When I first started using a DSLR about a year and a half ago I thought that panormaic or mosaic photography might be something to have fun with and that is the reason I finally started getting back into doing some personal photography after 20 years of basicaly hanging up the fun part of photography... though I still can't give up the professional side as that still pays the bills. Being a scientific photographer I am pretty comfortable with the technical applications of films and print processing, but panoramic work on film and paper is almost not worth the effort... and in many cases not very practicle... period.

I have been compiling a lot of technical data on panohead and stitching over the past 9 months and it is still challenging to get every type of situation (lighting, subject matter and the time necessary to catch rapidly changing lighting conditions) covered. Anyone on the forum who is considering the NN3 can contact me for the numbers of several lenses and their entance pupil calibrations. I am still compiling the data and more focal length information will be forthcoming over the next few months.

This image is a pano/mosaic along Glen Leigh in Pennsylvania. It was taken with a NN3, K10, and a 31 LTD on a Manfrotto tripod and is composed of 15 seperate images.

Unfortunately, the benefits of shooting in pano format are largely rendered moot on the computer screen, but images like this can be blown up to tremndous size (this image is 90MB or so) and very detailed large prints at 300 DPI can be produced. In most cases you can see the veining of the leaves. Next Spring... learn... digital printing... yum That should take forever to perfect

Stephen

[daacon]

Great shot Stephen what software did you use ? I would love to see that blown up to wall size !

[SCGushue]

Great shot Stephen what software did you use ? I would love to see that blown up to wall size !

Dave,

Thanks!

The current pano software that I am using is PTGui. It's about a hundred bucks and seems to do the job very well and better than most. I have CS3, sitting in the box for the last 4 months or so, but have not felt compelled to load it (Lightroom either) to find out whether or not their horrible Photomerge has been improved at all since CS2.

Even without the pano head, PTGui does a good job stitching handheld sequencing, although, close up, there will undoubtedly be parallax () problems.

Stephen

[roentarre]

That silky flow of the waters is magnificent.

I tried to use ND filters in the recent waterfall trips. The colour did not turn out well and water was not silky enough. I dislike waterfalls with its top directly under the sun - making images so difficult to make a shot.

This is a great photo, Stephen

[weatherwise2]

I like the picture and the details. I have never taken pano so a few questions: How wide is the scene in the picture to take a pano?. How many pictures did you take for this width? If there is a lot of overlap on the pictures how does it differ from HDR where the pictures are merged based on exposure differences? Sorry for being naive but hopefully will learn.

[SCGushue]

That silky flow of the waters is magnificent.

I tried to use ND filters in the recent waterfall trips. The colour did not turn out well and water was not silky enough. I dislike waterfalls with its top directly under the sun - making images so difficult to make a shot.

This is a great photo, Stephen

Hi James,

And thanks for the comments. You are right about ND filters and the sun and a million other things that go wrong in what looks like straightforward imaging. The secret I guess (to me anyway) is just to keep going out and trying variations on a theme until it comes together.

The sunlight on a waterfall can be tackled with HDR or bracketing and selectively slipping in the bracketed image into the final pano like I did here. But I still have not had time to an indepth study of HDR. There are some really talented guys on the forum that I hope to get to share their secrets

Stephen

[SCGushue]

I like the picture and the details. I have never taken pano so a few questions: How wide is the scene in the picture to take a pano?. How many pictures did you take for this width? If there is a lot of overlap on the pictures how does it differ from HDR where the pictures are merged based on exposure differences? Sorry for being naive but hopefully will learn.

Weatherwise,

Scene width: This image could easily be taken with a 12mm or 16mm lens... so it is wide field.
Physically the scene is probably no wider than 70-80 feet. BUT () if you want really big images you can do the same scene on 15 seperate images to make a huge pano file that can make detailed prints the size of small wall.

How many Pictures. I think in this pano I used 15 seperate images. 3 rows of 5 horizontally rotated images with a 31mm lens. The camera is is shot (15 degree rotation between images for the 31LTD)horizontally for five images, then rotated up 15 degrees and rotated back for 5 images, the dropped 30 degrees down and panned again for five images. All fifteen images are then assembled in panoramic software.

Overlap: There is anywhere from 25 to 33% overlap on each image. There is no HDR involved in the final outcome. The pano software (PTGui here) does a very nice job of blending all the images and finding pivot points in each image.

Method: To do pano correctly, especially in a tight area like this, with very near forground and background, you really need to have a good panoramic head on a sturdy tripod.

I am glad to see your interest. I have been working on panos for about a year. In another year or so I hope to have arrived at where I want to be. Feel free to ask any questions that you might have. I am glad to share my year of study on this topic.

Stephen

[weatherwise2]

Thanks for the information. I think I will try this sometime this winter. there is an old estate I've wanted to get in a snow scene. May practice soon.