beetwo77 wrote:

I have done a star shot before using Autopano. I was curious to see how this one would work out though as I shot it relatively poorly. Has come up great though:

Hi, the sky pano (the others as well) is great. You could probably try to either expose the sky longer or use a higher ISO. You can get incredible detail there.

best

Christian

Hi Christian and Ed,

greatlly appreciate your feedback. I have to admit to having been very busy working this month and I've been sloppy with the fine details of my shots.

Its funny how aspect ratios work. The star photo I shot in portrait orientation. When I cropped it, I had to use a ratio of 3.5:1 to get the best star segments into the image. A ratio of 3:1 works for images but I agree 100% 3.5:1 is too skinny as demonstrated by this image. I should have shot it half an hour earlier and the in landscape orientation and it would have been a better result. I think I shot it at ISO1600, again should have gone 3200 although there was a fair amount of moon light around so I think it was always going to be hard to balance. Live and learn I guess. I will definitely have a look at your points when I get some time. Thanks again.

Also Artisan, I think the price for APG is reasonable but I can't help my cynicism. I used to work for a software company who charged 20% per year annual maintenance fee for their software. The upgrade fee from APG 2 to APG 3 is 40% of new purchase price. APG is 2 and a bit years old. In my cynical mind I feel like Kolor has used 20% per annum effectively as a software maintenance fee and I have a built in prejudice to this approach because the company I worked for charged an arbitrary industry standard 20% maintenance fee and the amount of maintenance fee earnt by the company was far in excess of the cost of maintaining the software, i.e. the maintenance fees from existing users were in fact funding other software developments, not spent on improving software that the person paying the maintenance fee was using. So the people paying maintenance fees were subsidising the development cost for people to buy other software that the company wants to produce for different markets they want to get into. The company I worked for had the clear understanding that they were competitive with the upfront purchase price of the software and would often take a lower profit margin because they used the easy money they made on software support to prop this up in the knowledge that once people invest in the software, the price to change to another software was higher than the price of support so people were unlikely to move products. I run my own business, I understand the need for a business to make money to survive, but my pricing is cost reflective. That is to say that each customer pays for what they get, not to subsidise R&D for other peoples software. Now I know this is not how the world works, but this is how things work in my mind.

Of course this is not necessarily true for Kolor either, and of course in overall terms, the price of the software is not that high and we know it is highly productive and generally good software. And also we know that users of APG 2.6 have the option of not upgrading. Just explaining my thoughts on upgrade fees / maintenance fees. I don't expect something for nothing, I just have a built in bias to 20% per annum standard maintenance costs!

I am a strong advocate for the software and I wish Kolor continued success as my photography is heavily tied to panoramic stitching and APG.

Regards Ian

Great pictures. My favorite are the first and the last one.