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02/04/2008 02:13:34 AM · #1 |
I find that I really enjoy taking photos of older and interesting buildings. My lenses really seem to make it hard to do so without really distorting the lines.
Is there a lens made to address that particular problem? What is a good lens for shooting buildings? |
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02/04/2008 02:24:06 AM · #2 |
| What about something like This? We have a few owners here, but no photos from it. |
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02/04/2008 02:39:15 AM · #3 |
Tilt-shift lenses are normally for changing the focus plane of the image, which can be useful for architecture photography, but won't necessarily resolve perspective problems.
What you want is a perspective control lens, which gives you control to adjust the convergence of verticals, and things like that. I don't know a lot about them, but they are expensive, and possibly even limited to medium format or large format cameras. They are also a lot of work to setup each shot, because there are many adjustments on the lens to get it all right. You won't be running around snapping nice shots - you'll need to set everything up on tripod and work for a while on each shot to setup the lens just right.
What's your biggest problem with distortion? Barrel distortion, or converging verticals? Both of these can be corrected in photoshop, or can also be addressed by adjusting your standpoint. Converging verticals will be bad if you are standing just outside the front door of the building, looking up at the front. Try standing further away, and maybe even looking for a higher viewpoint, and the verticals won't be so bad. Barrel distortion can also be present on the wide-end of most zooms, so again, standing further away, and zooming in a little will help. You could also look at getting a good wide-angle lens, maybe even a prime, which will give you a distortion free wide angle shot.
If none of this helps, post some more details about the exact problems you are having.
Message edited by author 2008-02-04 02:40:56. |
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02/04/2008 09:05:55 AM · #4 |
canon's 24 tilt shift for exteriors and 10-22 for interiors.
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02/04/2008 10:21:35 AM · #5 |
Nikon came out with a nice new PC Lens:
PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED
I haven't read any reviews of it, yet. |
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02/04/2008 10:31:33 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by surfdabbler:
Tilt-shift lenses are normally for changing the focus plane of the image, which can be useful for architecture photography, but won't necessarily resolve perspective problems. |
This is not correct. "Shift" is for accurate perspective, "tilt" is for changing the plane of focus; as fr as I know all modern PC (perspective correction) lenses for SLRs are actually tilt/shift lenses. The first examples of PC lenses were, in fact, only "shift" lenses, with no tilt, but I'm not sure anyone makes those anymore.
In any case, speaking to the OP, if you're serious about this then you DO need a tilt/shift lens, as wide a one as possible. While it's true that you can fix perspective issues up to a point in photoshop, you have to shoot around the planned correction, 'cuz when you keystone an image to fix converging verticals you are left with wedges of blank canvas on both sides that you have to crop to.
A good "substitute" for a lens with shift capabilities is to use an ultrawide from a little further back than you want to be, in vertical orientation. Then you crop out the whole bottom of the picture (your squared-up building will be at the top) and have a horizontal image without converging verticals.
If you shoot architecture regularly, you want a tripod with a head that has levels built in on 3 planes. If you square the head up to true vertical and horizontal, then every vertical in your image will be squared up as well. This is the fundamental "move" in architectural photography. Now, with a shift lens you would shift the lens until the top of your building moved into the frame. Lacking the shift lens, you need to step back a ways and use an ultrawide in vertical orientation, as I said above, then crop to horizontal.
R.
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02/04/2008 12:58:55 PM · #7 |
I will try those methods when I get a wider lens...which I currently don't have, and is probably part of the issue. It is mostly the verticals that I have trouble with. I am trying to find a location to take a great shot of our courthouse, but I end up with the perspective problems, or just a lousy angle for the building. What I really need is a cherry picker at my disposal :)
If anyone has the time and would like to do a tutorial on fixing perspective problems in PS (Elements would be wonderful!) I would certainly use it! I've played around with it, but always end up with chunks of the building that need "replaced" or cloned in, and with details it's hard to do that. I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly.
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02/04/2008 08:30:16 PM · #8 |
I don't have photoshop, but a quick web-search came up with a couple of pages that might be worth reading. The first one tells you where all the relevant menus are found, and the 2nd page shows an example of a corrected ultrawide image...
//akvis.com/en/graphic-tips/transformation-objects/transform-elements.php
//shutterbug.com/equipmentreviews/software_computers/1206photoshop/index1.html
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02/05/2008 03:56:07 AM · #9 |
Originally posted by jpochard:
If anyone has the time and would like to do a tutorial on fixing perspective problems in PS (Elements would be wonderful!) I would certainly use it! I've played around with it, but always end up with chunks of the building that need "replaced" or cloned in, and with details it's hard to do that. I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly. |
To a certain extent this is inevitable. Skewing or keystoning an image is going to move wedges of the image out of the rectangular frame or leave wedges of the BG in the frame. But one thing to consider is this: let's say I have taken a shot where the left edge verticals are square, and the right edge verticals are angling in from lower right to upper left. now, I can skew IN along the bottom edge, and leave myself a wedge in the lower right to cope with, or I can skew OUT along the upper edge and remove a wedge of image from the shot. In the first case, I have to crop to a narrower format to eliminate the wedge, and my image will also be skinnier than reality. In the second case i don't have to crop, but my image is more squat than reality. In both cases, I will have to do a second image adjustment with "scale" and drag to right edge left or right to adjust the overall proportions of the image.
Basically, when you KNOW you're gonna have to use PC in editing to square up verticals, you have to do a really loose framing of your subject to allow for this loss of image area during correction. You do this by moving back from your subject or by using a wider lens.
R.
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02/05/2008 09:19:49 AM · #10 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Originally posted by jpochard:
If anyone has the time and would like to do a tutorial on fixing perspective problems in PS (Elements would be wonderful!) I would certainly use it! I've played around with it, but always end up with chunks of the building that need "replaced" or cloned in, and with details it's hard to do that. I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly. |
To a certain extent this is inevitable. Skewing or keystoning an image is going to move wedges of the image out of the rectangular frame or leave wedges of the BG in the frame. But one thing to consider is this: let's say I have taken a shot where the left edge verticals are square, and the right edge verticals are angling in from lower right to upper left. now, I can skew IN along the bottom edge, and leave myself a wedge in the lower right to cope with, or I can skew OUT along the upper edge and remove a wedge of image from the shot. In the first case, I have to crop to a narrower format to eliminate the wedge, and my image will also be skinnier than reality. In the second case i don't have to crop, but my image is more squat than reality. In both cases, I will have to do a second image adjustment with "scale" and drag to right edge left or right to adjust the overall proportions of the image.
Basically, when you KNOW you're gonna have to use PC in editing to square up verticals, you have to do a really loose framing of your subject to allow for this loss of image area during correction. You do this by moving back from your subject or by using a wider lens.
R. |
Or use a view camera with a digital back for ultimate control.
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02/05/2008 11:30:48 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by jpochard:
I will try those methods when I get a wider lens...which I currently don't have, and is probably part of the issue. |
Judy,
Another possibility is to shoot a panorama to get a wider view with your existing lens. Here is an example from Pyramid Hill:
This was stitched from five images. You would probably need only two images to get the whole courthouse. Stitching the images together is not hard if you take them properly. I'd be willing to help if you came down to Cincinnati.
Here is another example of how to get a whole building into a picture:
//www.theparkside.org/
For this, I pasted three images together that were taken from different locations in front of the building. The center wing of the building is a standard rectangular shape. The center shot of the building, of course, shows only the front wall. I added shots taken quite a way down the street from both the left and the right so that you can see both side walls of the center wing. It is an impossible image but I think it conveys the "feel" of the building better than any real image could.
--DanW |
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02/05/2008 05:19:05 PM · #12 |
| Nice job on the parkside image! That looks great. |
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02/05/2008 11:24:40 PM · #13 |
If you shoot a panorama, stitch it and use a spherical projection, you can recenter the image, crop out a rectangle and then change the projection to rectangular.
There's a nice example of this in a post in another forum, about six posts from the top of this thread //www.autopano.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=20710#p20710
edit-the post is about the inside of a building, you are interested in the outside, but I think its applicable, both are just the three dimensional variation of squaring a circle (would that be "cube-ing a sphere"?)
Message edited by author 2008-02-05 23:26:57. |
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02/05/2008 11:39:26 PM · #14 |
For my architecture entry (coming out of voting in 22 minutes), I actually climbed up into an alcove to get myself higher, allowing me to keep the lens flat compared to the direction I was facing and still get higher parts of the building than I could if I were on the ground, while still keeping verticals mostly vertical. Basically, I turned myself into a shift lens.
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