Panoramas - Discusson on How - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM

10/17/2005 12:29:30 AM · #1

I made my first attempt at a decent panorama today... using the tripod and the leveling gear that I have. I set the tripod up, and it was on uneven ground, so I leveled it as well as I could using the bubble level on the tripod. I then put the camera on the tripod with my BUBBLE LEVEL installed on the hot shoe. I then adjusted the head to make the camera as level as possible on top of the tripod. This photo is the unedited stitch (Panavue) and it appears that my leveling was fairly close but not perfect, obviously.

This particular panorama has one stitch problem that I can't resolve (about 2/3 of the way into the left/right image) and I do plan to shoot it again.

I'm looking for someone who does a lot of panoramas to tell me if there is a good rule of thumb for how many degrees of pan to use for each consecutive photo in a series? I would like to try my best to have each image the same degree of pan from the last. My tripod head has pan locking and the pan is marked in 5 degree increments, so I should be able to keep them almost identical...

Rikki

Canon EOS-20D

10/17/2005 12:44:18 AM · #2

i do quite a bit of panoramas and like yourself use the bubble level. i typically overlap images at least 10%. I would also suggest not using your CPL as this greatly emphasises the gradiations in the sky and if not done correctly causes what you see in your image and thus making it harder to stitch.

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

10/17/2005 12:47:17 AM · #3

Originally posted by rikki11:

I noticed that too... my next effort will not include the polarizer. It's also difficult to decided where to meter a shot like this. I tried to choose a neutral area and I did shoot all the photos (13 verticals) at the same exposure.

Neil

Fujifilm X-T30

10/17/2005 12:58:57 AM · #4

The best advice I can give to anyone serious about panoramas is to get Panorama Factory. There's a trial version so you can try it. It's really good about automatically merging and adjusting the exposures to match. Further, all the automatic features, which work very well, can be tweaked and overrided.

Panorama might be able to fix the issue of the polarizer, but yes, it's better not to use it.

rayz1

Nikon D300

Nikon NIKKOR AF-S DX VR 55-200 f4-5.6 G IF-ED

10/17/2005 01:30:15 AM · #5

Originally posted by nshapiro:

John, I do a fair amount of panoramas. I overlap between 15 and 20%.

Here's a really big one (small on DPC, but the description is there, and take the link to the bigger image). This one has some distortion because I used my 10-22 at 10mm, and that's harder to stitch.

The best advice I can give to anyone serious about panoramas is to get Panorama Factory. There's a trial version so you can try it. It's really good about automatically merging and adjusting the exposures to match. Further, all the automatic features, which work very well, can be tweaked and overrided.

Panorama might be able to fix the issue of the polarizer, but yes, it's better not to use it.

Definitely, I have used the program quite a bit and it is awesome in what it does, if the pictures you give it are reasonably on the same focal plane the job it does in stitching them together has to be seen to be believed. I know of two local Pro photographers who use it because of its ability

NstiG8tr

Canon EOS-5D Mark IV

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM

10/17/2005 01:38:43 AM · #6

Panoweaver from Easypano is good to as well as Arcsofts PanoramaMaker. Panoweaver has a trial version to use but I think it's high dollar to buy. Arcsofts is good to and also not that expensive. I've used both for panos and also Microsofts Digital Image Pro.
Like the other guys , I overlap at least 10% if not more.
Pick out good landmarks to overlap.
I'ver never used a tripod yet for a pano but I will some day when I have my tripod with me to use.
Maybe I should plan a pano shoot and take it.

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

10/17/2005 01:58:11 AM · #7

My Canon S1 IS came with software to stich the photos, and a Panoramic Mode which locks the exposure, and also shows part of the previously-captured frame in the viewfinder to assist in lining up the next shot. It also flags and numbers those frames separately.

I think in the Canon manual they had a suggestion for degrees of rotation between shots, but I can't remember exactly -- something like 20-30 degrees, or maybe it's completely dependent on the focal length in use; perhaps it wasa 20% overlap ...

I don't know what Canon packages with their dSLR cameras.

Message edited by author 2005-10-17 01:58:50.

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

10/17/2005 11:27:22 AM · #8

I tried Panorama Factory when I was evaluating stitching software and Panavue won in my mind. I'm sure they are probably equal, one being better in some aspects than the other possibly. My 10d and 20d both came with stitching software and it just doesn't work very well.

Neil

Fujifilm X-T30

10/17/2005 12:22:54 PM · #9

Originally posted by jmsetzler:

How long ago? PanoramaFactory v3 had a lot of features added!

Anyway, it's free to try, other than the time expended, but since most functions work automatically, it's not time consuming.

10/17/2005 12:26:27 PM · #10

Originally posted by nshapiro:

How long ago? PanoramaFactory v3 had a lot of features added!

I got Panavue back in April...

10/17/2005 12:38:03 PM · #11

I shoot most of my panos hand-held, mainly because when I'm on business I've rarely had an opportunity to haul a tripod along. Here are the things I've found that ensure good stitches:
- Use of a low-distortion lens (does not exhibit significant barrel distortion)
- Rotation about the nodal point, at least approximately. When doing hand-held, just concentrate on rotating about the camera axis, not the axis of your body. If there are areas in the scene that are much closer than others, this becomes much more important
- Overlap 15-20%, use a feature near the right edge to gauge for the next shot (assume shootng L to R)
- Shoot in manual mode, hold aperture (and thus DoF) constant and modify shutter speed if exposure needs adjustment between frames
- Test exposure in brightest and dimmest area. If 2 stops or more different, change exposure across pano in 1/2 or 1/3-stop steps
- Shoot RAW, and process all exposures using the same conversion settings.
- When stitching, output the file to a multi-layered format such as multi-layer TIFF or PSD file. This allows modification of the overlap areas later.
- Use the center image as the exposure and color "standard" and work out in both directions making adjustments to match the more central image. This thends to minimize the largest exposure change required

With regard to software, the only program that has yielded results satisfactory to me has been (the freeware program) PanoTools. I use the PTGUI interface, which is not free. There is the hugin interface, that is free, but I have no experience with it. By most accounts it is still the most capable stitcher out there, and has consistently yielded superior results for me. Once you have PanoTools installed, you can also install the PTLENS plug-in (which relies on the PanoTools DLL) to correct barrel distortion prior to stitching.
There are, I'm sure, a bunch of other things I'm forgetting at the moment. I think this covers most of it, though.

sabphoto

Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+

10/17/2005 12:45:05 PM · #12

Not sure on specific panoramic softwares (the one that came with my Olympus is nice but I like more control) but I do like you did and try to take a reading across the entire image and set my aperature and such to a middle of the road setting. I usually overlap about 10%, of course the more the better cause you have more room to blend and fix.

I open the first one in Paint Shop Pro (Adobe will do to), convert the background to transparent (or just create a new doc with transparent background and paste them in) and enlarge canvas to the size of all images added together. Height stays the same of course.

Copy paste the next image in on a new layer and line it up the best I can using partial transparency so I can see through it some. Continue this till all are in.

I usually save as PSP at this time so I don't mess up my original.

Then I play with the blending on each layer to help hide the lines, any lines left over I remove with very soft edge eraser and low opacity or clone out. If needed you can adjust brightness and such per level but I try to stay from this.

After all done I save again as PSP so I have a close to original then I flatten layers and crop, then save as whatever I need.

I don't have any examples readily available (sorry)

Good luck, that lighting is sometimes the worst of it all.

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

10/17/2005 12:52:32 PM · #13

Originally posted by kirbic:

There are, I'm sure, a bunch of other things I'm forgetting at the moment. I think this covers most of it, though.

You "forgot" to make an active link to get PanoTools : )

Thanks for the tip about axis of rotation on hand-held sequences -- I'm pretty sure I've been using my body instead of the camera plane ... : (

The pano mode in the Canon is REALLY handy for hand-helds, as you can see the previous photo in the viewfinder and line up the next shot pretty accurately.

10/19/2005 09:27:26 AM · #14

I just saw over on DPReview that Panorama Factory v 4.0 has been released. It now saves to multi-layer format, and adds some other very nice functionality. I tried it out a couple years ago and really liked the interface, it just fell sort on features.
With this revision, it looks like it is becoming a very capable stitcher, for a reasonable price.

Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS for Canon

10/23/2005 04:10:02 PM · #15

Ok.. I bought panorama factory 4.0 and I'm impressed. I went out today and redid this photo as well. I ditched the polarizer and included rock in the foreground throughout the image. This is 15 vertical images panned over approximately 195 degrees.

magnus

Canon EOS-30D

10/23/2005 04:51:15 PM · #16

I admit I'm a bit envous of you Panorama Factory users, but not enough to switch to windows :-)

So, any recommendations on Mac compatible stitchers? In particular, anyone tried RealViz's Stitcher Express? The best I've found so far is the Canon tool I got with my camera (better than Photoshop's built in tool, and far easier to use than Pano Tools), but it's far from perfect.

Thanks kirbic, that's a very useful list. The only things I'd add (only relevant when shooting without tripod), is to be careful to keep the horizon level in each shot, and to frame each shot assuming that some of the top and bottom will be lost in stitching. Keeping this in mind, I find that shooting 3 to 5 frame panos really doesn't require a tripod.

Chiqui

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II

Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro

10/23/2005 05:24:12 PM · #17

Panorama Factory is amazing. Granted I used to use PhotoStitch before but still, I was impressed with PF. Here are some recent examples:

//june.hawkins.nu/thumbnails.php?album=3

June

Message edited by author 2005-10-23 17:25:28.

10/23/2005 05:52:01 PM · #18

Magnus,
I'd recommend checking out the Sourceforge PanoTools page. PanoTools can be run on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms. There are at least two graphical front ends that work on Mac.
Overall, PanoTools is still THE stitcher, but it is a bit more difficult to learn. I'd certainly try giving it a go.

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

10/23/2005 05:59:49 PM · #19

That is freeware? I want to experiment with how long it takes to do something on my Mac running OS 8.6 : )

10/23/2005 06:25:19 PM · #20

Originally posted by GeneralE:

That is freeware? I want to experiment with how long it takes to do something on my Mac running OS 8.6 : )

Yep, PanoTools is freeware, except that some of the graphical front ends are not free. There is at least one good free front end these days though, so yes, it can be installed and run for free, an amazing thing.
I don't know if it can be run on Pre-OS-X Mac operating systems, I'd actually guess not, since the core of OS-X is much different than pre-OS-X