Stiching and Panosaurus: Ultra Wide and fast

Hi,

Every now and then I've stitched images to make either panoramas or very large pictures. Now I finally managed to get me the Panosaurus tripod head, an gizmo that enables to rotate the camera around the optical center of the lens. This enables completely seamless stitcing afterwards, even if the objects are very close.

An example is in the next post. I had just put the Panosaurus in working order, so this isn't any breathtaking landscape or interior shot. Instead, here is an artsyfartsy picture of a bike. This image has been stitched together (with Autostich) from 61 photos that were taken from 1,5 meter distance of the front of the bicycle, using Sigma 30/1.4 @ f/1.8.

Things get interesting when one can use wide apertures and have wide angle shots. Of course, the subject needs be completely still through the whole shooting session, so it rules out 90% of photographic situations... But for architectural shots, where people are considered unnecessary objects it has its place, and landscapes, when clouds are moving slowly.

Image in next post.
--
Pete
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Here is the complete image. Bear in mind that the bike is standing 1,5 meters (5 ft) away from the camera:



I have not found a single seam in this picture (full size image is HUGE). It would not be possible without the head gizmo.

Cheers,
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Pete
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I actually have been looking at the exact same product as you. One thing I was wondering though was focus. How are you locking the focus and exposure when taking these pictures to stitch?

BTW that picture is very sharp

I have the camera on manual focus and exposure. Before starting the sequence, I make a couple of test shots of the important parts and expose according those tests.

With stiching it is possible to get pictures with enormous resolution. BTW, the images were straight out of camera (e-410), no color or tone correction was made to them.

--
Pete
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Interesting!

Well. At first I thought 'Ermmhhh, 64 pics for that image?'

But, of course...

I'd appreciate if you could tell me:

• how big is the resulting image pixel-wise?
• what was the grid - 8 by 8?
• did you change tripod position and/or height or did you just tilt?
• did you preprocess the images before feeding them to Autostitch?

Thanks for illuminating me

Cheers,

Claus.

PS: Quite a nice picture, BTW.

I was just looking at the Panasaurus and thought from the web pics that it looked a little flimsy. I would be using E500 and the 14/54 to do some shots. Did you use your 500 or 400???
thanks
John

Claus A said:

Well. At first I thought 'Ermmhhh, 64 pics for that image?'

Click to expand...

I know what you mean.. But if you have ever tried to take multiple photos from close objects on ordinary tripod head, let alone handholding, and then stiched them together, you know that parallax distortion can make the resulting photo unsatisfactory. All kinds of double and shadow lines appears, and the images won't even stitch seamlessly. For example good interior shots are not possible without this kind of tripod head. The example I posted had no such problem, even if the bike was standing right in front of the camera.

Claus A said:

I'd appreciate if you could tell me:

• how big is the resulting image pixel-wise?

Click to expand...

The maximum size of the resulting image is somewhere over 20000 x 20000 pixels. However, Autostich can't hande it. Funny, because I've done bigger pictures with it. I guess it has something to do with having a dense matrix of source images.

Anyway, I dowsampled the originals and got a picture that is 5430 x 5500 pixels.

Claus A said:

• what was the grid - 8 by 8?

Click to expand...

The camera was in portrait orientation so I had a grid of 15 x 4. I make the edge of the next picture align with the center of the previous picture. The pano head has angular scale on it, so it is easy to follow the same track in every row.

Claus A said:

• did you change tripod position and/or height or did you just tilt?

Click to expand...

No, the tripod must stand still. This is crucial. I only rotate and tilt the pano head.

Claus A said:

• did you preprocess the images before feeding them to Autostitch?

Click to expand...

I only downsampled them.

Cheers,
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Pete
--

Hi,

You are right, it is a bit flimsy. But then again, it wasn't expensive either. OTOH, it is quite light. I think that to make a sturdy panorama head for bigger cameras would make it quite large and heavy. The Panosaurus has plastic parts, exluding the vertical stand. So it isn't scientificly accurate, but it is definitely accurate enough for any practical work. I don't expect this to be my last pano head, I was planning to build one myself, but for this price I might just as well use this as the first experience.

I used my e-410 and Sigma, but I've tried it with e-410 and 11-22 as well, I'm sure it can handle the e500 and 14-54 easily.

The head is not strong enough for carrying the tripod on your shoulder with the camera attached, but it is possible to use a quick release plate on the pano head.

Cheers,
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Pete
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I have had a Panosaurus and agree with comments about its usefullness and its drawbacks. Somewhat more expensive but better imho is the Nodal Ninja which is all metal and more compact. Worth a look if your in the market. http://www.nodalninja.com/
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Bill Shinnick

Amfibi said:

Hi,

Every now and then I've stitched images to make either panoramas or
very large pictures. Now I finally managed to get me the Panosaurus
tripod head, an gizmo that enables to rotate the camera around the
optical center of the lens. This enables completely seamless stitcing
afterwards, even if the objects are very close.

An example is in the next post. I had just put the Panosaurus in
working order, so this isn't any breathtaking landscape or interior
shot. Instead, here is an artsyfartsy picture of a bike. This image
has been stitched together (with Autostich) from 61 photos that were
taken from 1,5 meter distance of the front of the bicycle, using
Sigma 30/1.4 @ f/1.8.

Things get interesting when one can use wide apertures and have wide
angle shots. Of course, the subject needs be completely still through
the whole shooting session, so it rules out 90% of photographic
situations... But for architectural shots, where people are
considered unnecessary objects it has its place, and landscapes, when
clouds are moving slowly.

Click to expand...

Hi Pete,

I have used the technique you are demonstrating here, a coupleof times. I got inspired to this reading another forum where a guy showed some amazing pictures. Now he used a FF camera and a 85/1.2 lens so he had no problems getting a more shallow DOF.

Here is one of my attempts:



with a medium sized (357kB) version here:

http://photos.imageevent.com/jonas_b/dprolyslrkvartal/0708/pilane_svart_867_web.jpg

The picture above is stiitched from 37 pictures and taken with a Pentax K10D and the Sigma 30/1.4. I was happy with it but also wanted to try one with a more shallow DOF. I revisited the place and used 50/1.4 lens instead, took 96 pictures and processed them. A failure; the bokeh wasn't nice. Darn.

Your picture... 60+ images! Did you have a lot of overlapping? Or, more likely, maybe I don't translate the needs properly from a 1.5 crop sensor to the 4/3 sensor?

In my experience this sort of super wide and shallow DOF pictures needs a target of a certain size (like a car or somewhat smaller) and a fast lens and a short distance (not to loose the DOF effect).

It's good to see somebody else doing the same thing, and nicely executed to that.

--
Jonas

Very interesting image.

Any idea what the fianl FOV / Equivalent focal length is of the final image?

http://www.AshMills.com

(no text)

Good choice of subject too.
Did you lock the focus as well?

Amfibi said:

Here is the complete image. Bear in mind that the bike is standing
1,5 meters (5 ft) away from the camera:



I have not found a single seam in this picture (full size image is
HUGE). It would not be possible without the head gizmo.

Cheers,
--
Pete
--

Click to expand...

--
http://www.4-3system.com
http://jonr.light.is

Hi,

the angle of view is roughly 100 degrees. But, using more shots it could of course be any desired angle. The resulting image will look like a fisheye image, so it would have to be corrected or defish if straight lines are desired.

--
Pete
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Thanks Jón,

Yes, I locked the focus, I had the camera on MF mode and Manual exposure.

--
Pete
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Just to follow up;

When experimenting with the super wide shallow DOF mosaics I found that the distance is important (maybe I mentioned that in my post above) together with the size of the subject.

Another thing is that the two bottommost rows of pictures may need one or two extra pictures at the sides. This is because of the narrowing effect we get from tilting the camera.

Finally; a good panohead is essential together with a careful adjustment of the lens nodal point (or entrance pupil). For more simple panos, typical one row and taken from a distance with not much in the foreground, we can get away with handholding but in this case the parallax errors are hard to avoid.

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Jonas

Hi Pete!

Nice pic you got there... but, I'm just curious.... did you realy have to take 61 shots? Couldn't have done away with, say, 55 less?

Thanks.