100 Megapixel Francis Bay, St John, USVI Sunset

I'm just back from a 10-day photo trip to St John, USVI. St John is an extremely beautiful island and landscape photography was intended to be a major component of my trip, but I found myself highly challenged in this regard. I'll share more about the primary reason for this challenge later, but lack of color in the sky at sunset was another challenge.
 
My St John, USVI photo gallery is predominated by blues and whites. While the Caribbean blue water under full sun is probably my favorite color, one of my goals for the recent trip was to capture some new colors from this island. Nine evenings of chasing sunsets resulted in pics from only one night with color worthy of sharing.
 
It had been a long, hot day of hiking and I was tired. Analyzing the sky, I decided to go light with only the Canon EF 24-70mm f/4 L IS Lens and Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS Lens and a single Canon EOS 5D Mark III body. I guessed that these two lenses would cover my entire range of needs for the balance of the evening. What I didn't plan adequately for was the sky completely exploding overhead, leaving me seriously focal length limited on the wide end. While I captured many images of the cropped sky show, I wanted the bigger picture.
 
There was no time to hike back to get the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 ZE Lens from the SUV, so I took the next-best alternative – I captured a few panoramic photos that, when stitched together, frame nearly all of the color in the sky that night. Using completely manual settings, I captured overlapping images (overlapping by at least 1/3) and later stitched them together using Photoshop's Photomerge tool. Containing nearly 100 megapixels, this panoramic image has many good crops available in it. I can decide what a print will look like later.
 
In the end, a colorful sunset helps accomplish the new color for St John goal.


 
Camera and Lens Settings
24mm  f/11.0  1/13s
ISO 100
14022 x 7268px
Posted: 6/25/2014 9:25:51 AM ET   Posted By: Bryan
Posted to: Canon News, Sony News    Category: Photo Tips and Stories
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