channel. Something good.

I see you have so many good things in Nova Scotia, awesome landscapes, a gorgeous house, a beautiful wife....and a swarm of mozzies

Hardcastle towers has come on a lot and looking good since your last video

That was good, nice piece of software. Get a hose up on that roof and you could have included one of your waterfall photos.

Another great vid. Laughed my ass off especially in the shooting section of your home. For the record I'm never tired of your waterfall shots.

No issues with you switching up 'format' once in awhile, especially with content this good. And of course, this episode had it's moments of shenanigans, of course :) Thanks as always for taking us along for the ride and sharing your insights!

Really nice to see the pros using something other than the Adobe suite (and being impressed!). And absolutely love the final grand landscape - great to see the progress. Also impressed that you wee perfectly level with every shot - annoyingly hard to do with a ballhead. Looking forward to the play by play on Hardcastle Towers.

“Bobby dazzler…”😂😂 Not heard that in years. Great video as always and looking forward to a roof video on the Hardcastle Towers channel…

When Photoshop went to a subscription based model, I went to Capture One and Luminar. Most of the time I use Luminar Neo now.

Great video as always Gavin - one of your most exotic locations ever! Thank you for always being so authentic and honest with your reviews and sponsorships. I personally don't have a problem with you doing sponsored stuff as you are trying to make an income out of this - I'm sure my comment doesn't really matter but thought I'd share my 2 cents worth anyway

Nice instructional video 👍 I always appreciate the jokes and shenanigans as well. Makes for a really fun experience.

Hi Gavin just as hint, use Lr or ACR for stitching, not Ps, you’ll get by far the better results. You also can use directly use the raw files and get as result a stitched DNG containing all RAW information, you can edit it like a raw.

I love using Luminar Neo! It’s a great editing software! So glad you’re using it!

Love your humor ! A great team!

Gavin you tickled my bell with this one!!!!! I enjoyed this a lot!!!!!!! Thanks!!!!

Smashing video and some great examples you used there. It's been on the radar for a while that bit of software but have never pulled the trigger on it, you certainly have provided some food for thought 👍 Cheers

Another great job Gavin. The Church is looking good.

Seriously, this is such a great YT channel. You definitely should have 85k subscribers and not 84.4k like you have now. Not many photo channels are funny, this channel is definitely the most entertaining.

Glad you’re back I thought you’d snuffed it, love from Yorkshire

A great video as always! Tom H had some good tips on panos as well 😊

Nice vid there Pal, its opened my eyes up to whats possible

Another very entertaining and educational video, thanks.👍

Absolutely brilliant! Thank you so much. I will definitely be using the link below!

I like your sense of humor, both of you! great fun 🙂

Great video Gavin. I just go Luminar Neo a couple weeks ago and love it.

I have used Photomerge in Photoshop for years. Buying the Luminar merge tool today after watching your video. Thanks!

Oh man, I'm so glad you showed Hardcastle Towers for the pano shot. Because I went and shot a waterfall near Abraham Lake this weekend and almost thought, "Boy would Gavin love this shot. It's too bad he's not here." And you've, thankfully made it so I don't feel guilty for shooting it because you loved shooting the church so much. Thanks Gavin! 😊

Can’t wait until that HT project is finally finished. 🤩

That was really impressive. Hardcastle Towers looks like it is coming along nicely. An update episode would be great.

This weeks was great and I like Neo 👍🏽

Thanks for this Gavin. It started me on a trial of this and other apps and was most impressed with PTGui.

Sing us a song, your the Pano Man , sing us a song tonight, well were all in the mood for a Pano and you've been editing all night. 🤣🤣🤣👍😎

Really dig the windows on your church. Nice vid G man. 🙌🏽

Demonstrating how to shoot a panno while feeding the mosquitos... real talent!😅

There's another difference... the roof and edge lines using Luminar are curved while these lines in PS are still rectilinear. The two made different choices as to what distortions were 'acceptable'. PS would do a better job with more frames (with over 50% overlap), probably Luminar would too. Thanks for the interesting comparison!

Awesome Video Again Gav.

Love the video, love the channel!

I do panoramas all the time, I find a simple nodal point bracket makes all the difference, if you just use the ball head it will make it more difficult to get a good pano due to the "swing" of the front of the lens!!! Interesting video like always!!

Great Vlog Gavin I have been using the Luminar Software for a while now I think its very good the Stitching Software is very new to Luminar but like you say it does a great job.

I use Capture One for stitching my Fuji files and it works like a dream. Even handheld the results are always bang on.

Nice to see Jason, Chris, and myself all had a little cameo in this video. I could have used this trying to stitch the panos I took when I was up there.

I think that the photoshop version of the pano of Hardcastle Towers is really a representation of the future state of the church post renovation. Get to work on adding that amazing and unique feature 👍

You had me at 'Bum Butter'.

Thanks Gav - I'll be having that !!

Something different, still great content and learning. Thank you.

Thanks, I purchased the tool last week. Hadn't installed it yet. Now I must. BTW I'm in love with Amanda. So there's that to deal with.

Gavin, this got a big thumbs up from me as I am sure once Brent sees this exquisite panorama, I am sure he will quit photography altogether knowing that he could never approach this level of panoramic artistic ability. I just recently began using Neo after struggling getting photoshop to swap my star track sky in my nightscape images. It did a poor job no matter how hard I tried and Neo did almost perfect. Great to see Neo has this other use case in Panoramas. Photoshop has been really limited to projection types and in my experience quite lousy with vertical panos. My only other option that I've found for the PC has been ICE (Image Composite Editor). I think it was an Intel proof of concept and is no longer supported and hard to find, but it gave you many different projection types. Love to see that Neo is expanding to fill that need.

Love your cat.

you can just use the ruler tool to measure the horisontal line 🙌🏻🙏🏻 great videos ! really enjoy your work!

Great video, very informative have learnt a lot tonight Your Hardcastle Tower is coming on, keep up the good work you will finish it soon, I’m sure, well another year perhaps 😂😂.

Hi Gavin just as hint, use Lr or ACR for stitching, not Ps, you’ll get by far the better results. You also can use directly use the raw files and get as result a stitched DNG containing all RAW information, you can edit it like a raw. The longer the lens the better the results. Works also perfect with wide lenses, because of their distortion you need to take sufficient shots and stitch in cylindrical or spherical mode. „The“ stitching tool is PTgui Pro. Nothing can compete. Honestly, that plug in looks like they collaborated with PTgui and integrated it. But that’s just wild guessing.

Aounds like a good program. The renos look like they are progressing, would love to see a walk through

❤ I love the video I use that software now

Gavin, you should hire a tilt shift lens and use the shift function. With one of these lenses, the camera stays still on the tripod and the lens moves (using shift only, not tilt). This avoids the swivel which causes some trouble sometimes when stitching. Shift gives you twice the width of a normal 36x24mm sensor image, but in two images for post stitching. You get perfect alignment every time. The downside is cost, the Nikon lenses are 1700 quid new and around half that for a fair used one. If you want more than two frames you can still rotate the camera and use shift again, so you can have 4x widths and only move the camera once - a way around the nodal point problem more or less. Look up the Nikon 24mm f/2.8 PC-E lens and watch a few you tube how to guides on the genre - it is not an easy lens to master but well worth the time. They tend to be used by professionals so if you buy used be careful, it may be very well used even though it looks like new! Best to buy a new one if you can manage that.

Are you doing panos because you miss Brent as much as us? 😂😢

Another lesson learned thanks guys by the way I like what you've done inside the church, any chance of Hardcastle Towers update.

Gavin, it would be very informative if you tried these same pano stitches in Lightroom. Everyone insists that LR and PS-ACR are the same engines, but I have found that LR's stitching results are far better that PS's. LR also lets you preview three different algorithms, as well as varying levels of border warping, before committing to the stitch. Keep up the good work!

Appreciate the subtle trolling by complaining about the bad sky and not even mentioning Luminar’s sky replacement tool.

Excellent video and information! I enjoy tinkering around with the Luminar program and for me, there are some basic tools/functions in it that work much better than Photoshop. Fix, export, finish.

Hi Gavin just as hint, use Lr or ACR for stitching, not Ps. - By far the better results, you can use directly the raw files and get as result a stitched DNG containing all RAW information, you can edit it like a raw file. The longer the lens the better the results. Works also perfect with wide lenses, because of their distortion you need to take sufficient shots and stitch in cylindrical or spherical mode. „The“ stitching tool is PTgui Pro. Nothing can compete. Honestly, that plug in looks like they collaborated with PTgui and integrated it. But that’s just wild guessing.

I use Camera Raw with excellent results! Like Brent Henderson, I use a combo Pano setup with no problems. Luminar Neo is just another monthly payment I don't need! I love your videos but I don't think you sounded totally convinced either! 😇

Great real world assessment! On a related topic have you ever ventured out to stereo images for landscape 3D perspective? Can’t find too many references that this technique but it might be fun to try?

You have me in stitches

Been stitching panos with PTGui for a couple of decades, but thanks for the tip. Keep up the good work❤

Gavin, I'll be honest with you, I normally watch your channel mainly for the entertainment value, (and of course the trezmendous photography!) But this time, I was genuinely interested in your teaching and instruction. You're quite knowledgeable about the 'ere photography lark aren't you? LOL 🤣🤣😉😉

Hi Gavin: Thanks for creating and sharing this video. I am always looking for better ways to complete panos and this might be the ticket. Keep well. Cheers, Keith Pinn

🎯 This is the way to go..

very interesting. i like a nice pano so this excites me :-)

Gavin. This was one of your funnier episodes. 🤪

Hi Gavin just as hint, use Lr or ACR for stitching, not Ps. - By far the better results, you can use directly the raw files and get as result a stitched DNG containing all RAW information, you can edit it like a raw file. The longer the lens the better the results. Works also perfect with wide lenses, because of their distortion you need to take sufficient shots and stitch in cylindrical or spherical mode. „The“ stitching tool is PTgui Pro. Nothing can compete.

Hi Gavin and Amanda, Hope you save the old roof top with picket fence-Historical ??? Maybe a future out house. Could save the picket bits.

Great advice, thanks for sharing! By curiosity, what brand of microphone are you using? I know that it is not a Neumann or Audio-Technica, but can't figure it out, thanks.

autopano is the way to go...

So they do get in touch!!!

I think that stitching the RAW files in Adobe Camera RAW works very well for me. And you get a stitched RAW file instead. Better than the PS app/program. Have you tried?

Could you try to merge these samples in Lightroom? From what I read, it's not the same as PS.

Hi Gavin, great tutorial as always! Quick personal question… what brand is that Grey Henley shirt your wearing? Cheers!

Love it thanks brother. Did you make it to Letchworth?

Here in Louisiana we, too, have totally clear skies. Have for months. So there - Come down and shoot a few panos. 😀 Of course we also have the "bonus" of 42C temperatures. Yay! ...not 😵‍💫

I own two cameras and one is a 7D and the other is a 7DII. I use a 15 to 85 mm lens to shoot panos. I get all kinds of grief with it. If i use my 70 to 200 2.8 lens I get great panos and no grief. This is a full frame lens on a crop camera, Since i shoot mostly at f8 to f16 and I overlap my shots by at least 40% they stitch together with out a problem. I have made images with as many as 44 shots stitched together and they turned out amazing. I stitch them together on an old PS 3 software with no problems. Some of the best selling images are those done with my old everything. No butt cream needed. LOL

This looks really interesting. The results look really great. I've shot panos in landscape and stitched them together in LR and haven't been overly excited with the results. Besides the obvious advantage of using Luminar Neo that you demo'd Is there an advantage to shooting panos in portrait mode vs landscape mode?

Great video Gavin! House is looking good! So I have to ask, what is that little dwarf house in the left part of your shot? Is that a little she-shed for Amanda? lol Its very cute.

We need more hardcastle towers vids. And great. Now I have to spend more money on this program lol

PTgui is the Cadillac of Panorama stitching software.

Wonderful tool, thanks for the demonstration! On a side note or two, have you removed the cat hair from your mic? And ... did that mosquito get you? 😁

You should make the one of the church available in print. Or do a giveaway print of it. Lol. You know people will want it.

This pano stitch doesn't surprise me. Luminary is giving Photoshop something to work for. They thought they had the market but Luminar is taking over. Watch out Photoshop, there's a new sheriff in town.

Looks like a great bit of software. I rarely do panoramas and when i do I've used Hugin You could install the old roof onto the top of the Bigfoot so that you have a tower and balcony on the go. Think along the lines of the addams Family's car.

Aaaaw cute kittycat