Super Wide Angle Shots by Stitching...

[Guest .]

Hi All,

Jou might know situations when even 10mm lenses do not provide enough "wide angle" to capture a scene??? ....
Did you know that panorama tools can do more than just stiching horizontal panorama scenes??!

Let us have a look at the Grerman Reichstag Dome (BERLIN)... quite interesting architecture ... I think...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_building

Interesting enough .... Wikipedia does provide a pano shot of this dome.

I did it in a very different way!

Well, the SIGMA 10-20mm DC is the "shortest" wide angle lens available (except fisheyes ... which do not work with architecture!)

Anyway ... its focal length is too long even at 10mm to shoot the dome completely.

The only way to make it is to do two separate shots, which overlap a bit.

I did that freehanded.

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Next, I stiched both shots using ADOBE's Photomerge function (part of Photoshop CS3)

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Finally, I corrected perspective and distortion and did a sensible crop ...

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well, this way you can do wide-angles, which cannot be done optically. Another point is a considerable increase in resolution .... simply because you combine the pixels of more than one frame.


Some other examples ......

The Dome again (both frames @ 10mm)

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Then the artificial "wideangle" ......

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Finally an example I did in a dimly lit museum .... making use of the SIGMA 18-200mm DC OS (@18mm) using the OS freehanded.

This "artificial wideangle" is composed from 4! single 18mm frames. There is absolutely no chance to shoot the dino completely with optical measures.

Even the 10mm SIGMA lens did not manage the job there. The other thing was, that I had to use the OS-system ... otherwise I would have blurred the shot.

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See you with nice pictures

Klaus

 

[netzuser]

Hi Klaus,
thank you for the detailed briefing on your stiching-workflow
and the resulting pictures of corse.
Regards
Uwe

 

[foveonfan]

Thank you, Klaus. Very informative indeed.

The biggest stitch job I have done so far is 27 frames, but that was just a simple 360 degree panorama.

Sincere regards, Jim Roelofs

Discover the light of your journey.

 

[Guest .]

Hi all,

The latest stiching-softwares have improved a lot. The first tool, I made use of, was CANON's Photostich. Not bad ... but you had to work very precisely for good image results. Colours and exposure had to be exactly adjusted to each of the frames included. The other problem used to be that these early softwares made a number of smaller but visible mistakes attempting to correct the inevitable lens mistakes like vignetting or distortion.

What the modern tools now achieve is incredibly perfect. Indeed, even colour differences, different exposures and severe distortion are corrected automatically. Mistakes are rare and hardly even visible.
Thus, it is possible to do "lazy" work when shooting.
When in a hurry, you can do your shots freehanded and with automatic (so different) exposures.

Let me show you another amazing (artificial) wideangle-shot .... even more worth mentioning ... it is a 4-frame nightshot .....alle frames @18mm ... freehanded each, thanks to SIGMA's OS .... Shutter speeds were around 1/6s. .... stiched as a matrix using Photomerge.

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The result then .....

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A good pano-tool should be able to work frames which are arranged in a matrix ... not just in-line arrangements.

It is fun simply, to experiment along these lines.

See you with nice pictures

Klaus

 

[Steaphany]

Shooting 360 QTVR and Flash "immersion" panoramas was what prompted me to search out a DSLR and which culminated in my decision to go with the SD14.

A tool which facilitates the Panorama stiching process is a spherical tripod head. When properly configured to the camera, the camera can move continuously or by steps around the entrance pupal or nodal point of the lens, which eliminates incongruities caused by paralax. I have found that spherical tripod heads can be very expensive and of the lower cost models on the market, you do have to make sure that your camera and lenses will fit, handling both physical dimensions and weight.

Still on my "need to buy" list is the Nodal Ninje 5 which I have confirmed with the manufacturer is able to work with the SD14 with or with out the Power Grip PG-21:

http://nodalninja.com/

I have used PTAssembler and I'm planning on trying Pano2QTVR which can output QTVR files directly and with it's additional FlashPack it will output directly toAdobe Flash 8 files. Another sticher that I've looked at is PTgui. Here are their URL's:

http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm

http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2qtvr.php

http://www.ptgui.com/

Recently, I found another stiching program, AutoPano Pro, which has the ability to scan through a directory of photos, group together related images which comprise a panorama mosaic, compensate for variations in color balance, exposure, camera tilt, and automatically stitch images together. I will be adding this to my software tool set:

http://www.autopano.net/

For any who are interested, I have compiled a list of web sites which display interactive immersion panoramas. Ask, and I'll post the URL's.