Posted by Steve Rogers

Hollis Gazeobo Small

Location: Hollis Garden
Lakeland, Florida

More info

Hollis Garden is a formal 1.2 acre botanical garden donated to the City by the Hollis Family. The garden is located on historic Lake Mirror accessible from the Lake Mirror Promenade or Orange Street. The garden contains several water features and displays thousands of flowering plants, ornamental shrubs, historic trees, herbs and vegetables. The garden may be rented for weddings. Hollis Gardens was voted one of the Best of Class Gardens by the Gulfcoast Research and Education Center.

Workflow
  • Nikon D800
  • Sigma 8mm Circular Fisheye
  • 4x (90°) at +12.5, plus N (5 stops each)
  • HDR with Photomatix Batch Mode
  • PTGui
  • Panotour Pro
Critique

This is the second shoot for this location. The first shoot was ok, but the pano head slipped slight of the NPP, so there were a number of small stitching errors. This second shoot doesn’t have any immediately obvious stitching errors, but I’m still developing an “eye” for these kinds of issues. There’s also a bit of “shimmering” as the pano rotates around the scene, but I believe this is due to the compression that occurs to make the image fit in the iframe. If you enlarge the image to full screen, the shimmering goes away.

This is also the first time I used the Lens Flare feature in Panotour Pro. Personally, I think it looks a bit tacky in this image, but there may be other scenes in which it adds some interest. I might reconsider using it later in the right kind of image.

Finally, when enlarged to full screen, the rotation is a bit jerky for my liking. This could be due to my computer specs, so I’ll take a look at the pano on some other devices (including mobile) and see what other adjustments should be made to give a smoother rotation.