Panoramic Heads

[Andysnap]

I was mulling, and indeed musing, earlier about shooting panos with my Rolleiflex. Now it might be that I've got this wrong but if I'm taking a 3 or 4 shot pano from a fixed point, looking across a valley say, I take the first shot and then swivel round a little to take the next and so on. This means that when I squash them together in PS the result is basically bow shaped as I will be further from the scene at the start and end of the sequence (does that make sense?) So if I had an opposite curved panoramic head that would fit both to a tripod and the camera with a slot that allowed the camera to be slid along the head between each shot would that counteract the bow? Or is all this just the tired idiocy of a foolish old man.... don't answer this bit.

 

[simon ess]

I never knew there was so much to it.

http://www.panoramic-photo-guide.com/panoramic-heads-to-make-panoramic-photography.html

 

[Andysnap]

I never knew there was so much to it.

http://www.panoramic-photo-guide.com/panoramic-heads-to-make-panoramic-photography.html

I know, waaay too complicated. I just thought it might be a reasonably easy thing to design and possible make (3D printing, acrylic?) a lightweight head that would give me a bit more pixelness to deal with rather than losing chunks from the end.

 

[ChrisR]

Hang on... most "scenes" that are used for panoramas are basically at infinity, aren't they? So, roughly the same distance whichever direction?

BTW I haven't tried reading the link from Simon...

 

[Andysnap]

Hang on... most "scenes" that are used for panoramas are basically at infinity, aren't they? So, roughly the same distance whichever direction?

BTW I haven't tried reading the link from Simon...

Yes, yes Chris you are quite correct, but I meant after you have stitched them in post. Like this.

Untitled_Panorama1-Test by Andy, on Flickr

I wondered if there was a way of avoiding at least some of the white bits.

 

[Harlequin565]

Take more photos to cover your area. If (for example) this was 3 stitched, then try 7 or 8. That's an easy digital solution and as a rule of thumb I try and use three vertical shots to make a square. Film though is going to be more tricky as you're using more film.

Rotating the nodal point using a contraption like what Simon linked to is also supposed to improve things. I've got an el-cheapo Chinese import one that you're welcome to borrow and have a play with if you like (if you're still up Northwich way and happy to collect). Too much of a faff for me to a) carry and b) mess about setting up. But as a filmy you're used to faff.

 

[srichards]

Or take a pano on with a tripod on wheels and go across rather than pivot? Much more tricky for a vertical pano as you'd need a ladder or a rocket pack...

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

The curve come from the common cylindrical projection used. Ideally the camera should be rotated around the enterance pupil of the lens, whivh on a rollie is about the center of the lens mount. Though for landscape pans with little foreground this is quite unimportant. Most stitching software like that in photoshop is quite good enough.

Most of the gross curves you see in pans is caused by the geometry of the situation.
If you stand in the typical domestic street looking straight across the road and take a pan starting from the extreme left and take the necessary shots to reach the far right.the size of a house at the extremes compared to the one straight accross from you will be very different.. and will form a massive curve. There is nothing at all you can do about this.
The better option is to make the closest point one side or the other, and pan in only in one direction away from it. There will of course still be a curve but it will be acceptable.
With more sophisticated stitching software there are other options in the projections available. In this case one called rectiperspective makes all radiating lines straight. And would likely give a more natural look.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Or take a pano on with a tripod on wheels and go across rather than pivot? Much more tricky for a vertical pano as you'd need a ladder or a rocket pack...

That actually makes a very dificult problem for all stitchers, as those that have tried it have found. It only works on a flat 2D sbject with no depth, like a long hoarding.
If you try it on a row of houses you will find that the sides of the images are in proile, and impossible to match up in the stitch.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I do no think many photographers know how stitching programs work.
First they locate matching contoll points in all the images.
These are used for two things, first in combination with the focal length and dimensions of the sensor or film, to replot the image onto the surface of a sphere.
Then the images are "slid" into position so that all the control points coincide. Creating an overlapping but continuous image.
This image is then replotted onto a flat surface using the chosen projection.
The joins are then blended and any differences in tonal values equalised.
Finally the finished image is printed out or saved.
It is impossible to make an accurate panorama with out errors, if the image is not plotted on to a sphere first. This process of plotting is called stitching, stitching is not the process of joining the images up.

 

[excalibur2]

While not an expert I've done quite a few panos and the most important thing is to keep the camera in the same position as you swivel i.e. don't swing up and down for each shot. I'm doing a seven to eight shot one of my back garden, 35mm camera is vertical on a tripod...the problem is I can take 4 shots while most of the garden is in sunlight and have to wait till the sun moves round for the rest of the shots
I was showing my grandson what I was doing and he laughed and took out his mobile swung it around and did a 180 deg pano shot of the computer room in secs

 

[RaglanSurf]

I was mulling, and indeed musing, earlier about shooting panos with my Rolleiflex. Now it might be that I've got this wrong but if I'm taking a 3 or 4 shot pano from a fixed point, looking across a valley say, I take the first shot and then swivel round a little to take the next and so on. This means that when I squash them together in PS the result is basically bow shaped as I will be further from the scene at the start and end of the sequence (does that make sense?) So if I had an opposite curved panoramic head that would fit both to a tripod and the camera with a slot that allowed the camera to be slid along the head between each shot would that counteract the bow? Or is all this just the tired idiocy of a foolish old man.... don't answer this bit.

You know you can get a digital camera that will do it all for you?

 

[excalibur2]

You know you can get a digital camera that will do it all for you?

The best pic I saw with a digi was the guy took 24 shots for his pano....the fun is the same using film or digi, it's just using film costs a few pennies (cough) more.

 

[FruitFlakes]

Rollei actually make a panorama tripod head/attachment that allows you to rotate the camera around the nodal point.

 

[Andysnap]

You know you can get a digital camera that will do it all for you?

A what? Never heard of that, it'll never catch on.

Rollei actually make a panorama tripod head/attachment that allows you to rotate the camera around the nodal point.

I have actually got one and i have used it, it works to a degree but I often take the flex out to travel light and then I dont have a tripod.

 

[ChrisR]

Yes, yes Chris you are quite correct, but I meant after you have stitched them in post. Like this.

Untitled_Panorama1-Test by Andy, on Flickr

I wondered if there was a way of avoiding at least some of the white bits.

In that case, I don't think you're losing much by cropping. I think I've seen a solution somewhere that involved cloning bits of foreground to fill in.

But more alarming to me is the change in tone at the overlap point... not that the tone of one shot differs from the next, but that the joins really stand out in that view!

 

[Andysnap]

In that case, I don't think you're losing much by cropping. I think I've seen a solution somewhere that involved cloning bits of foreground to fill in.

But more alarming to me is the change in tone at the overlap point... not that the tone of one shot differs from the next, but that the joins really stand out in that view!

Just a quick and dirty attempt Chris, the finished product looks lots better. In this example you are correct it wont affect the shot with a crop, this was just the first group of shots I came across, but on other occasions you can struggle to keep all the important stuff in there after cropping.

As I said in the first post just an idle musing really, it isn't a major problem and I more often than not remember to account for the effect when I take the shots.

 

[ChrisR]

If you had taken 5 shots instead of 3 presumably the effect would be reduced?

 

[realspeed]

I think there may be autofill somewhere in the edit suite

 

[Andysnap]

I think there may be autofill somewhere in the edit suite

There is but it doesnt always do a good job, in fact sometimes it does an atrocious job.

Now, once again a thread has wobbled off into a different area ie photoshop.
I really was asking if a curved panoramic head would counteract the effect above. I think Terry has answered some of the questions but I'm still unsure if it would work on a landscape pano.

 

[realspeed]

Tried using he distortion tool for the above, maybe from here work on pincushion effect correction

I have found when doing pano I make each frame the same distance from the camera, also using 1/3rd overlap on each frame helps

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

There is but it doesnt always do a good job, in fact sometimes it does an atrocious job.

Now, once again a thread has wobbled off into a different area ie photoshop.
I really was asking if a curved panoramic head would counteract the effect above. I think Terry has answered some of the questions but I'm still unsure if it would work on a landscape pano.

A curved head would be no help at all. It would almost certainly create additional parallax errors. As it is moving the entry point of the lens in an arc.

 

[Andysnap]

A curved head would be no help at all. It would almost certainly create additional parallax errors. As it is moving the entry point of the lens in an arc.

Thank you, a nice simple answer. My musings are now completed.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I

Tried using he distortion tool for the above, maybe from here work on pincushion effect correction

I have found when doing pano I make each frame the same distance from the camera, also using 1/3rd overlap on each frame helps

How can you make each frame the same distance from the camera? The frame is defined by an angle of an arc not a distance.
Provided the overlap is sufficient it makes no difference at all to the resulting panorama.
If you are using a fisheye lens, it is better to keep overlap to a minimum, with all the control points in a narrow band near the edge.
For a normal rectalinear lens it makes little difference.
Nor does it matter if the lens suffers from pincushion or barrel distortion as the software automatically corrects for this.

When taking hand helds and to avoid parallax problems, it is best to include the whole of close objects in their own frame, to avoid the possability of joins crossing through them, and making it difficult for the blender to do its work. In better stitching software like PTGui and PTAssembler a good over lap allows you to use masks to avoid difficulties and stitching errors.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I have added a short tutorial in another thread on how to make a basic masked panorama, and how to remove excess people and straighten verticals.
https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/how-to-make-a-basic-masked-panorama.658531/

 

[Teflon-Mike]

If you had taken 5 shots instead of 3 presumably the effect would be reduced?

\​

Nicked from my wide-side wander; that was I think a 24 section stitch, (Shot in portrait to maximize FoV on the vertical) to get a 180 Deg Pano; & the grey-canvas shows the stitching wobble; as you take more sections it does reduce; but that one would have taken a whole roll of 35mm for one picture!!

I would night-mare at the time it would take, then to scan that roll of film; and how many times the computer would lock up trying to process 24 mere 10MPix sections! As was ISTR I had to down-size the widgetal frames to about 1.5MPix a piece to give it a chance to actually complete the stitch!!

I have to say that the notion of trying to do this on film, let alone MF-Film, is a bit of an anathema to me; I cant see the possible advantages to make one even want to try. I had to down-size those stitch sections to a resolution barely as good as my first lens-less dgi-compact to keep the file-sizes practicable, whilst that and the digi-distortion of processing rather renders any IQ advantage rather redundant, to get an image that is significantly in the digital domain and constrained by the width of the screen.

Did have a mess with the digi-pact on a flash bracket on the tripod, to put the pivot in-front of behind the lens, and put those into a cylinder viewer, for fun; and have tried side-shifting, rather than swinging, to make some pans... stitching is a somewhat peculiar technique, I think, and interesting to note how perverse it is as far as tolerance on matching the sections; if you have enough sections and over-lap between them, then the accuracy of PoV doesn't seem t be all that critical; what seems more crucial is the subject, and having enough appropriate discontinuities in the scene for it to latch onto and match in over-lap, I think.

Useful to get a UWA angle of view from a normal or mild wide angle lens... at a pinch.... but the walk-around, comparing APS-C kit 18-55 to 8-16 UWA and Full-Round 180Deg Fish, sort of showed you probably really need at least five frames at 18mm shot portrait to get a similar FV horizontal and vertical to a UWA, and stretched that far, there's a curious sort of inverse fish effect, with a gross bow, on the horezontal, in the middle, that lessens towards the edges whilst the vertical remains pretty straight. To get to the same 180 Deg of a fish, you need that same 20-odd shots in the horezontal, and probably a dozen strips of them on the vertical to get full coverage, or you are making an elongated panorama.. and a LOT of processing time!

So, I am somewhat struggling to work out the intent behind the idea of doing it on film.... i'm not familiar with the Rollie, I thought it was an interchangeable lens TLR? Is it the lens restriction that's the prompt, or square format negs?

 

[Andysnap]

So, I am somewhat struggling to work out the intent behind the idea of doing it on film.... i'm not familiar with the Rollie, I thought it was an interchangeable lens TLR? Is it the lens restriction that's the prompt, or square format negs?

Nah, just fancied doing some panos and wondered if a different shaped head would work. I often stitch 2 or 3 squares together just because it makes me happy. Also, I really only shoot film now, digital is for wildlife only.

The Rollei isn't interchangeable, thats the Mamiya which I also own but weighs as much as an old Volkswagen Beetle.

 

[RaglanSurf]

Lots of cheap options if you fancy a go https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8...vtargid=kwd-1031846555&ref=pd_sl_7qier1ybih_b

 

[excalibur2]

\​

Nicked from my wide-side wander; that was I think a 24 section stitch, (Shot in portrait to maximize FoV on the vertical) to get a 180 Deg Pano; & the grey-canvas shows the stitching wobble; as you take more sections it does reduce; but that one would have taken a whole roll of 35mm for one picture!!

I would night-mare at the time it would take, then to scan that roll of film; and how many times the computer would lock up trying to process 24 mere 10MPix sections! As was ISTR I had to down-size the widgetal frames to about 1.5MPix a piece to give it a chance to actually complete the stitch!!

I have to say that the notion of trying to do this on film, let alone MF-Film, is a bit of an anathema to me; I cant see the possible advantages to make one even want to try. I had to down-size those stitch sections to a resolution barely as good as my first lens-less dgi-compact to keep the file-sizes practicable, whilst that and the digi-distortion of processing rather renders any IQ advantage rather redundant, to get an image that is significantly in the digital domain and constrained by the width of the screen.

Did have a mess with the digi-pact on a flash bracket on the tripod, to put the pivot in-front of behind the lens, and put those into a cylinder viewer, for fun; and have tried side-shifting, rather than swinging, to make some pans... stitching is a somewhat peculiar technique, I think, and interesting to note how perverse it is as far as tolerance on matching the sections; if you have enough sections and over-lap between them, then the accuracy of PoV doesn't seem t be all that critical; what seems more crucial is the subject, and having enough appropriate discontinuities in the scene for it to latch onto and match in over-lap, I think.

Useful to get a UWA angle of view from a normal or mild wide angle lens... at a pinch.... but the walk-around, comparing APS-C kit 18-55 to 8-16 UWA and Full-Round 180Deg Fish, sort of showed you probably really need at least five frames at 18mm shot portrait to get a similar FV horizontal and vertical to a UWA, and stretched that far, there's a curious sort of inverse fish effect, with a gross bow, on the horezontal, in the middle, that lessens towards the edges whilst the vertical remains pretty straight. To get to the same 180 Deg of a fish, you need that same 20-odd shots in the horezontal, and probably a dozen strips of them on the vertical to get full coverage, or you are making an elongated panorama.. and a LOT of processing time!

So, I am somewhat struggling to work out the intent behind the idea of doing it on film.... i'm not familiar with the Rollie, I thought it was an interchangeable lens TLR? Is it the lens restriction that's the prompt, or square format negs?

Every filmie should use a pano at times WHY? well how many times is you lens not wide enough for the subject, so all you need to do is a 2 shot pano (maybe three)..I've done this plenty of times BUT some results can be amusing esp with people as one, two shot pano in Ibiza of a crowd on a beach bar that I took, and though it was great until someone pointed out that one girl had a leg missing.
You don't have to do home scanning as the lab does it for you and all you need to do is use Photoshop (or whatever) and merge all the shots together..h'mm and hope you got the over lapping of each shot right Best result are taking the shots from horizontal moving down and so far have done a nine shot pano.......but would agree panos are best done with a digi as I found you waste a lot film even getting reasonable good at it......What I might try one day is a nine shot pano using the RB67, maybe a digi would be handy to test out the shot before using the RB.
Another good reason to do a pano Is:- the human eye is roughly the same as a 40mm lens and would pan a scene, so instead of using a 24mm lens where bits of the scene are tiny, using a 40mm lens everything is more the size the human eye would see in the final pano shot.

 

[Andysnap]

I quite often do panos on film and they are not that difficult, just need to make sure you have an overlap and that the exposure is even.

Coniston-Range-Pano by Andy, on Flickr

The-Struggle by Andy, on Flickr

Tenby-Harbour-Pano by Andy, on Flickr

 

[excalibur2]

I've yet to try a pano on a subject you can't get close to with a 135 or 200mm lens...anyone done this?

 

[Andysnap]

I've yet to try a pano on a subject you can't get close to with a 135 or 200mm lens...anyone done this?

Well the above were taken with the 75mm lens on my Rolleiflex, equivalent of 41mm on a 35mm camera.

 

[ChrisR]

This was a 5 shot panorama I took from the top of Catbells, of Newlands Valley after the TP meet. Pivot was the monopod, so not at all accurate, and still a very nice stitch (I think made by PS Elements but I'm not sure).

Newlands_Panorama1 by Chris R, on Flickr

Looks to me like the point of pivot is not necessarily all that critical!

Vista 400, Pentax MX.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

This was a 5 shot panorama I took from the top of Catbells, of Newlands Valley after the TP meet. Pivot was the monopod, so not at all accurate, and still a very nice stitch (I think made by PS Elements but I'm not sure).

Newlands_Panorama1 by Chris R, on Flickr

Looks to me like the point of pivot is not necessarily all that critical!

Vista 400, Pentax MX.

The pivot is not critical at all, if you are shooting distant objects. However close objects in the foreground do cause parallax problems, but less so if you can isolate them with a shot of their own, as it gives the stitcher a chance to avoid placing a seam through them. though some of the latest blenders do a marvellous job of avoiding parallax problems , Smart blend is one that you can use with a number of stitchers. http://wiki.panotools.org/SmartBlend

 

[Teflon-Mike]

Well how many times is you lens not wide enough for the subject.

Little bit of a motorway to Madness.... I spent a long time, chasing what always seemed to be lurking just beyond the limits of the frame.. and ended up caught by a fish! Lol.

When I gave in and bought DSLR, I bought the Sigma 4.5mm full-round-full-180-full-fish for that bit 'more' than I'd had with Panomar 12 on 35mm, and revalation that even accepting the crop-factor loosing a lot of it's fishiness, it wouldn't actually mount to digital on an adapter, due to the rear element protrusion. Intriguing shift; the full-fish proved just how incredibly demanding they are to use; and for 'wide' rather wasted, begging I bought the Siggy 8-16, to full-fill that hitherto uncharted UWA.. with those two in the bag, a-n-d I have to say, seldom on the camera, honest answer to how many times is my lens not wide enough for the subject, is err... not many!

Looking back at what I shot on film.... instantly thunked of my travels in India, and a trip up to Shimla, and looking up on the Himalayas.....

I really aught to burrow back into the binders and get round to making some decent scans of those negs.. however... on review!! Rather revealing how many of those HUGE landscapes I shot portrait like that! Emphasisng 'depth' rather than width, trying to capture some fore-ground interest, So while I craved wide, curious how seldom I ever used it, and how often, I used tighter framing to concentrate interest... Obviously a couple of shots of places like the red-fort or taj'mahal, I struggled a bit, but curiously didn't resort to the fish, which implies that I probably found the 'big-picture' cluttered with incidental features or lacked impact...

Another one, that also probably deserves a better scan; I found a faster "view-finder", in the form of a 1000cc motorbike, my best aid to 'framing', Lol! There's a funny back-story to this one; I'd just bought the bike, and booked a few days off work to get familiar with it before trying to tackle brumie rush-hour on it, so headed off on a 'follow-my-nose' tour, that took me South-West, when I spotted signs for Glastonbury; disappointing 'wide' shot of the Tor monument, when I clambered up the hill, sent me back to the bike to go find another hill to climb and get a better angle/perspective from, shooting it with a tele... un-zooming by zooming on a motorbike! Lol! But, spotted sign for Stone Henge, and had a 'daft' idea; "Oh, yeah, lets go there! Take a photo of the sun-set! But better not stay too long, Head-lamp on this bike doesn't seem much cop, really aught try get home before dark"

Again, zoomed with an engine to get a decent vantage, and shot with the 70-210, I think, as the sun set, and the dawn of realization, over that head-lamp 'problem'! Dohw!! Lol. Again shot portrait, and having only ever seen the place in post-card shots before I got there, and seen documentaries where they said emphatically "Oh yes, the ancient peoples were making a statement on the landscape" I was rather underwhelmed by how un-imposing the monument is IN the landscape, so that shot was, I think deliberately trying to de-emphasise it and over-load the context, lead the viewer to look and remark 'what's that'? rather than be presented with the cliche and tell ME what it is as they flick past, and actually be surprised when they are told or recognize the monument.

But, is to highlight the quirk; wide angle's are great for getting up close and personal, and brilliant in smaller spaces for opening them up, but for a big scene, I so often found that backing up and framing wide, or so often 'portrait' made for more photo than more real-estate in it.

Which is all bit of a tangent to the topic, I guess. But yes, no, err... almost always wished for more wide... BUT, a bit of a unicorn, searching for it, and when I had it or got even more, bit of a Narwhal tusk that wasn't 'quite' what I'd expected or hoped!

 

[ChrisR]

This was a 5 shot panorama I took from the top of Catbells, of Newlands Valley after the TP meet. Pivot was the monopod, so not at all accurate, and still a very nice stitch (I think made by PS Elements but I'm not sure).

Newlands_Panorama1 by Chris R, on Flickr

Looks to me like the point of pivot is not necessarily all that critical!

Vista 400, Pentax MX.

Two things, thinking of this topic in general (rather than panoramic heads in particular). First, it's hard to get a satisfying composition in a really wide panorama. Maybe if it gets printed large the detail available gives it interest. I don't know, never tried it. Which leads me to the second thing: does anyone here print wide panoramas? If so, how and where, and how about the framing?

The Newlands shot is cropped to 8759 × 1996 (from 8780 × 2136... crop was to remove the shadow of my head, it might have been better to try some content-aware healing?) which translates to 29.2" by 6.7" at 300 dpi, a 4.4:1 aspect ratio (originally 4.1:1). I think it would look weird printed at that size! I wondered whether a canvas would allow a taller print, but if it went up to 12" vertically it would be near;y 5 feet long!

 

[Andysnap]

Oh lordy! All those numbers....

The biggest pano I have printed is a 30'' by 10'' digital shot of about 16mp, I have no idea what the pixel size was but it looks lovely. It was printed by DS Colour labs.

 

[ChrisR]

Oh lordy! All those numbers....

The biggest pano I have printed is a 30'' by 10'' digital shot of about 16mp, I have no idea what the pixel size was but it looks lovely. It was printed by DS Colour labs.

Was that the "photographic printing" or the "large format"? (£4.50 vs about £17, I think) I'm assuming the latter is inkjet...

 

[Andysnap]

Was that the "photographic printing" or the "large format"? (£4.50 vs about £17, I think) I'm assuming the latter is inkjet...

Cant remember Chris it was a long time ago.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

This pan I took today in the town playing field, is three across and hand held. When I took it it was obvious that the foreground would cause parallax problems in the stitching... and it did... which i corrected with a simple distorted patch on the netting. (The netting was only four feet away, and is something I would normally avoid including) I shot it to demonstrate that even with people moving around and close objects pans are easily possible hand held)