Panoramic Photography - Melbourne Photographic Society

PANORAMIC
PHOTOGRAPHY
4/17/2015
Paul Cooper
April 2015
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INTRODUCTION
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A wander through Panoramic Photography
What is it
What options do we have
Step by Step digital approach
Troubleshooting
Pushing the boundaries further
Applying what we have learnt
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WHAT IS PANORAMIC PHOTOGRAPHY
 Number of definitions are out there
 Images that are wider than your field of view
 ( Typically about 40 degrees )
 Typically images with the aspect ratio of 3:1 or
greater
 Can be vertical or horizontal
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CAPTURING PANORAMIC FORMATS
 Many Ways of Producing Panoramic Images
 Analogue Photography
 Fuji GX617 & Hasselblad Xpan II
 Rotational Cameras
 Digital Cameras
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Camera Phones
Panoramic Compacts
Cropped Digital Images
Merged Multiple Images
 Multiple Printed Images
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CAMERA PHONE & TABLETS
 Apple & Samsung (amongst others) have added Panoramic Images
to their smart phone cameras
 Easy to use, even I can master it !
 Produce’s small sized images & some strange effects
 Does not need too much of an investment in technology other than
a smart phone
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PANORAMIC COMPACTS
 There are several compact cameras that have panoramic
technology built into them.
 They are often marketed as Sweep Panoramic or 3D
panoramic Cameras
 Come with supporting firmware or software
 Most major manufacturers have these in their portfolio
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Panasonic
Sony
Fujifilm
Nikon
You can always use compacts to create panoramas, if you have
manual controls
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CROPPED DIGITAL IMAGES
 With the advances of digital sensors it is possible to create
panoramic images from a single digital image using editing
tools
 Simple approach accessible to us all
 Works best from full frame images
 A good quality wide angle lens is your friend here
 Correct for curvature !
 If printing or projecting beware of cropping too tight, you will
potentially loose quality when printed.
 Use of bicubic smoother in P/S will help
 Can go up to about 30” print if full width crop
 You will need to do some additional work to enter these into a
competition to convert to standard canvas size
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MERGE MULTIPLE IMAGES
 Use this approach to create the highest quality panoramic
shoots
 You can make the image as wide or deep as you like
 Can deliver very high quality images
 Needs a structured approach and workflow to work
 Needs planning to get the best images
 Will focus our discussion here today and in particular on using
this for outdoor photography
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HOW DOES PHOTO-MERGING WORK ?
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Overlap
 Merges together a number of individual images to create a
single larger panoramic image
 They have to overlap to work , 25% to 40% is recommended
 Aesthetically they have to be shot in the same light conditions
 We use software to merge the images together
 I will use Adobe Elements todays, as it is common to many of us
 Could also use Lightroom or Photoshop ( CS3 onwards)
 Other products are available
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POSSIBLE IMAGE LAYOUTS
Landscape format field of view at 50mm = 40 degrees , with 25% overlap reduces to 30 degrees
360 degrees = 12 Images
http://www.nikonians.org/reviews?alias=fov-tables
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PLANNING
 To get the best quality images for the panoramic landscapes
you need to research & plan
 Identify where the best images are to be found
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Online
Books & magazines
Friends
Other peoples pictures
 When you have found your target vista, imagine how the
image will look in your picture,
 Where to shoot from
 Lighting
 Weather conditions
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CHASING THE LIGHT
 There are a number of tools that can be used to find when the
light you are looking should be there
 Sun Compass
 Online Tools
 The Photographers Ephemeris (TPE)
 Free on PC
 Very low cost app
 Easy to use
 The Weather forecast
 BBC
 Met Office
 Metcheck…….
 Maps
 OS
 How do you get to the location
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EQUIPMENT
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Digital SLR, CSC or Compact with manual controls
Stable tripod with good quality head
A standard or telephoto lens
Photographic 3D spirit level
Cable release
Optional
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Levelling Base
Nodal Slide
Panoramic Head
Panoramic frame
Couple of bright pebbles
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LOGISTICS
 Choose where you are going to take your picture from
 Recce the location if possible before hand
 Or find the tripod holes in the dark
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What are the logistics of getting there from your home base.
What time do you need to arrive for the best light
Can you get there or back in low light conditions
Can you assemble your kit in the gloom
Don’t forget the image in your mind
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SETTING UP – DOES & DON'TS
 Pick out the image that you want to shoot
 Ensure the Tripod Base is level first and then the head so you
are shooting perfectly level
 You cant fix this easily in the adobe tools without compromise
 Understand the boundaries left and right
 Use your frame if you have one
 Use your stones as optical queues
 Beware of zoom ranges on your lens that have distortion
 Leave enough time to reach the location
 Make sure you have your gear you need
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WHY IS LEVEL SO IMPORTANT !
Perfect Scenario
Handheld Shooting
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Not Level on Tripod
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PREPARING TO SHOOT
 Assembled you camera on the tripod and got every thing level
 Composed your image
 Know where the left and right edges of the shot will be
 You now need to work out the following settings across the image
 Exposure
 White Balance
 Focus
 Take some test shots, and work out what the best exposure and
white balance will be.
 If shooting a 360 degrees remember somewhere the image is
probably going to be facing the sun.
 Some bits will inevitably be under and over exposed when you
average the exposure over a wide panorama – live with it
 Panorama, don’t forget the rule of thirds still applies, just on a bit
of a wider scale.
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CAPTURING THE IMAGE
 Outdoors, on a tripod for panoramas with 24-70 full frame I
normally use as a starter
 ISO 200, 50mm ,F11 , Aperture Priority, WB: Daylight or Cloudy, RAW
Focus: near infinity, unless something near needs to be in focus
 Now set the camera to manual and dial in the manual settings
 Go to the left hand side of the Panorama
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Shoot your shot, check the histogram. Look OK, Adjust ?
Pan the camera right, remember overlap
Shoot
Pan the camera right, remember overlap, shoot……
 Move systematically and shoot the rest of the shots
 Remember manual settings, so shoot quickly, but don’t rush
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CHECK THE IMAGE
 What are you looking for
when you check the image
 Check the histogram
 Check that straight lines
( Water, buildings and posts )
are horizontal and vertical as
they are in real life
 Polarisers can sometimes
really stuff the sky as you
change the angle with the
light source. Small
panorama’s are normally
fine, big ones be wary,
circular one, don’t try.
http://media.digitalcameraworld.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/123/2013/06/Histogram_photography_cheat_sheet.jpg
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WHY ALL THE MANUAL STUFF ?
 You can not easily edit individual images and then merge
them together after the event.
 The only thing you may want to do, its to remove human
impact such as poles, posts, people etc.
 The dif ferent settings on each image can remove the impact
of the panorama
 Your finished work will looks like a David Hockney collage if
you try to edit individual pictures
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A BAD JOIN !
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PARALLAX ERROR & NODAL POINTS
 These can be potential issues if you are shooting architecture ,
townscapes etc.
 Parallax error s occur when you rotate the camera between frames,
and the rotation point is away from the plane of the sensor
 This leads to a slight misalignment when you stitch the images
together
 The wider field of view in the lens, the more pronounced can be.
 It rarely impacts landscape shots if you don’t use ver y wide angle
lenses in landscape orientation.
 If you want to be precise you use a special head / bracket to ensure
that the camera rotates exactly around its optical centre
(sometimes referred to as a nodal point)
 How to select and use tools for this see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ds1xa1JVrQ
 For full details of how to fix see http://3dpanorama.co.uk/faq/how -tofix-parallax
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DOWNLOAD THE IMAGES
 Download your images as normal
 However experience tells me that an additional simple step
makes life a lot easier during processing
 Copy the images that relate to a single panorama to its own
sub folder.
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COFFEE
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CREATING THE PANORAMA IN SOFTWARE
 Look at the Cropped Wide Angle Shot
 Look at Photo merge in Adobe P/S Elements
 Very similar functionality in Lightroom and Photoshop
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SOFTWARE OPTIONS
 There are many products you can use for photo merging , not
just Adobe stuf f.
 These are the most popular
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There is not a lot of good freeware around
Panavue Image Assembler 3 Free, but unsupported
PTGui $80
Panoweaver 8 $299
Arcsoft Panorama Maker 6 $80
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CROPPED WIDE ANGLE SHOT
 Open the Image
 Select the Crop Tool
 Create a Custom Size that matches the panoramic format
 35 wide and 10 deep
 Crop the Image
 Save to another Image name
Follow the example in Argoed……429
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ADOBE ELEMENTS 11.0
 Open the editor
 Enhance
 Photomerge >
 Photomerge Panorama
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IMPORT THE FILES
Auto
 Use Folder
 Browse & Select
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B l e n d I m a g e s To g et h e r Ye s
V i g n et te Re m ova l ye s
OK
A n d w a i t f o r t h e r e s u l t s… … .
It is dependant on the number
o f i m a ge s , t h e s i z e a n d f o r m a t
& the processor on the
machine.
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PRACTICAL ISSUES
 This is the point when you see the results come together.
 If you have shot RAW on a large setting, with many images the
process may just be a tiny bit slow.
 Only once have I had Elements refuse to merge a big
panorama shoot ( 32 images at 36mp)
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SAVING THE FILE
 When the merge is completed and you are happy with it.
 Save the file as a PSD or Tiff format
 Don’t save as big RAW file, its huge
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Six Raw Images= 251 Mb
P/S PSD file of Merge = 1.12 Gb
Tiff File without Layers = 99mb , 5 minutes to load in Nik Color Efex 4 !
Cropped Jpeg from Tiff =77.5 mb
Projectable Image 1400px wide = 360kb
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TIDY THE IMAGE
 You can now apply any corrections that you need to the image.
 Use the normal tools in the elements
 Adjust tones, dodge & burn, what ever you want
 Get it to a smaller size or have lots of coffee breaks !
 Crop
 Image > Resize > Image Size, reduce longest side to half of what it is
 Just remember everything will be just a bit slower
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PRINTING THE IMAGE
 Panoramic images have their own challenges
 Finding someone to print the whopper images you may create
 Finding a way to mount them
 Costco printing can handle
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5 x 33 (1:6 & a bit)
8x 20.5 (1:2.5)
12 x 24 (1:2)
12 x 36 (1:3)
 It may be easier to mount onto Foam Core Board without
borders rather than creating long narrow mounts.
 You can use the Colin Prior style of approach
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WHAT CAN GO WRONG
 Leave Automatic settings on
 Collage Effect
 Either try to correct each image using batch update or reshoot the thing
 Exposure Wrong
 Use batch update
 Focus Wrong
 Your stuffed
 Zoom and change the optical length
 Try it and see what happens, sometime it corrects
 Forget to overlap the pictures
 Emm, now you have a problem. Assess if any overlap, if there is just a very small one,
try it and see
 Got cur vature of lens on images
 Straighten the images first, but don’t adjust anything else, or crop the pictures
 Kit not level
 Try it and see
 Shoot Handheld
 It often works, suck it and see
 Panorama is too big for the computer
 Easily happens. Reduce the file size to 50% small on each image. Don’t change
anything else and try again. Next time reduce the RAW file size to small if you can.
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FURTHER OPTIONS
 Planet Panoramas & Small Planets
 http://abduzeedo.com/reader-tutorial-making-little-planets
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PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES FURTHER
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SMALL PLANET INSTRUCTIONS
 http://abduzeedo.com/reader-tutorial-making-little-planets
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APPLYING WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNT
 Evening Workshop, 25 th June in the Peak District. If conditions
are right, we will go to Arbor Low Stone Circle, with a 360
panorama and Neolithic stone circle
 Evening Workshop, 9 th September , Ramshaw Rock. There are
some cracking panoramas available.
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