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10/06/2012 12:40:00 PM · #1 |
Check out this blog. It's a technique I had never thought of, and I'm not sure I buy into it or not. I understand a diagonal is longer than a side, but I wonder how much you lose when you crop the sawtooth pattern off the top. Anyway, an interesting idea. Might be fun to try.
How to shoot an awesome panorama |
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10/06/2012 12:59:19 PM · #2 |
I'll have to do some more thinking about this one, but I can't see it as being any more than a *very* slight advantage over shooting in portrait, and in order to gain most of it, you'd have to overlap quite a bit horizontally, resulting in more seams. Not my idea of ideal. I'd rather shoot a second row.
ETA: Yep, as I thought there is no real advantage; you need tremendous overlap to avoid losing all the advantage to the "sawtooth." His example uses what must be 85% to 90% overlap (!). He could have shot an entire second and third row and still used less photos.
Message edited by author 2012-10-06 13:08:13. |
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10/06/2012 01:59:20 PM · #3 |
It's a lot of extra work for minimal benefit.
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10/06/2012 02:26:01 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by alohadave:
It's a lot of extra work for minimal benefit. |
Absolutely, the whole rotate before stitching seems like a lot of extra work with room for error — why not just shoot in portrait? Especially since (if shooting handheld) it's harder to maintain a consistent angle.
Most of the other hints in the article were pretty good though, especially the reminders to set the focus manually.
One *possible* advantage of shooting on the diagonal might be in the reproduction of fine lines -- I'm thinking there may be some improvement by either having (or not having) them follow the pixel array ... I haven't actually experimented with this though.
As far as the "sawtooth" edges, I think they could just stay -- there's plenty of information there ... I shoot a lot of handheld panoramics, and I'm starting to just leave the stitching irregularities in place, not pretending I'm perfect ... ;-)
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10/06/2012 03:04:20 PM · #5 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
One *possible* advantage of shooting on the diagonal might be in the reproduction of fine lines -- I'm thinking there may be some improvement by either having (or not having) them follow the pixel array ... I haven't actually experimented with this though. |
In his examples, with strong vertical and horizontal lines, yes, there's some (small) advantage to that. With less predictable edge directions, IMO no advantage.
Originally posted by GeneralE:
As far as the "sawtooth" edges, I think they could just stay -- there's plenty of information there ... I shoot a lot of handheld panoramics, and I'm starting to just leave the stitching irregularities in place, not pretending I'm perfect ... ;-) |
I used to get film processed at a long-gone local lab, and the owner had several "random panos" that he had framed and hung in the store. He intentionally changed angle, and he didn't always shoot horizontal rows (think shooting up a rise in the land). The arrangement of the shots was as much the "art" as the content. I have one such pano hanging at home that I shot on 35mm film, printed to 4x6s, laid together to "stitch" and mounted to "float" about 1/8" over a mat background. Then matted the resulting work and framed. Actually, it's of the CA coastline south of San Francisco, and includes the Bixby bridge. |
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10/06/2012 03:28:58 PM · #6 |
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10/06/2012 04:56:49 PM · #7 |
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10/06/2012 05:37:37 PM · #8 |
So, what's mathematically interesting is that, with the camera tipped at 33.7° from portrait orientation so that the diagonal of the sensor is vertical, and with 25% overlap, you get 97% of the vertical coverage that you'd get by shooting in portrait. So no real advantage at all. At 50% overlap, you'd actually get about a 25% increase in vertical coverage. But at the cost of additional shots.
My take-away here is if you often shoot with as much as 50% overlap, you might consider the diagonal method, although I'd only do this on a tripod. I *never* shoot with that much overlap, even shooting hand-held. 25-30% is about where I like to be. On-tripod, I'll go as low as 20%. |
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10/06/2012 08:06:39 PM · #9 |
Good stuff. 25% though is an interesting amount. It's not insignificant, especially if his goal was to use a more natural focal length. For a sawtooth sky one could use content aware fill pretty easily to give you even more space.
Going to the Ducks versus Huskies tonight and maybe I'll try it on a handheld. The problem is things are moving so the extra frames can cause problems. Were you guys aware that CS5 doesn't necessarily put a seam between every frame? It seems to be able to take large chunks from individual shots and then fill in around them with the other images. I was surprised how irregular and curved the seams looked when you had the program show them to you. |
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10/06/2012 08:13:08 PM · #10 |
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Bixby Creek Bridge from same trip, I believe...  GeneralE, Isaac, and I were driving around in the Denali... |
You bet ... though a big part of the adventure was turning around in the Denali ...
PS: We may miss you this time out :-(
Our current plan is to drive up to Wahington during Thanksgiving week. |
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10/06/2012 10:38:57 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Were you guys aware that CS5 doesn't necessarily put a seam between every frame? It seems to be able to take large chunks from individual shots and then fill in around them with the other images. I was surprised how irregular and curved the seams looked when you had the program show them to you. |
No, actually. In fact I skipped CS5 altogether. I had CS4, with which I wasn't too impressed for panorama generation. I always got much better results with PTGUI. I will have to try CS6 to see how it does. Given my propensity to not have a lot of excess overlap, anythign I use is going to result in relatively predictable seam locations. |
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10/08/2012 09:28:52 PM · #12 |
| After the weekend I decided the diagonal idea isn't really worth pursuiting. First, it's difficult on handheld to keep the camera at a similar angle. That cuts into the effective extra length you get. Second, it takes a fair amount of extra work to level the images. In the end, the regular panorama worked just as we'll if not better. |
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10/08/2012 11:19:26 PM · #13 |
I wonder what happens if you take one of those new cameras which automatically creates a pano as you hold the shutter and sweep the camera around if you hold it on a slant (or in portrait) ...
Message edited by author 2012-10-08 23:19:59. |
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