a panoramic shot in three panels with my 150mm F5.6 lens on my Shen-Hao 4x5, taken from the western side of the first set of falls in Swallow Falls State Park, in Maryland. Palladium print. All feedback welcome and encouraged.
I take it this is a contact print? This is quite interesting, very even exposure. Do you have a panoramic degree scale, the level of accuracy on these frames is outstanding? I think it's a very good alternative to a genuine panoramic format. Mick.
I got lucky on the exposure - It was a fairly flat-lit overcast day, so I just left the settings on the lens exactly the same, and everything came out consistent. I didn't use any kind of panoramic scale - I just picked visual landmarks on my ground glass and panned the tripod head until the landmark came up again on the opposite side of the glass. Yes, this is a contact print made from three sheets of 4x5 film. It is a Palladium print on COT-320 paper.
Since you've got a Shen-Hao, you can also do panos using shifts (if you've got a lens with adequate coverage), which will line up even better than panos made by rotating the camera.
Murray- I haven't decided how to mat it yet. It's on 11x14 paper, and the actual print (not the scan) shows the ragged borders from the brush strokes applying the Palladium to the paper. I'm torn between matting to the approximate framing you see in the scan, and matting with enough window open to show the ragged edges. I'll frame it probably in a 16x20 or thereabouts, 8ply. I've got a very nice cream-colored mat board that I think will go very well with this. I'm not going to cut separate windows to cover the separation bars caused by the negative edges - just leave it like it is so the image flow happens naturally.
I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon in praise of triptych/diptych shots. A broken up image can be far more interesting than a solid panorama.
As for printing, I'd love to see these with their ragged borders intact, printed large and mounted in a single frame. It'd be expensive, but undoubtedly beautiful!
Thanks...I was trying to visualize it as a finished piece...now I can. I've been doing something similar for years now (I would be doing gelatin silver enlargements), but they haven't yet reached a "critical mass, or number" that would get me to print them. Thanks again, you've given me another way to consider presenting them when I actually get around to printing them.