Doing Panoramas........

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and why??? I also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated--Hector Gomez, LC

Hector,

I just solved this problem myself. It is not your tripod head. Although a head with pan will help out a lot. I just hot the Kirk BH-1 ball head and it's the best tripod head I have ever seen. Your problem is most likely with the software. The pano stitcher that came with my D30 is garbage...simply don't use it ever! I tried another program I got for free with no luck either. I then tried the Panoramafactory at (www.panoramafactory.com) with the same images and they came out perfect. They let you download a trial version for 30 days use. I stitched 6 images together of a windmill and it came out perfect...see this link...

http://www.pbase.com/image/1252765/original

this one is of 10 images...

http://www.pbase.com/image/1252764

Try that program out...it works wonders...

Hope this helped,
Jamil

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this
assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch
them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight
and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano
head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and
Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and why??? I
also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited
to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is
a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated
--
Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

Here is a web site that you my find helpful:
http://www.panoguide.com

So far, I have only used Panorama Maker 2000 (it came free with my scanner). I've gotten good results even though panoguide.com gives it a low rating. I agree with their comments that it can be tricky to get the images to stitch together properly. With your level of camera, you'd probably want something more advanced than this. I plan to look for more advanced software soon.

--Danny Gallant

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this
assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch
them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight
and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano
head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and
Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and why??? I
also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited
to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is
a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated
--
Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

Hi Hector,

I've been doing panoramas for a number of years now, and the tripod head I use is the Kaidan KIWI. It does an excellent job but requires some attention to the set-up of the unit to be most effective.

First it needs to be level. You want to attach it to a tripod head that is equipped with bubble levels.

Then you need to get a hotshoe mounted bubble level to make sure the up/down motion of the camera is kept on a level plane.

The most important thing though is to find the nodal point of the lens you intend to use and center it over the point of rotation.

You can find your nodal point by setting up rod, or a thin light stand, about 6 ft. in front of the camera position with the lens focused at infinity and the camera mounted on the Kaidan head. Make sure the tripod has been levelled. Line the rod up with an upright in the distance at infinity, perhaps a telephone pole, then pan the camera from side to side. Slide the camera in increments along the horizontal slot in the Kaidan head until you reach a point where the rod in front does not move in relation to the upright in the distance as you pan the camera. When you see this you have placed the nodal point, the exact point at which the image travelling through your lens flips from right side up to upside down, over the center of rotation and this allows you to do a sequence of shots without the foreground elements moving substantially in relation to the background. Sometimes you will see things move, or 'smear', a bit through the camera as you are doing the sequence, but that's just the distortion of the wide angle lens. The computer program you use to stitch the images with will largely eliminate this.

I use MGI's PhotoVista. I have no idea if it's the best program, it's just what I've always used and it works for me. I find after years of photographing with it I can sort of anticipate what kind of distortion the computer will introduce to the final image. But there's always an element of surprise in stitched panoramas - kind of like the element of the unknown in infra-red photography.

For the past year I have been making panoramas of the city of Toronto, Canada for Torontowide.com. We update the image every week and in the gallery section you'll find aprox. 60 examples of my work.

Good Luck,
Doug Brown
http://www.torontowide.com

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this
assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch
them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight
and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano
head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and
Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and??? I
also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited
to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is
a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated
--
Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

All that is nice but you can take very good panoramas if you will follow a few simple rules.
1- Change to a vertical format
2- Overlap about 50%
3- Have AEL on
4- Keep objects out of the foreground
5- Most of all use Photoshop Elements's PhotoMerge

I have a picture 44" X 12" printed on canvas of 8 seperate shots of Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies that you can not tell where the stitching is at all! I have used at least 5 different stitching software and the PhotMerge in Photoshop Elements is by far the best.--Roy Boorman

Post the image so we can see

DJM

Roy Boorman said:

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this
assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch
them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight
and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano
head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and
Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and??? I
also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited
to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is
a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated
--
Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

All that is nice but you can take very good panoramas if you will
follow a few simple rules.
1- Change to a vertical format
2- Overlap about 50%
3- Have AEL on
4- Keep objects out of the foreground
5- Most of all use Photoshop Elements's PhotoMerge
I have a picture 44" X 12" printed on canvas of 8 seperate shots of
Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies that you can not tell where the
stitching is at all! I have used at least 5 different stitching
software and the PhotMerge in Photoshop Elements is by far the best.
--
Roy Boorman

Click to expand...

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right?

Click to expand...

Hi! My very strong recommendation is to keep it simple. After your appetite is whetted you can get more complicated and meticulous. Basically taking the panaoramas can be done very simply with the following obvious precautions:
Do not use a wide angle lens (vignetting, distortion). 50mm OK.
Keep exposure fixed, manual
Keep focus fixed, manual
Keep White Balance fixed, eg Daylight, definitely NOT Auto
Do not use a polariser (different parts of the sky have different polarisations)

Do not have objects too close to the camera (that will force you to purchase a pano head, maybe, but can usually be overcome by software)

Process all the source images identically (much better NIL processing), merge and then process the final to your liking.
You do not even need a tripod, never mind a pano head, to begin with.

The real work is done in the merging software. Seems that Panorama Factory is the way to go. It allows you to fix distortions, vignetting, whatever. But I would suggest that the CanonStitch is adequate for your first attempts. If your photos show vignetting then it's better to process that out before merging. Here is my first pano made with a 20-year-old film Point&Shoot, HANDHELD(!), followed by CanonStitch:



and larger version below:



I always find it best to try out things simply first. Get the hang of things... You can later on get as complicated and as meticulous as you wish. It's more fun that way, IMHO anyway. Besides, you'll still have your original images to play with for the next 20 years as you learn the more meticulous stuff.

A lot depends on your skills with Photoshop. The proper set up with a panorama head can make it easy for the panorama software to work. The better stitching software can handle a few problems such as using a simple pan head versus a panorama head.

The following picture is made up of 9 pictures taken hand held in "portrait mode" and then stitched together using Photoshop Layers, Arbitrary Trasforms and Layer Masks. I even had to move around to dodge poles when taking the pictures. The result has been reduced for posting.

I tried several different packages on the image and non of them could handle it. Some came close but messed up in a few areas. With Photoshop Layers and Layer Masks, I could control everything and get the result I wanted.

http://www.fototime.com/ {A371EFE7-9330-4914-A3C6-4B5F4202A2D6} picture.JPG

Karl
--Karl

nice shot.

And stitched by hand, too.--The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.netPhotography -- just another word for compromise

Most of the information below is great, but I'd add that a Kaidan (or other) pano head is necessary unless you're doing grand vistas, where the nearest part of the subject is distant. Yes, keep the camera vertical, and use a stitcher program, rather than Photoshop. I recommend Quicktime VR authoring studio, as I was a member of that team at Apple. As a photographer, I've found many uses for it, including shots of tall buildings, grand vistas which are too wide for my widest lenses, and even partial vr shots. Also, it's probably the easiest one to use, though I've heard great things about 'stitcher' and others.

Photoshop alone won't do the warping to make the image(s) correctly match in perspective -- as you pan left/right, the images will have a shifted perspective, which QTVRAS will fix. Also, in Photoshop, the image might stitch and pano, but will look as if it's 'panning' across a very wide shot, rather than place the viewer in the room. Use dedicated stitching/pano software. Really.

bartone

Roy Boorman said:

Roy Boorman said:

Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

All that is nice but you can take very good panoramas if you will
follow a few simple rules.
1- Change to a vertical format
2- Overlap about 50%
3- Have AEL on
4- Keep objects out of the foreground
5- Most of all use Photoshop Elements's PhotoMerge
I have a picture 44" X 12" printed on canvas of 8 seperate shots of
Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies that you can not tell where the
stitching is at all! I have used at least 5 different stitching
software and the PhotMerge in Photoshop Elements is by far the best.
--
Roy Boorman

Click to expand...

Karlg said:

With Photoshop Layers and Layer Masks, I could control everything
and get the result I wanted.

Click to expand...

Right on, Karl! I just LOVE that subject line. Unfortunately, of course, when it comes to Photoshop there are very few Real Men out there... ;-) I came across a website the other day where the guy makes 360 degree horizontal and vertical (full sphere) panoramics using any lens. Now, if only Photoshop could be made more intuitive for the beginner.

1.I used Manfrotto with 141RC head (not pano head just plain head)

2.Before taking shots - check all frames in mind if they are on the same horizon. - use small circle inside the viewfinder.
3.Use manual focus
4.Use manual exposure(better take shots within very short period of time)
5.Stitch them in PS - I tried other software but not satisfied!

Good luck!

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this
assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch
them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight
and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano
head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and
Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and why??? I
also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited
to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is
a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated
--
Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

Aloha
most people have given good advice
http://www.panoguide.com is a good place to pick out software

using a tripod makes it easier etc.. to do using a pano head makes it that much easier to do
the Kaidan are a good choice to use
the pano head is needed more in tighter situations with things closer to you.
less for farawy subjects (but again helps out a lot)
use AElock so your images come out equal without being bandy up and down etc...
using a wider angle lens allows more up and down (duh !

keeping the camera level at all tiems is a must for good quality.--Chad Dwww.panotools.comwww.happyfish.com

If you want to do panoramas and have FULL control of every bit in the process, the only package I found that gives you that is Panorama Tools:

http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/

and it's FREE!!!

It has the most powerfull interpolations and can even correct distortions in your lenses!

I use it to produce a layered image in PS6 and continue from there (not much left to do but review the result, minor fixes, flatten image and apply some USM...)

BUT - If you thought PS6 was hard to learn...

There is a utility calles PTGUI that front-ends the Panorama Tools. It brings the power of Panorama Tools to the average photographer. It's not free.

Here are some links I collected with more info:
http://www.ptgui.com/

http://homepage.dtn.ntl.com/j.houghton/pttute.htm

http://cgibin.rcn.com/maxlyons/

http://ptfaq.org/fom-serve/cache/1.html

http://www.themaestro.net/DSP/Remap/remapsource.html

http://www.bigbenpublishing.com.au/360/docs/tutorial/index.html

http://philohome.free.fr/

http://www.culture.com.au/virtual/

Here is a 3X3 panorama I did:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=595531&size=lg

--Happiness.Tal.

I agree with Tal on this one. Panotools is really the best of the best in terms of what it allows you to do and how it warps the individual images. Also with panotools you're not restricted to keeping the horizon in the middle of the frame, if you still want to adhere to the rule of thirds, panotools dan warp the images accordingly and allow interesting compositions.

As Tal mentioned it does take some time to master but when you have, you really appreciate what is required to get a good stitch.

there is now a front end program for the mac a well (thank God!) which really helps make the process easier.

But the best advice is to read all you can about it and keep experimenting. All the links Tal suggested are good and really helped me.

Good luck

Colin

Honu said:

Aloha
most people have given good advice
http://www.panoguide.com is a good place to pick out software
using a tripod makes it easier etc.. to do using a pano head makes
it that much easier to do
the Kaidan are a good choice to use
the pano head is needed more in tighter situations with things
closer to you.
less for farawy subjects (but again helps out a lot)
use AElock so your images come out equal without being bandy up and
down etc...
using a wider angle lens allows more up and down (duh !

keeping the camera level at all tiems is a must for good quality.
--
Chad D
http://www.panotools.com
http://www.happyfish.com

Click to expand...

Fully agree with Samir and Karl. I take everything offhand and use Photoshop to manually stitch panos. My largest is a 53 megapixel dawn shot of the Grand Canyon using 23 shots. Here is some of my stuff.
http://pws.prserv.net/lees_pics/landscapes.htm

I do use some wide angle but I use Andromeda's LensDoc to remove the barrel distortion. Good shooting. Leon

Samir Kharusi said:

Karlg said:

With Photoshop Layers and Layer Masks, I could control everything
and get the result I wanted.

Click to expand...

Right on, Karl! I just LOVE that subject line. Unfortunately, of
course, when it comes to Photoshop there are very few Real Men out
there... ;-) I came across a website the other day where the guy
makes 360 degree horizontal and vertical (full sphere) panoramics
using any lens. Now, if only Photoshop could be made more intuitive
for the beginner.

Click to expand...

Laurence Bartone said:

Photoshop alone won't do the warping to make the image(s) correctly
match in perspective -- as you pan left/right, the images will have
a shifted perspective, which QTVRAS will fix. Also, in Photoshop,
the image might stitch and pano, but will look as if it's 'panning'
across a very wide shot, rather than place the viewer in the room.
Use dedicated stitching/pano software. Really.

bartone

Laurence Bartone said:

Laurence Bartone said:

Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

All that is nice but you can take very good panoramas if you will
follow a few simple rules.
1- Change to a vertical format
2- Overlap about 50%
3- Have AEL on
4- Keep objects out of the foreground
5- Most of all use Photoshop Elements's PhotoMerge
I have a picture 44" X 12" printed on canvas of 8 seperate shots of
Bow Lake in the Canadian Rockies that you can not tell where the
stitching is at all! I have used at least 5 different stitching
software and the PhotMerge in Photoshop Elements is by far the best.
--
Roy Boorman

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Re: kperspective - Photoshop Elements Photomerge has a perspective tab after stitching picture together, move to upper left and select tool place it at "vanishing point" ie where you stood to take picture and it will "fkatten" the image to show perspective.--Roy Boorman

Colin Herd said:

there is now a front end program for the mac a well (thank God!)
which really helps make the process easier.

Click to expand...

Where can one find the new front end program for the Mac?

Hector:
The 1D will be a great camera for panoramas because of the large buffer.

I shoot multi-row panoramas (mosaics) stitched with Panorama Tools almost exclusively. Initially I started out doing these hand-held, but this gets very difficult if you want flawless results or if you want to shoot more than about 10 images for your mosaic.

I bought the Kaidan Spherical head, and have never regretted it. In many instances it is essential to have an approximate idea of the yaw and pitch angles for each of the shots, and you can have this with a good tripod head.

I wrote an extensive tutorial on creating seamless multirow mosaics:
http://www.caldwellphotographic.com/MosaicTutorial.html

For a gallery of sample mosaics from NYC:
http://www.caldwellphotographic.com/NYCMosaics.html

Max Lyons' excellent multi-row mosaic site:
http://cgibin.rcn.com/maxlyons/

Max recently removed a memory restriction in Panorama Tools that was limiting me to image sizes of approximately 65 megapixels. As I write this I am currently working on a 42-image mosaic (7 across by 6 high) that will wind up somewhere in the 150 megapixel range. With any luck I'll be able to post a full-sized compressed version of this image on my site in a few days.

If you are into landscape or architectural photography there is virtually no limit to what you can do with multirow panoramas. The image quality can exceed even 8x10 or 11x14 film.

Brian

fotosaccion said:

I own a Canon 1D and am wanting to do some multi-frame panoramics
and stitching but I am not sure what I am doing. It appears that I
have to have aPANORAMIC head to do it right? Am I correct in this
assesment? I took some images last night and attempted to stitch
them together and I got mixed results. My lines were not straight
and I could not seem to get it right. If indeed I do need a pano
head....WHO's????? I've looked on the web at Kaidan, manfrotto and
Peace river studios...... What do most of you use and why??? I
also need to know if I want to do multi row panos.... I am limited
to the Kaidan??? Do most of you only do single row panos??? It is
a considerable price increase in the myulti row arena....

Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated
--
Hector Gomez, LC

Click to expand...

--J. Brian Caldwellwww.caldwellphotographic.com

THANK YOU ALL FOR SOOOO MUCH GREAT IDEAS AND ADVICE!!!

Sorry it took me a while to post back... I am home sick... My nephews decided to share what they had with me!!! OH WELL!!!

I am specifically trying to do a multi-row pano of the front of a building but the catch is that there is a fountain in front that I am trying to get in the shot.... Let me see if I post a picture of it so you can get an idea of what I m trying to do.... From what I have read... I will definitely need a pano head because the fountain is close to the lens.

My first attempt I shot in vertical position and just tried a 2X2 pano.... but now that I look at it... the problem is the fountain...!!!! I guess it is time to invest in some more equipment!! I think PANOS are EXTREMELY adictive!!!

Let me get a single shot of the area I am trying to do a pano with and that will clarify what I am wanting to do..... I have never posted anything here.... so it should be interesting what comments I get back.... It's all good since it makes me a better photographer......

Thanks for all the good advice!!!!!--Hector Gomez, LC