First attempt at a pano

[Ron Evers]

It is cold out & a few flakes of snow in the air so I set up between two balcony posts & shot six frames of the back yard using a Vivitar 24/2.8 set to f5.6. I used PhotoStitch to merge the pics into a pano. Two of the seams show up badly & I wonder why.

Here is my set-up, I used macro focusing rails to get the lens front element as close as possible over the point of rotation. It is a little out front however.

Comments/recommendations welcome.

 

[I am Ivar]

Hi Ron!

It looks like there was too much contrast in the sky/trees between some of the tiles. What you could try and do is to get in there and manually adjust the images to have the same sky/tree colours/brightness and try stitching them again

Good luck!

cheers,
Ivar

 

[Ron Evers]

Thanks Ivar. I actually tried to do as you suggested because the third frame was much darker than the rest. I do not understand why, as all six frames were shot in a time of less than a minute & there was no change in the light with the heavy overcast.

 

[creisinger]

I've done some panos before and was quite happy with the results but I do have a couple of questions/comments about yours:

1. Why didn't you shoot at f9 or f11? Maybe your lens has the "sweet" spot at f5.6 but with a higher aperture you get more DOF which in this particular case would have been fine. Of course I can't see the details at the resolution you posted but if you are going to downsize it to 3000 pixels on the long side even the f11 would look crisp sharp (even if it's not the sweet spot and to capture more detail in the trees).

2. I never ran into a stitching/overlay problem using the regular mount plate for my tripod. I like your rig but I think in your case it's overkill. Your subjects are so far away that it doesn't matter if your panning perfectly on the axis of the pivot point.

In my experience it would only be necessary to use your set-up if you are making a pano of something where you have subjects also very close to the camera. There you have to have a pan exactly on the pivot point to prevent alignment issues.

3. If you set the lens to f5.6 so that the camera had no control over aperture and your exposure time, ISO and WB were manual and never changed it's likely that the stichting software screwed up making the images brighter/darker. I'm using PTGui for panoramas and love the software. I get very little brightness issues.

4. I think a second row of shots showing the tree tops and more sky would have made the panorama perfect. Just a personal thing. But otherwise it looks good.

 

[D-B-J]

i like the idea, but the colors and brightness seem off.

 

[Ron Evers]

I've done some panos before and was quite happy with the results but I do have a couple of questions/comments about yours:

1. Why didn't you shoot at f9 or f11? Maybe your lens has the "sweet" spot at f5.6 but with a higher aperture you get more DOF which in this particular case would have been fine. Of course I can't see the details at the resolution you posted but if you are going to downsize it to 3000 pixels on the long side even the f11 would look crisp sharp (even if it's not the sweet spot and to capture more detail in the trees).

I assume 5.6 is the sweet spot as it is highlighted in another colour on the lens & that is why I used it. I get your point but must say all was in focus with the focus at infinity.

2. I never ran into a stitching/overlay problem using the regular mount plate for my tripod. I like your rig but I think in your case it's overkill. Your subjects are so far away that it doesn't matter if your panning perfectly on the axis of the pivot point.

In my experience it would only be necessary to use your set-up if you are making a pano of something where you have subjects also very close to the camera. There you have to have a pan exactly on the pivot point to prevent alignment issues.

Good point.

3. If you set the lens to f5.6 so that the camera had no control over aperture and your exposure time, ISO and WB were manual and never changed it's likely that the stichting software screwed up making the images brighter/darker. I'm using PTGui for panoramas and love the software. I get very little brightness issues.

This lens is manual aperture & focus on a 2x crop body; the ISO was set to 200 & WB to cloudy. The frames were shot in raw & all but the dark frame were processed exactly the same in Lightroom 2. I could understand the dark frame seams showing if I did not get a good match with the others so possibly as you say the problem comes from the stitching software.

4. I think a second row of shots showing the tree tops and more sky would have made the panorama perfect. Just a personal thing. But otherwise it looks good.

Not sure I understand this comment, there is only a single row of six shots.

Thanks for your input, it gives me food for thought.

 

[fokker]

At the risk of stating the obvious, were you in manual mode? If you were in Av or Tv or P mode then the camera may have changed shutter speeds on the dark frame. Otherwise I can think of no possible reason why there would be a dark frame in the bunch.

 

[Ron Evers]

At the risk of stating the obvious, were you in manual mode? If you were in Av or Tv or P mode then the camera may have changed shutter speeds on the dark frame. Otherwise I can think of no possible reason why there would be a dark frame in the bunch.

I was in Av mode where I am 90% of the time. Thinking about this further, I note that the dark frame has the most sky & my metering is centre weighted. The camera may well have dropped the exposure level due to the sky being dominant. (Insert light bulb here.) This is one example where a fixed exposure in manual may have been the best option.

 

[fokker]

At the risk of stating the obvious, were you in manual mode? If you were in Av or Tv or P mode then the camera may have changed shutter speeds on the dark frame. Otherwise I can think of no possible reason why there would be a dark frame in the bunch.

I was in Av mode where I am 90% of the time. Thinking about this further, I note that the dark frame has the most sky & my metering is centre weighted. The camera may well have dropped the exposure level due to the sky being dominant. (Insert light bulb here.) This is one example where a fixed exposure in manual may have been the best option.

Yeah, manual is the only way to shoot a pano. Armed with this knowledge you may now post version 2.

 

[reznap]

Ron likes to show off his nice backyard I think.

+1 on manual, like fokker said.

 

[Vinny]

I believe the suggestion for a second row is another series of 6 shots with the tree tops and sky showing.

 

[Ron Evers]

Ron likes to show off his nice backyard I think.

+1 on manual, like fokker said.

Well Paul, I am somewhat proud of it. You see, when we bought the property in 1973 it was a bald headed hill, not a single tree. I designed a house to fit into the landscape & started planting things to encourage wildlife back to this barren piece of land. Originally the only wildlife was Groundhogs & Killdeers & now we have too numerous wildlife to enumerate in a post. Our front yard is likened by many folk to be like a park. Our house is 350' back from the road to near where the land starts to drop off quickly. It is a life's dream coming true. Sorry part is, we are now getting too old to keep it all up.

 

[Dallmeyer]

Hey Ron you made all that beautifully scene a reality from scratch? That's fantastic!

 

[gpardo64]

Nice Work Ron. Both the backyard and the pics.

 

[creisinger]

Ron,
regarding my previous #4.:

I don't know if you just started with panoramic stitching of if you have done this for years already but with the current software that's out there and I'm sure also with the software that you used you can stitch an (almost) infinite number of images together (until you run out of memory).

I know you "only" took 6 shots from left to right but my suggestion was to add another 6 shots above the ones you took also overlapping the previous ones to get more of the sky. Maybe that's clearer now.

I assumed that all settings on your camera were locked. I'm not familiar with your camera body so I can't tell you what Av mode does but all settings need to be on manual. What you did with the lens, setting it to manual aperture is absolutely the best thing to do because the blades will always stay in the same position instead of using a "cheap" lens that won't allow manual aperture. In that case the blades will NEVER open precisely the same amount in each shot and you will have brightness variations which is really something you want to avoid.

Nice property but I feel for you when it comes to "gardening"