D800E full res brenizer quality

Pookeyhead

Pookeyhead

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David
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Off work.. bit bored. I took some shots of my knackered greenhouse at the end of my garden earlier to do some lens tests for someone in the equipment forum, and while I was about it, I took a Brenizer stitch just to see how much quality I could squeeze out of an image.

At 800 pixels, apart from the shallower depth of field there's not much difference between them, obviously.

Nikkor 70-300 set to 100mm @ f8 single shot from D800E
JZooE2B.jpg


Nikkor 70-300 set to 300mm @f8 with a 40 image stitch
tP1FLbt.jpg



Cropped into this area....
yEhZH2l.jpg


...results in this....
dkGTwHE.jpg


Pretty impressive. It's a D800E after all.

However... a 40 image stitch with the same lens set at 300mm.. Same crop....

Boom!
GC15bZN.jpg


Pretty incredible. It prints at 6 metres across with perfect sharpness and no aliasing.. LOL

The drawbacks? It took 15 minutes for PS to merge the files on a 6 core 4.7GHz machine with 32GB of RAM, and resulted in a 4GB 16bit TIFF :)

Still... it passed some time and was interesting.
 
An impressive result, definitely. Well worth the effort id say.
 
Very interesting I've stitched a few together before not anywhere near the same level only 2or 3 images but it's definitely a great way of doing things unfortunately with my sort of subjects , animals/wildlife I can't very often do it
 
No.. this would be static landscape only.. and only then when the limited DOF from a long lens wouldn't ruin anything. But for a view where everything is far enough away to not matter.. this would be killer.

I could take several brenizer sets at different focal points... stitch them all... then focus stack them all... LOL. I'd be focus stacking about 15 4GB images though, and it would take around 600 RAW files to produce.

It may be a project I'll try one day :)
 
Now point it at the moon. I need proof of the moon landings and nothing short of a footprint will do! :)
 
Even a 3 or 4 image pan of an equivalent area covered by a 35mm lens, give a massive boot to picture detail. And is quite doable on a live scene. It is perhaps why mosaics are popular with stitcher users. Most modern stitcher programs can even cope with camera offset, and hand helds.
 
Pookeyhead said:
No.. this would be static landscape only.. and only then when the limited DOF from a long lens wouldn't ruin anything. But for a view where everything is far enough away to not matter.. this would be killer.

I could take several brenizer sets at different focal points... stitch them all... then focus stack them all... LOL. I'd be focus stacking about 15 4GB images though, and it would take around 600 RAW files to produce.

It may be a project I'll try one day :)
Click to expand...

Nah - set it as a technical exercise!
 
rofl!

Maybe a project to be completed over the Easter break?!
 
Very impressive...Although I'm not sure I'd want a 6m picture of a greenhouse on my wall ;) (that should probably read walls) :)
 
I'm going to try it with a decent subject soon. Ideally I need 64GB of RAM. It absolutely bring the computer to it's knees.
 
Oi!.. stop dissing my greenhouse :)
 
Didn't see them... will have another look. The image I posted was 28,000 x 28,000 approx.... so around 780 MP give or take.
 
Now we're talking!
 
Nikon_Nick said:
Now THAT is detailed!
Click to expand...
What is equally impressive is that he writes the software to do it as well.
PTAssembler, But he has written code to handle even larger files for his own use.
 
I've done a couple of Brenizers recently with varying degrees of success. I found Photoshop's stitching tool to be pretty poor; it takes ages and misses out a lot of frames. If any of you are Mac users then PanoEdit is by far better in my view. It takes a fraction of the time and gives you less errors (visible seams or missed frames etc). I'm not sure if it's still available as it wasn't in the Mac App store when I last looked, but if you can find it it's worth a shot (or 40 :p )
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
What is equally impressive is that he writes the software to do it as well.
PTAssembler, But he has written code to handle even larger files for his own use.
Click to expand...


Kind of redundant now. He did a lot of that stuff a long time ago. Some of those images are 2004 or earlier... individual film scans etc.

Photoshop's Photomerge can do the same job now, and do it extremely well.

No idea why Carl is having trouble with it Works flawlessly for me.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Kind of redundant now. He did a lot of that stuff a long time ago. Some of those images are 2004 or earlier... individual film scans etc.

Photoshop's Photomerge can do the same job now, and do it extremely well.

No idea why Carl is having trouble with it Works flawlessly for me.
Click to expand...

Photomerge can do a little of what PtAssembler can do but never as well. He is still doing a lot of that stuff and increasing its capabilities.
I downloaded the latest version around Xmas time. I also use his Tufuze pro.
Though PTAssempler has Fusion, Both Focus and exposure built in which is very useful.
The problem with Photoshop is that you can not select your own control points, automatically mask to remove duplicate objects or parts of objects, choose a wide range of projections or Straighten individual verticals and horizons Nor compensate for camera position. or effectively move seams. In fact it is not designed for serious Pan work.
In many respects PTGui is even more popular as the Gui is rather easier to understand. Though it is more expensive and updates are not free as In PTAssembler.

These demonstrate some of those features on a set of hand held shots taken on an Fuji X10 last year.
You will note that as the bowlers were constantly moving I took a couple of central shots and select the best areas from each. I chose a rectiperspective projection so that the buildings did not come out curved. I also corrected a couple of verticals. What took a couple of minutes in PTAssembler would have been a nightmare in photoshop.

I also used the photometric controls so that the Images matched each other edge to edge in the final output, which could have been in a wide range of file formats including masked PSD's But in this case was a merged tiff.

Was it necessary to do it this way..? perhaps not for such a simple shot, but as a camera test and demonstration it was by far the quickest way to get this result.
The Program will also use all the Cores you have, and all the available memory so is very fast. ( you can choose how much/many of each)

Could students use it? The computer literate ones should have no problem. The real problem is understand WHY you need to do certain things to get the image you want... It is best to have them in mind before you start. But it soon becomes second nature. I am in my 80th year so it can't be that difficult to learn.





 
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Pookeyhead said:
Kind of redundant now. He did a lot of that stuff a long time ago. Some of those images are 2004 or earlier... individual film scans etc.

Photoshop's Photomerge can do the same job now, and do it extremely well.

No idea why Carl is having trouble with it Works flawlessly for me.
Click to expand...


Hardly redundant, that particular Gallery is devoted to his early large pans and mosaics, he was the first person to publish a Gigapixel shot in 2003/4
At that time There was no file type that could contain that size, so he had to code his own.
All of his recent work is seen through his http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/ site.

Max Lyons never worked with film, his interest in Digital Photography and composites started at the same time.
He developed his Codes based on that of the mathematician Helmut Dursch. who invented "Panorama Tools"
Although his Gui can still work with some of the original "panorama tools", He has now written and incorporated all his own more advanced tools. capable of working in 64 bit and with very large files. The limit is still set by the file type chosen, as no one had thought it would ever be necessary to contain Gigapixel sizes as photographic image files...
 
Ulfric M Douglas said:
I have to say : stiching a load of f8 frames is just called stitching.
Click to expand...

I agree... As Max Lyons work shows, people have been doing this way before Brenizer. I used to do this with 120 film to get the same quality as 5x4 around 20 years ago.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
Hardly redundant,.
Click to expand...

I've never had Photomerge deliver anything but perfect montages every time. PTAssembler would be redundant for me. If it ever starts letting me down I'll have a look, but as it stands I just load 'em up and let it take care of it for me. The simpler the post processes are the better.


[edit]

BTW... I use a panoramic head to do this stuff, so technically I don't really need any software at all, so that's probably why Photomerge never lets me down.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
I've never had Photomerge deliver anything but perfect montages every time. PTAssembler would be redundant for me. If it ever starts letting me down I'll have a look, but as it stands I just load 'em up and let it take care of it for me. The simpler the post processes are the better.


[edit]

BTW... I use a panoramic head to do this stuff, so technically I don't really need any software at all, so that's probably why Photomerge never lets me down.
Click to expand...

As long as you are happy..................
However photomerge could not have got the radial lines straight as in the bowls shot, they would all have been curved one way or another. it would also have been difficult to mask and choose the bowlers, with out distortions.
Photomerge, merges, very simply and rather slowly, but has few options or projections. Its blender selects seams around objects to disguise errors. but it chooses very well when it can. You can choose from spherical, cylindrical ,rectilinear and plano projections . Photomerge does many of the things PTA does but is limited in its options by the GNU General Public License. "pano tools" code given by Helmut Dursh which control the basic principals of stitching mathematics.

I have a couple of Nodal Ninja heads but rarely need to use them. 90% of the time I will get a perfect stitch first time, with the "Automatic" option, from a hand held with out any manual settings. These days I only use a pan head if there are close foreground objects. but even the grass in the above shots was not a problem without.

It is impossible to do an undistorted stitch with out software.
Stitching is not the Joining of the image. It is the projection of the image on to a section of a sphere so that they will, after optimising, overlap perfectly. Then constructing a projection of that spherical image on to a flat surface. ( this takes software to do) This is done in a single Mathematics process so that the pixels are only moved once.

That is why it is so very difficult to join a set of bromide prints from film.

If you take a set of digital images and try to physically join them you will always fail, the edges will never match up, even with a perfect lens. it can only be done if they are pasted on to a spherical surface.
 
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Terrywoodenpic said:
It is impossible to do an undistorted stitch with out software.
If you take a set of digital images and try to physically join them you will always fail, the edges will never match up, even with a perfect lens. it can only be done if they are pasted on to a spherical surface.
Click to expand...


Depends how close the objects are, and how far across your field of vision they go. If close, you need to map them into a curve if they cross your entire field of vision. However, you're wrong about nothing lining up without software. For simple panoramics I do it all the time. With landscapes where nothing is close I literally just line them up in layers.

The fact is, I've never yet found the need for anything more than photomerge, even when there's people in the frames. Photomerge leaves you with all layers intact with layer masks ready to edit... simply a matter of painting someone in or out, with either black or white brush, just like any other layer mask. It's ridiculously easy to do.
 
"Joiners" have been around of longer than computers and carefully shot can be successfully collated into larger images. Whichever software you use to do it in the digital age, as long as it works, who cares what label is on the DVD's box?
 
Gary Coyle said:
Great detail, try looking at this guys stitched work with a 5D and 24-105mm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Diliff

Incredible detail at full res
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Nice work....
David Iliff seems to make full use of the projections available in PTGui as there is very little near-point distortion or curved out ends of straight lines in evidence. In fact he avoids most of the distortions which spoil less sophisticated programs.
PTGui which he uses for stitching, Is probably the best around and certainly the most used in the Pano world. Some one did a survey of Panographers and PTGui had a large majority of serious users, Just as Nodal Ninja brackets supplied about two thirds of users of pan brackets.
They have recently introduced a smaller spherical unit to suit the new small system cameras

Nodal ninja were chosen by NASA for space use and by Leica as a part of the Leica geosystem for laser survey work. Results of the survey can be projected on to the 360x180 spherical pans.
 
Gary Coyle said:
Are you 2 getting crossed wires here, you simply cannot stitch without software, Photoshop/Photomerge IS software
Click to expand...


I think we're talking about specific software who's purpose is to create panoramic or stitches from multiple images. My argument is that taken correctly, you can literally joining images up without too much issue.

Terrywoodenpic said:
Nice work....
David Iliff seems to make full use of the projections available in PTGui as there is very little near-point distortion or curved out ends of straight lines in evidence. In fact he avoids most of the distortions which spoil less sophisticated programs.
PTGui which he uses for stitching, Is probably the best around and certainly the most used in the Pano world. Some one did a survey of Panographers and PTGui had a large majority of serious users, Just as Nodal Ninja brackets supplied about two thirds of users of pan brackets.
They have recently introduced a smaller spherical unit to suit the new small system cameras

Nodal ninja were chosen by NASA for space use and by Leica as a part of the Leica geosystem for laser survey work. Results of the survey can be projected on to the 360x180 spherical pans.
Click to expand...


I still manage without them though. Why try and convince me to use something that until now, I've simply not needed? I'm not saying they're not great pieces of software, I'm just saying that I've never actually had a need to use anything but PS's photomerge. Photomerge leaves everything in layers with layer masks, which can be edited simply. I've just never had a need to use anything more if I take the source images correctly.
 
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