Anyone Stitching Panos with a MF Digital Back?

[Ken_R]

Hi, I use an Arca Swiss RM3Di with a Rodenstock 40mm HR lens and a IQ160 back and shift the back 15mm left and right for a simple 2 shot pano. Here is an example I did just a few weeks ago using this technique. The detail on the file is just ridiculous. Good enough for a 6ft wide print that you can stick your nose to it.

 

[STCameras]

As expected, the images are great!

Is anyone running HRD or focus stacking to get these shots?

I hear so much that you need the "Lou Ferrigno" of computeres to process these files. What sort of systems are preferred and what kind of processing time is required?

 

[alajuela]

As expected, the images are great!

Is anyone running HRD or focus stacking to get these shots?

I hear so much that you need the "Lou Ferrigno" of computeres to process these files. What sort of systems are preferred and what kind of processing time is required?

On my Shanghai Bund photos, the night Pano (the other two were straight one exposure shots) was shot with exposure bracketing to recover the some of the lit high lights. It is hard to see on the small jpg. After I had the pano stitched, I went back and took an underexposed frame and masked in the details.

There are no blown out highlights in the image. If I remember correctly nothing higher than 248- 248 - 248. Shadows nothing lower than 7-7-7. I did help myself by shooting as soon as they turned on the lights - late dusk.

In simple terms get a s**t load of RAM. I have 24G dram3 - wish I had more. Also get a good video card, the Nvida Quardo cards are good.

One thing for me which was not mentioned, is doing local adjustments is a challenge on a pano at 100% on the screen. A 3 or 4 shot pano is not as hard -can be treated as a normal shot. It has to look correct in parts and as a whole. Also need to check for ghosting when you have multi shot pano, with moving details.

The Shanghai Bund have printed 2 meters wide, no problem. You can see people on the boardwalk.

Thanks

phil

 

[pedro39photo]

amazing work Ed HUrst !!!! great light

 

[Ed Hurst]

amazing work Ed HUrst !!!! great light

Thanks Pedro - that is great to hear

 

[jlm]

in several instances, I have had much much better results merging with autopano giga 2.6 than withe CS5.1; in particular, the assembling in CS would produce barrel distortion-like crops that did not happen with autopano. more files than three or four also better with autopano

2009 MacPro, 2x2.26Ghz quad core, with 24G 1066Ghz Dram; Nvidia GeForce GT 120 512MB
OSX 10.8.4, two monitors

files are panos from IQ160, and have assembled as many as ten shots

 

[GrahamWelland]

in several instances, I have had much much better results merging with autopano giga 2.6 than withe CS5.1; in particular, the assembling in CS would produce barrel distortion-like crops that did not happen with autopano. more files than three or four also better with autopano

2009 MacPro, 2x2.26Ghz quad core, with 24G 1066Ghz Dram; Nvidia GeForce GT 120 512MB
OSX 10.8.4, two monitors

files are panos from IQ160, and have assembled as many as ten shots

John,

NOW I know what's happening when the list dim in Lower Manhattan!

I use a similar outfit, although 2008 2x4 3Ghz and it works fine although limited to OS X 10.7. Similarly I find that most of the time PS CS6 does a good job with panos but sometimes I just have to use autopano giga with problematic images. The difference can be quite noticeable when needed.

I tend to do flat stitches with my Alpa & IQ and try to keep to established ratios such as 6x12 or 6x17 where possible. I think aesthetically these work well.

These days I tend to shoot most panos on film with my XPan II or Fuji 617. Scanning & spotting is a bigger pain than assembling digital images obviously but for some scenes a single capture is better. For some scenes I will just shoot with my Alpa & Rodie 23 and crop. I seldom run out of resolution, especially when considering realistic sized prints.

Focus stack and pano builds - yes sometimes when needed. The main thing is to be systematic about taking the shots and marking the beginning and end of each set with a dark frame. You also have to add in the time for LCCs as well to the pano set. I will LCC each image file in the pano / focus stack first, and then focus stack in Helicon Focus each pano 'panel' and then finally combine the panels in CS6/CS or autopano. This way any pano distortions apply to a flattened focus stack and so there's less likelihood of different scene distortions causing problems which you could have if you merge the scene into different depth panos and then focus stack process the pano. YMMV.

 

[Ed Hurst]

PTGui is also excellent, giving many options for the projection, great controllability regarding alignment and the ability to save a particular project as a template and apply it to another set of files (useful when you have bracketed files and want the different sets of files to align identically).

2009 Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM.

I have stitched as many as 60 files before shot with a 645D (that takes many hours to compile based on 16-bit TIFFs).

 

[ondebanks]

I've done both handheld and tripod MFD panos...just a few. Lack of opportunity, rather than lack of inspiration!

One slightly unusual thing I've done is to mount the camera on an Astrotrac, so that the stars are pinpoints rather than trails in deep twilight horizon shots. Aiming the frames of the pano is trickier in this case, as the camera sits above a tilted platform whose alignment towards the celestial pole must be preserved.

Another unusual thing I've done is a handheld infrared stitch. For fast handheld shutter speeds in the IR, you need a DB whose IR-cut filter can be trivially removed (Kodak DCS, Mamiya ZD), or which has no IR-cut filter at all (a few custom Phase One & Leaf "full spectrum colour" and "Achromatic" variants). I use a Kodak DCS645M.

I use Hugin to stitch - really excellent free software. It does amazingly accurate automatic lens profiling; I haven't seen any of the sort of residual vignetting that jagsiva drew attention to above.

Late 2012 Mac Mini: 2.6 GHz quad-core i7, 16GB 1600MHz RAM, 1.12TB Fusion Drive [1TB HDD with 128GB SSD]

 

[mmbma]

I do pano with this baby. No stitching needed

 

[f8orbust]

+1

Hard to beat that Linhof - gets you (virtually) to that sweet spot of panoramic photography, namely the 3:1 ratio. I see a lot of stitched images from tech cameras that linger around the 2:1 ratio - just not the same.

 

[mmbma]

It is a pain to use but yes the results are worth it! Sorry for straying off topic. I find it hard to stitch panos on a tech cam because I often shoot in interesting weather conditions (fog, twilight, etc.) Hard to compensate for exposure and fall off even with LCC. (If you a long lens it's different i guess). So I went back to film for panos

 

[FSOT]

Me too I shoot Hasseblad XPan and hope to see a digital sensor for it like the DMR.

 

[STCameras]

Would be nice to have a single shot sensor.

 

[wryphotography]

Would be nice to have a single shot sensor.

could you imagine 3 60mp sensors together? the file sizes would be absurd. One IQ180 file is already half the size of one 3200ppi scan at 16bit of a 617 transparency.

I'm selling my Fuji cause the workflow is too much of a pita to scan in and then clean off dust, edit etc. I would rather stitch 3x1 panos, and have the option to do take single frames for 4x5 ratio or other things.

I stitch with Mamiya AFD and iq180 without a tech cam or really doing too much nodal point calculations and the results are superb.

 

[STCameras]

Agreed........

However the idea of stitching is a workaround becasue we all want to make these wonderful large format images. It's achievable in several ways with the gear we have so we do it.

 

[markymarkrb]

I miss the one shot pure magic captures of my Fuji GX617 with Velvia 50. Waves were much easier to capture. I do like the results of the IQ180 though. The digital file is just too nice to pass up if you can afford one. Someday there will be a great 1x3 digital sensor.

 

[mmbma]

could you imagine 3 60mp sensors together? the file sizes would be absurd. One IQ180 file is already half the size of one 3200ppi scan at 16bit of a 617 transparency.

I'm selling my Fuji cause the workflow is too much of a pita to scan in and then clean off dust, edit etc. I would rather stitch 3x1 panos, and have the option to do take single frames for 4x5 ratio or other things.

I stitch with Mamiya AFD and iq180 without a tech cam or really doing too much nodal point calculations and the results are superb.

I certainly can imagine a 3x 60mp sensor and that would be a beautiful thing! By then our computers can handle files like that with no sweat

 

[SergeiR]

I certainly can imagine a 3x 60mp sensor and that would be a beautiful thing! By then our computers can handle files like that with no sweat

Its only 180mp. Less than your average scan from 4x5 film. Computers right now can handle it pretty easy (i regularly work with 400mp scans).

 

[alajuela]

Its only 180mp. Less than your average scan from 4x5 film. Computers right now can handle it pretty easy (i regularly work with 400mp scans).

Hi
When you have an 60 meg raw file you have about 300+ megabyte 16 bit tif file. So three raw files in a pano opened in PS is close to one giga byte on one layer.