Panorama - not using photostitch

Henrik Tived · Sep 29, 2002

Hi guys,

just wondering here what would be the ideal way to shoot panos, I have the below gear! Not much but it is a beginning for a beginner

Now I have borrowed a manfrotto pano head to play with but my told me that I needed to find the nod point??? Duh what point?! Something so that I would avoid the extra movement/shift in the camera when moving around.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

TIA

regards

henrik
--

D60 w/grip 16-35L,28-70L,70-200L IS, 300L f/4 and 100f/2.5Macro, 1.4xII 2x550EX, ST-E2 - remote timer
Manfrotto 055pro legs - 468RC ballhead
too much to carry!! but a lot of fun to use

WalterK · Sep 29, 2002

Henrik said:
Hi guys,

just wondering here what would be the ideal way to shoot panos, I
have the below gear! Not much but it is a beginning for a beginner

Don't worry about the pano head to start with. The nodal point of the lens is where the line going through the center of the lens from front to back intersects with where the point within the lens that would minimize parallax between foregrand and background when the lens is rotated. This allows the lens to rotate around a point rather than the cricumference of a donut.

For a beginner, just get the feel of panos. Level your tripod carefully. Mount the camera in Portrait orientation, which will prevent your panos from being very long and not high enough. (If you shoot a vertical pano, such as a monument, use Landscape orientation, for the same reason.)

Use manual exposure and select one of the White Balance settings, according to shooting conditions. This will keep the camera from changing the exposure from shot to shot. Some people expose for their main image in the sequence. Others find the average exposure and use that. I expose so that the brightest scene is exposed correctly, which keeps the highlights from getting blown out. I shoot RAW, and can always dig the detail out of the darker frames.

Use a high f-number (f11, for example) to give you great depth of field if you are shooting a landscape.

Use manual focus and focus about 1/3 into the scene. If your test shot shows that not enough is sharp, use a wider lens and/or a higher f-number.

Start at the left-most shot. Take note of something easy to spot in the rightmost part of your image. Use a remote switch, or the self timer to minimize camera vibration, and use mirror lockup for the same reason.

After the shot, rotate the camera to your right so that what you had seen on the right edge now is about in the middle of the frame. Shoot, and continue until the sequence is done.

Use whatever software you have, including Canon's program. You can adjust the seams manually if Canon's software makes mistakes on auto.

To understand more about panos go to:

http://www.panoguide.com
--
Walter K

Henrik Tived · Sep 29, 2002

Hi Walter,

Thanks very much for your reply

I am about to ask you for a list of nodel point of various lenses but I think I better glace through the link you gave me

once again thanks very much

Henrik

PS: So the 16-35 would be an ok lens to use for pano's ?
or is there too much distrotion - not that this lens have much!

would I be better off using the 28-70 at 50mm or there about to get a straighter image????

OK, i'll look at that page...it probably has the answers!

WalterK said:
Henrik said:

Hi guys,

just wondering here what would be the ideal way to shoot panos, I
have the below gear! Not much but it is a beginning for a beginner

Click to expand...

Don't worry about the pano head to start with. The nodal point of
the lens is where the line going through the center of the lens
from front to back intersects with where the point within the lens
that would minimize parallax between foregrand and background when
the lens is rotated. This allows the lens to rotate around a point
rather than the cricumference of a donut.

For a beginner, just get the feel of panos. Level your tripod
carefully. Mount the camera in Portrait orientation, which will
prevent your panos from being very long and not high enough. (If
you shoot a vertical pano, such as a monument, use Landscape
orientation, for the same reason.)

Use manual exposure and select one of the White Balance settings,
according to shooting conditions. This will keep the camera from
changing the exposure from shot to shot. Some people expose for
their main image in the sequence. Others find the average exposure
and use that. I expose so that the brightest scene is exposed
correctly, which keeps the highlights from getting blown out. I
shoot RAW, and can always dig the detail out of the darker frames.

Use a high f-number (f11, for example) to give you great depth of
field if you are shooting a landscape.
Use manual focus and focus about 1/3 into the scene. If your test
shot shows that not enough is sharp, use a wider lens and/or a
higher f-number.

Start at the left-most shot. Take note of something easy to spot
in the rightmost part of your image. Use a remote switch, or the
self timer to minimize camera vibration, and use mirror lockup for
the same reason.

After the shot, rotate the camera to your right so that what you
had seen on the right edge now is about in the middle of the frame.
Shoot, and continue until the sequence is done.

Use whatever software you have, including Canon's program. You can
adjust the seams manually if Canon's software makes mistakes on
auto.

To understand more about panos go to:

http://www.panoguide.com
--
Walter K

--

D60 w/grip 16-35L,28-70L,70-200L IS, 300L f/4 and 100f/2.5Macro, 1.4xII 2x550EX, ST-E2 - remote timer
Manfrotto 055pro legs - 468RC ballhead
too much to carry!! but a lot of fun to use

WalterK · Sep 29, 2002

Henrik Tived said:
PS: So the 16-35 would be an ok lens to use for pano's ?
or is there too much distrotion - not that this lens have much!
would I be better off using the 28-70 at 50mm or there about to get
a straighter image????

I use the 16-35, and the distortion is not too great for the stitchers. Don't forget that the wider the lens, the fewer the number of shots for the pano. However, you can use any focal length you want. For example, a 180 degree scene might take 10 shots at 16mm, but 25 at 135mm.

--
Walter K

Guy Rehorst · Sep 29, 2002

I have found that Live Picture does a great job and is simple. If I have any problem with artifacts in Live Picture, I try Photostitch. I always find one or the other will work great- it seems to depend on the photo's your using. Each program has it's own strength and weakness.

GR

Giacomo Tognoni said:
thank you!

Tim Lozinski said:

The full size Tiff I have is 4625x2070, nice for printing on that
epson panorama roll

The software I used was panoramafactory, which seems to put a LOT
more effort into the stitch.

Its probably a bad example, since the light was failing and I didnt
use a tripod, but I am hoping to catch the bridge in this shot on a
bluer sky daytime with plenty of sun (I'll be lucky September in
England!!)

What do people think of all the stitching? I think its cool, I
tried to do a panorama from a crop and the 59cmx21cm epson panorama
paper print looks OK, but I reckon the stitch is the way to go if
you want cool details in large scale

I just looked again and thought I saw CMOS dust, but it's a bird in
flight (more obvious in the large scale one )

phew, lucky me (so far)

Cheers - Tim

Click to expand...

WalterK · Sep 29, 2002

I was very harsh on those who said Photostitch sucks, and that I had used it to do some of my problem panos.

Well, I have 2 icons on my desktop. One is labeled "Canon Photo Panoramas," and the other is "Stitch.exe." It is the "Canon Photo Panoramas" that I use, and it has excellent autostitch PLUS manual override of each seam by selecting 3 pairs of corresponding points. I thought this was the program that was being referred to.

It is NOT Photostitch, but the pano program from Canon Photo Advanced, a photo suite I purchased for the pano program.

I just tried "Stitch.exe, which turns out to load PhotoStitch, the one that came with my D60, and the one I thought I had been using. It is NOT the same program! There is no way to adjust the seams or edit individual images. It is totally automatic, and does leave visible seams. I would not recommend it for beginners and certainly have no reason to keep it on my hard drive!

I can't believe Canon bundled it with the D60 when they could have used their much better Canon Photo Panoramas program. It is practically useless compared to other intro pano programs including Canon's own!

On second thought, Canon's RAW converter is not much more useful...

While I don't like to flame anybody or anything, this program comes close to deserving it. I got the Canon photo suite for about $20. There is no reason its pano program could not have been included with the $2200 camera instead of the one they chose to bless us with.

--
Walter K

WalterK · Sep 29, 2002

From N.Bergen, NJ. Shows Hudson River from about 74th St on the north, to the Verazzano Bridge just visible in the south.

I left the 3 versions of the motor boat that kept up with my shooting sequence.

This was done with Canon Photo Panoramas, not PhotoStitch. The pano was processed in PS 7: Autocolor, then put into Neat Image to get rid of the noise, then back to PS. Changed to Lab Mode and used USM. The lens was a 28-135 at 135, f11. The haze was horrible, the sun was in the wrong place (note the bright south end. The Canon program did a good job!

--
Walter K

Tim Lozinski · Sep 29, 2002

Man

I thought "this guy's either a few short or he has magically found a way to make Photostitch do all these amazing things he is talkin about'.

Well, it turned out that neither was right, (well maybe a bit of the former

- just kiddin).

And you made me feel bad for 'suggesting' that you were 'amateurish' for using photostitch (ie useless for serious stuff). LOL, I think if you still take defence to your professional pride in using photostitch then I will feel bad

I certainly don't wish to belittle anyone for their choice of software - whatever 'does it' for you, I was REALLY perplexed that photost(b)itch could do it for ANYONE serious about their images though, and you can see why now

Cheers - your error is forgiven

-Tim

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Panorama - not using photostitch

Henrik Tived

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WalterK

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Henrik Tived

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WalterK

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Guy Rehorst

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WalterK

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WalterK

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Tim Lozinski

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