Quick question for you all, what lens do you like for panos and
multi rows?
Hi David,
It varies by situation but generally I think you can probably get
away with 28mm focal length equivalent for outdoors. Indoors you're
going to need something much wider. I shoot a lot of architectural
interiors, mostly luxury condos, and when my clients ask for VR as
well, I always do it on film with my 20-35mm then scan to Photo CD.
Even so, at 20mm it's a tight fit - as in it provides limited
cropping possibilities for the Art Director. For rooms with
cathedral ceilings or loft-style condos I borrow a friend's
16-35mmL lens. Again I shoot it w/film so you'd have to work out
the digital equivalent. Would love to get my hands on a 14mm
rectilinear just see what it does!
Slightly off topic but while I'm posting to you I thought I'd throw
it out there...
I've noticed a few people mentioned that people should avoid having
objects to close to the camera when shooting panos. I've never
really found this to be a problem. As any interiors shooter knows,
placing objects close to the camera creates a sense of depth in the
photograph so I've never varied my style for my VR work and have
had no problems.
Perhaps it's MGI's software. But I think it has more to do with
finding the nodal point of the lens as I indicated in a previous
post.
I just thought of a good way to illustrate the importance of this -
can't claim authorship as I think I saw it on an early APPLE demo
video about shooting VR. You can do it now at your computer.
Hold your arm out with one finger raised, and sighting through one
eye, line it up with an upright in the room you are in... a
doorframe, corner of the room ... now still looking through one
eye, turn your head from side to side. See how your finger moves in
relation to the upright in the background? This is because the
nodal point in your eye, the point at which the image flips from
right side up to upside down, is way out in front of the point of
rotation, your spine.
This shows the importance of placing your lens nodal point directly
over the point of rotation. Doing so will largely eliminate this
problem and ensure, for instance, that the coffe table in the
foreground will not move in relation to the furniture grouping in
the middle distance or the fireplace and wall in the background.
Having said all that though, I should add that the importance of
nodal placement diminshes if there is no foreground detail in the
shot. Many of the panoramas on our site were done hand-held with
just a bubble level in the hot shoe to act as a guide. In fact the
home page shot for this week - a last minute sustitution as the
location we originally had in mind was snowed in, it's actually a
family shot of my daughter's choir - was shot handheld, 28mm on the
Pro 70. I did two passes, 5 shots per pano, slightly under 180
degree angle of view. Only minor retouching and contrast masking
required
Hope this helps,
Doug B
http://www.torontowide.com