Panorama Technique

[woodyspedden]

FAct is that this is simply one of those almost perfect confluences of lighting, composition, equipment (least important IMHO) and most importantly the eyes of the photographer.

Congratulations Don. Most of us just hope we get one image in our lifetime of this caliber. WOW

Woody Spedden

 

[Don Libby]

Thanks to all for the kinds words. I had gone to the So Rim last December for two reasons; I had a client that wanted an image or two, and I wanted to try out the new Mamiya 28mm lens. I spent three days shooting in incredible weather; snow, sleet, fog, clouds in other words perfect weather for a landscape photographer. I’ve also said the worse the weather the better the images. Anyway I had just returned to this spot from being over at Desert View and decided to see if it had cleared any from a couple hours ago. I parked my truck and decided to walk up to the overlook not 50 yrds away (without any gear:banghead when I got there I could just kick myself because the clouds were just clearing. This shot was taken just after running back to the truck getting my gear and going back and setting up. I remember a young man coming by just as I finished setting up stopping and looking out at the view he said while it was beautiful it also look fake then he shook his head and kept walking.

I plan on returning this December for a couple days then heading over to Death Valley. Anyway, pure dumb luck on my part as well as having just about as good equipment as I could ever ask for. Mamiya AFDII with P30+ and the really great 28mm lens.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it….

don
edited:
I’d like to add that when taking images for a panorama once you find what works for you stick with it. Just remember to have the tripod and the camera as level as you can. In addition to that I always work in manual mode picking what I believe will be the best f/stop and shutter speed, and no filters. In most cases if I have any doubt at all I’ll shoot it twice using different settings. It also helps to get the lens as close to the nodal point as you can which for me in most cases is just guess work and luck. I use photomerge off bridge and do all my work in CS3. This works for me no matter what lens I use (I’ve shot panoramas with a 300)

 

[KeithL]

"Going though some older images shot late last year.

Seven shot panorama with the Mamiya 28mm lens. I shoot manual left to right overlapping at least 30 to 40%. This was shot 1/400 at F.8 using photomerge directly from CS3 then cropping the excess unwanted stuff. "Native" image turns out at 8506 by 5855 pixels. I used RRS pano gear....."

William Blake eat your heart out!

Superb image Don.

 

[mjr]

That's a superb image! Love the atmosphere in it, I agree that bad weather usually means a great landscape.
I have loads of panoramas and all are hand held, white balance set as daylight or whatever, meter for highlights in manual and shoot away! I have autopano pro and cs3 but never really use autopano, photomerge does such a good job for me.
This is 9 shots with just a canon 20d hand held, put together in photomerge.

Cheers.
Mat

 

[yaya]

This is an old one from summer 2004 when we took the bike for a 4000 miles trip around the Alps.

Contax, 80mm, Valeo 22 handheld from the top of the Mont Blanc (4,300m). I don't have access to the originals but I think it was 4-5 horizontals and at the time I was using RealViz Stitcher:

Note that you can really see the earth's curvature....

 

[Lars]

Yair,
Some critique... That's from Aiguille du Midi, right? Not exactly the top of Mont Blanc.
Lars

 

[jlm]

i've been out on that ridge, camped in the valley just on the other side, climbed Mt. Blanc du Tacul from there.

 

[yaya]

Yair,
Some critique... That's from Aiguille du Midi, right? Not exactly the top of Mont Blanc.
Lars

Yup you're right:salute:

Still that's the top for us mortals who don't do rock climbing:toocool:

More from that trip (sorry this video was taken with a 4MP P&S)

Had the Contax kit, Valeo, Digital Magazine, iPaq and also a little 4X6" Canon dye-sub running on a battery so we could send postcards from every one of the 28 mountain passes we did...

 

[Don Libby]

I had posted this image in a much larger format without any protection such as a watermark. It has since been made very clear to me that anyone who wanted to could grab a screen shot and print the darn thing. I would have preferred to repost in my original thread however it appear I did not have that option.

 

[David K]

I had posted this image in a much larger format without any protection such as a watermark. It has since been made very clear to me that anyone who wanted to could grab a screen shot and print the darn thing. I would have preferred to repost in my original thread however it appear I did not have that option.

Knew I should have grabbed it while the grabbing was good Prudent move Don, it's an image worth protecting.

 

[David K]

After having played around with CS 3, PtGui, and AutoPano Pro for the last few weeks I can better understand why some folks have more than one program for panos installed on their computers. Each of them has it's strengths and weaknesses and none of them is clearly superior to the others (IMHO... YMMV). Both PtGui and CS 3 refuse to render QuickTime movies for me on the grounds I have insufficient memory (I've got 10 GB, how much do they want..). Perhaps this is because I'm setting the rendering quality too high or starting with images that are too large, although I've gotten this error message even when using 8 full sized Nikon D3 jpegs in a single row, which doesn't strike me as overreaching.

 

[Panopeeper]

Some comments on the above.

1. The exposure does not have to be fixed over the frames. However, preparing the frames for stitching can be *very* laborous. One should start out woth raw data and "equalize" the frames in raw conversion. Sometimes graduated transitions may be required, even more work for preparation.

Equalizing the frames by the blending is an abuse of the process with usually horrendeous result, either as banding particularly on clear sky, or by ruined colors.

2. The camera does not have to be level. In fact, in many cases it *can not* be level. However, the *plane of swiweling* needs to be level in order to avoid having to clip large segments.

3. There is no need to shoot with fixed focusing. One can achieve a large DoF by shooting with a long lens (long relative to the scenery), so that nearby and far objects are in separate frames and refocusing every frame. However, refocusing changes the field of view; PTGui has to be notified about this (by unlinking the FoV).

4. The father of stitchers is Panorama Tools. This is a package without human interface; Hugin (free), Panorama Tools Assembler (cheap) and PTGui (expensive) are based on Panorama Tools. These can stitch virtually everything, what is stitchable.

 

[Mitchell]

OK, here is a really stupid question.

Why stitching?

Need more resolution, or wider angles? I would think MFDB would supply enough resolution even if cropped down to panorama format.

Obviously, some of the gorgeous shots above cover wider angles with less distortion than possible without stitching, but some seem to me to be within reasonable wide angle lens limits.

What am I missing?

Thanks,

Mitchell

 

[jlm]

the widest angle lens I can use with my CFV back is 35mm; with the 1.5 crop, that is about 52mm equivalent field of view on a 6 x 6, which for a 35mm camera would be the same as...a 33mm lens

 

[Lars]

Mitchell,
Why stitch...
- Wider coverage (for example, don't have or didn't bring a wide enough lens).
- Need more resolution
- Cylindrical projection is desired

You didn't define "enough resolution". If you did, someone would always find or invent a need for more resolution.

 

[Mitchell]

Thanks Lars and Jim for explaining this.

Makes sense especially with the crop factors with DB's.

 

[Don Libby]

I've got a trip planned to the Grand Canyon; North Rim in October and South Rim in December. The Grand Canyon screams for large images (which I enjoy doing) and the Mamiya 28 fits that bill. What I'm going to attempt to do is multiple row, multiple column images for large panoramas (or a poor man's way to large format). We've had our monsoon season here in Tucson for several weeks now bringing with it very lovely clouds especially in the evening. I've been watching the evening skies for the past couple nights and unfortunately haven't been in a position to capture anything till last night. What better way to test my panorama skills!

This first image is a sample image of a single capture with the Mamiya 28mm lens; right out of the camera it measures 21.733x16.217 inches (6520 x 4585 pixels @ 300 ppi).

I experimented using the 28 lens in capturing 2 rows 2 columns to be merged into one large image. That image turned out to be 33.56x27.79 inches (10068 x 8337 pixels @ 300ppi) cropped to what I thought is a useable 28.237x21.37 inches (8471 x 6411 pixels).

I then took the cropped image and worked it into a quasi-panorama measuring 16x28.

Bottom line for me is that single row panoramas are much easier that multiple row.

Here's one of my first panoramas (I remember taking over 8 images for this one)

Why use stitching?

My answer: There's no such thing as too much or too large or too much detail.:bugeyes:

Lars is totally correct ....

don

 

[David K]

OK, here is a really stupid question.

Why stitching?

Need more resolution, or wider angles? I would think MFDB would supply enough resolution even if cropped down to panorama format.

Obviously, some of the gorgeous shots above cover wider angles with less distortion than possible without stitching, but some seem to me to be within reasonable wide angle lens limits.

What am I missing?

Thanks,

Mitchell

Mitchell,
No stupid questions here... to me the only truly stupid questions are the ones we don't ask for fear of appearing stupid In addition to the good answers you've already gotten I find stitching gives me an opportunity to go wider than I otherwise could without having to deal with the distortion that some wides inevitably bring to the table. I recall trying to use my Nikon 14-24 zoom at the wide end for architectural interiors. Got the coverage but also got one heck of a lot of distortion that had to be dealt with in post. Found I could get far better results using the Nikon 24 PC-E shifted left, then right and stitched with the same FOV as the 14mm and virtually no distortion.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Need to get me a RRS pano head setup . This might be my answer

 

[jlm]

just watch out that nothing changes between shots...like moving leaves, clouds, the light, etc. though branches and objects with sharp outlines are the most pesky. i have seen a few cases where the same person (poltergeist?) appeared in more than one place in the final image. an interesting effect