A Rainbow at Sunset

About a week ago the sky gave us a huge, wonderful rainbow right at sunset. Click the image above to see it larger.

And when I say huge, I mean huge. I couldn't fit it all in my viewfinder at 17mm. So, I took a number of shots to stitch together as a panorama later. And then I did it again. And again, just in case.

A few days later I finally got around to downloading PTGui and stitching the images together. PTGui costs quite a bit (~$130) but I've got to say -- it is very easy to use and I had my first panorama done in literally 5 minutes (not counting post-processing time in Bibble). Of course, the final version above took a little longer than 5 minutes, because I did a lot of fiddling (it took a while to realize that Bibble's lens correction can actually remove the barrel distortion on my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 -- that helped the stitch a lot).

As nice as PTGui is, I can't spend $130 on something I'd use once every few months. If I did landscapes or architecture, you can believe I'd buy it though! My next task is to figure out Panorama Tools -- I've installed it but it isn't that easy to use. When I figure it out, I'll post another image without the watermarks.

And yes, the rainbow really did look that brilliant and colorful in the failing light. I honestly feel like my post-processing couldn't do the actual rainbow justice. Oh, and did I mention it wasn't even raining?


Bonus shot: a plane flew over right before we went inside -- too bad it didn't go under the rainbow!