Hi koalaroo
Nice images. Very well composed in all of them.
Regarding your B&W image question - sharpening is not the issue. Although the image has good whites and deep blacks, the image has too much grey. Some colour images do not convert to B&W well because of this. The 'horizon' may or may not be straight and it is difficult to tell because it is not really visible and there is the curvature of the canyon side. However, one sees the horizon as sloping to the left - a visual illusion/perception. In such circumstances, I rotate the image to give a visually straight horizon. The body of water looks still and flat too. All in all, a few different things adding up to an image that disappointed you.
The last image is also a disappointing one for you because you were not too clear about what you really wanted in the image. You wanted everything - the long converging lines of the road, the bridge and the mountains. So you ended up with a compromised image. I think the image would look better if you had moved forward much more, losing some of the foreground, squat down and tilt your camera up, which would accentuate the bridge and have it against the sky, and the mountains showing through the centre of the bridge as well as on both sides. Changing your position always changes the perspective, lighting and look of the image and it is something that one should always do. There are some dirt marks in the sky (and sensor too?).
If you download this image and look at road in particular, you will see that the left half of the image is blurred compared to the right side. Either half of your lens is smeared or you have a serious problem with the lens that needs checking out. This problem is apparent on the 1st 2 images as well but not as much.

Regardless of time duration, one should hear 2 snapping sounds(not beeps) - once when the shutter is fully depressed, giving the sound of mirror snaping out of the way and you can't see the scene through the optical viewfinder when not using liveview, and the other time when the exposure is complete and the mirror snaps back into position and you can see through the viewfinder again.
The OP's comments was that there was a beeping sound and a red square, so it is a problem with not being able to focus and therefore release the shutter.

Hi Willie
Thanks for taking the time to experiment and posting. You last statement begs the question: Was the image stabiliser (or equivalent) left ON when you used the tripod? If yes, then it could be contributing to the camera shakes.
For the final experiment, shoot a set with the IS OFF and all manual camera settings - ISO, shutter speed, aperture and focusing. Now tonemap it in v4 and then in v5 without changing the program settings or any of the sliders and process it.
This will then only test the merging and alignment capabilities without introducing any other potential confounding factors. With your previous attempts, hand-holding and using a tripod can affect your images, therefore introducing uncertainty into the equation.
If you still get poor alignment at the edges with your last attempt, it may be time to talk to the Photomatix people.
Regards

To recap, the re-do and the originally posted images are from the same set of 11 images. The difference is that the original was processed in Photomatix Pro 4.2 and the re-do was processed in version 5. And version 5 has a problem with alignment on both sides of the image, but not the central part. I have not upgraded to version 5 yet so I can't do a comparison. I don't believe my images suffer from this phenomenon as I use 4.2. I think I would have noticed if there was a problem when I was editing them in CS5.

Would you be able to re-test with different sets of images and see if that happens again? Make sure everything is consistant apart from the version used. Obviously select those images that have features that will show up clearly if there was misalignment, and from different shooting sessions, in case there was a contributing factor to camera shake.

It would be great if you can google and see if others are experiencing the same thing. May be more satisfying than watching a Patriot's game? :lol:

Thanks Dr. for taking the trouble to find out. That's good to know.

Ha, Ha!. Hate to shatter your wrong impression of my 'natural eye'. It's 35 years of learning and practicing!! Bet you feel happier now as anyone can do it after all that time. I'm highly confident you will do it in far, far less time. I promise to post soon as my Uni course assignment (and the course) will be over in a few days time! This last few weeks have been so distracting with the Christmas & New Year festivities, the 5 day and 1 day Test cricket series against England, the national 20/20 Bash, lots and lots of summer events, the Tour Down Under just underway, the Clipsal 500 about to start. Where can one find the time to go to work 5 days a week?!! Talk to you again.

Chinaman

Hi Dr.db
The file sizes do show up on the status bar. Obviously not paid much attention to them! However, they leave me a bit confused. Why are there 2 values for an image? I opened 2 vertical psd files. One said 81.4M/88.0M (its a 2 image vertical pano) on the status bar. When I reduced the image to a 768 vertical pixel size, the numbers came down to 2M/2.4M. When I saved it as a jpg, the saved size was 576Kb at quality 12. For the second image, the sizes were 21.9M/44.5M, down to 1.09M/2.54M and finally 518Kb.

The ratio of compression from a reduced psd file to a jpg is not consistent, so it is difficult to still estimate the final saved jpg file size. About 4 times for the first image and 2 times for the second when using the first of the two sizes indicated. However, the final file size is close enough to the desired 500Kb size, so a repeat of the save with a single digit drop for the quality will bring it down to less than 500Kb.
Thanks.

Ah, that explains the difference between the 2 images you have posted but not why the 2 sides are out of alignment and focus where else the central part is very sharp, if you look at the letters above the canopy.

Thanks Peter for your detailed explanation. I am not doubting your issues and I won't continue to press you as I am not using this technique yet, and don't want to waste your valuable time. One of these days I'll have to come up to your place and tackle this fence and focus stacking together!

You have done extremely well, Willie. You can see that the details on the facade are so much more visible, making the image look sharper. The sky is noise-free and the verticals are looking much better too.
If you want to, you can make 2 or 3 further adjustments. First, straighten the building. It is sloping towards the right a bit. Then straighten the towers some more without screwing up the sides of the building. In Photoshop, I would use the warp tool as it moves only small sections. 2nd, boost the colour saturation a bit as the blacks have now subdued the colour. The beauty of a night shot is that no one can tell you the colours are wrong because there is so much colour distortion due to mixed lighting and long exposure effects. Long exposures show up lighting that you don't see with your eyes. 3rd, run the burn tool over the bright sides of the towers and under the canopy just to tone down the brightness a little bit.
One problem I can detect in this image is that the left and right sides have lost focus when you zoom in to have a look. The leterings on the boards are not aligning correctly. I thought it may be the quality of your lens, with sharpness falling off the edges, but your original image don't show that. Did you use less images this time? If you did, there may have been camera movements in some shots you have chosen for this merge. Using 11 shots may have masked the movements. Maybe by adjusting perspective and straightening the towers, they could have caused the problem. I have to say I've not taken a close look of my images before to say if that happens with mine. I'll have to check on tht when I get home.
Well done again.

Good idea. I will check on that tonight when I get home. Thank you.

Hi Dr.db
I forgot about this method of making the changes which I used to use previously. I found the sharpness of the image fell after image size reduction and I needed to open the saved jpg image in PS and sharpen the image and save it again. It made the image look less good. So now whilst still in PS and still a psd file, I reduce the file size first, then sharpen and save as jpg.
I suppose if the file size doesn't show up with the latter option, one could do the first option and see what the file size is for a certain quality number (1-12), then get back into PS and carry on with option 2. It's a work-around but troublesome.

Hi RMM
That is the screen that we are talking bout. What we are saying is that the 9.8Mb is not showing, only a couple of dashes instead. I don't think it is a 'wait long enough' situation as I wait long enough and my image file size will only be at aroung 1Mb, which I am trying to get down to 500Kb. I had a play with it last night. It worked when the opened file is a jpg file, edited and saved as a psd file, then saved as a jpg file. It didn't work if the opened file was a RAW or TIFF file. This is not often the case, as I have recently worked with TIFF files and I didn't have that problem. So it sounds like an intermittant problem with CS5.
Regards

OK, so I am discussing this issue with no actual focus stacking experience yet, only with theory, logic and other photographic experience.
My understanding of blooming is a bit like merging 2 layers - one with a sharply focus image, say a flower, and the other a blurred version of the same image. The blurring causes a diffusion of the outlines of the flower, making the flower larger in size to the sharp flower. So merging the 2 together will show the sharp flower with a blurred outer rim.
So it follows that if a wide aperture is used, there will be more areas of out-of-focusness infront of and behind the point of focus compared to if a smaller aperture is used. So as the focus is shifted from front to back, most of the front areas will be out of focus. When they are all merged, those out-of-focus areas may not be completely covered and show through in certain parts.
What I am trying to ask is this: is blooming likely to occur if a small aperture is used. With macro work, the dof is so narrow that using a wide aperture is only going to compound the issue. Normally, using a small aperture in a landscape shot can get everything sharp from front to back. So using 3 shots focusing on the front, middle and back should ensure that it will definitely be sharp from front to back. Hence I think blooming should not be an issue with landscape and non-macro work, but should be a problem with macro work. But earlier on, you said that it is not an issue with macro work -
"but the blooming that arises in focus stacking is the problem in all but a few very specific instances such as macro."
That, does not sound logical to me. But, there is atomic physics and then there is quantum physics!

Lighthouse, thanks for joining in, but you may not have understood our problem.
The toolbar>>image......image size, etc doesn't show us the file size, only the image dimensions.
For my competition entries, I need to keep the file under a particular file size, like 500Kb, so saving it to the best quality is not usually an option as it is often more than 500Kb.
After editing an image in CS5, depending what has been done, especially converting to B&W, the file size changes from image to image eventhough the image dimension is the same. So even if I remember a previous image size and its saved file size, it wouldn't be much help.