Panorama: When should you use it?

[Forkie]

I use panaramas when the whole world won't fit in the frame, or I just want a really, really long photo.

 

[ann]

:thumbup: or when the photo is to long and tall.

I took an image in Cuba in Nov. of a mural painted on a very large hill? Large like 7 shots across with 4 high. A 4mm lens might cover it, but it would be the size of a peanut.

So i have to join the head scratching line

 

[EchoingWhisper]

I'm just telling people there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

 

[Alex_B]

I'm just telling people there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

But there is a point. I once needed to produce an image with a 6x1 aspect ratio and a minimum pixel count of 2000 vertically for large scale printing. There was no other way to achieve that without taking some portrait oriented images and stitching them together as you would need a sensor with 12000 pixels horizontally. .... Of course you would not really call this a panorama because the FOV even horizontally was not huge, but it is a valid way to achieve larger vertical resolution in such a situation.

 

[EchoingWhisper]

I'm just telling people there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

But there is a point. I once needed to produce an image with a 6x1 aspect ratio and a minimum pixel count of 2000 vertically for large scale printing. There was no other way to achieve that without taking some portrait oriented images and stitching them together as you would need a sensor with 12000 pixels horizontally. .... Of course you would not really call this a panorama because the FOV even horizontally was not huge, but it is a valid way to achieve larger vertical resolution in such a situation.

You could get more resolution from the file with a longer focal length but the effective resolution will not be as high. To get more depth of field due to using a longer focal length, you have to stop down. Stopping down increases diffraction and reduces resolution.

 

[Alex_B]

I'm just telling people there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

But there is a point. I once needed to produce an image with a 6x1 aspect ratio and a minimum pixel count of 2000 vertically for large scale printing. There was no other way to achieve that without taking some portrait oriented images and stitching them together as you would need a sensor with 12000 pixels horizontally. .... Of course you would not really call this a panorama because the FOV even horizontally was not huge, but it is a valid way to achieve larger vertical resolution in such a situation.

You could get more resolution from the file with a longer focal length but the effective resolution will not be as high. To get more depth of field due to using a longer focal length, you have to stop down. Stopping down increases diffraction and reduces resolution.

I am afraid I got a higher effective resolution - sorry to say so mate. ... While in principle you are right that stopping down increases diffraction, stopping by one or two stops will not be visible in this respect. For most of my panoramas f/8 will do, for those where I need large DOF someing below f/16 will do. Even the latter is hardly noticeable in terms of diffraction. The effects are still swallowed by limited sensor resolution.

 

[480sparky39 38]

I'm just telling people there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

But isn't that the whole concept behind GigaPans?

 

[molested_cow]

Wait, who asked?

 

[o hey tyler]

It's okay guys, clearly what EchoingWhisper says is 100% truth and there's no reason to disagree. He simply just is never wrong. DUH!

EW, can you post some Panorama's that you've done?

 

[DiskoJoe]

It doesn't affect the DOF one by one, but it affects it like how a larger sensor could have less depth of field at the same f stop. In conclusion, don't use panorama unless you have a crappy zoom lens or a lens that isn't wide enough.

So if someone used a zeiss 50mm for a pano then they would be doing it wrong in your opinion? And all this time I thought you just used it to make pictures of scenes that are wider then your focal length.

 

[DiskoJoe]

I'm just telling people there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

But there is a point. I once needed to produce an image with a 6x1 aspect ratio and a minimum pixel count of 2000 vertically for large scale printing. There was no other way to achieve that without taking some portrait oriented images and stitching them together as you would need a sensor with 12000 pixels horizontally. .... Of course you would not really call this a panorama because the FOV even horizontally was not huge, but it is a valid way to achieve larger vertical resolution in such a situation.

You could get more resolution from the file with a longer focal length but the effective resolution will not be as high. To get more depth of field due to using a longer focal length, you have to stop down. Stopping down increases diffraction and reduces resolution.

Now youre just have no idea what you are talking about. Seriously you have NO idea.

 

[tirediron]

I'm just telling people that I think there's no real point to shoot at a longer focal length to get more resolution.

Added the missing words to your sentence.

 

[480sparky39 38]

I'm still scratching my head about this. Seems EW is saying using a long lens and taking 1,000 images to get better resolution is more than negated by needing to use a small aperture for increased DOF.

If using a 200mm set at f/22 means taking 1,000 images to stitch together to create something along the lines of a GigaPan, I don't see how shooting at a smaller aperture than the lens' 'sweet spot' is going to send the final results to the Recycle Bin.

 

[thereyougo!2]

I've done panorama's with a medium format 120mm macro lens on the Pentax 645D. File size is huge, but so is the detail. I could at a push have used my Canon with the Sigma 12 - 24 on it or the 14mm L lens and then cropped it to get the effect of a pano, but what would be the point? I would lose resolution and detail and have lots of distortion to boot. Yes the file takes up a lot of space on a hard disc (8 GB to be precise) but the detail is there, and if I decide to print this big it will look good (original uploaded size here: All sizes | Koblenz panaroma | Flickr - Photo Sharing! ) :


Koblenz panaroma by singingsnapper, on Flickr

 

[davidchurch]

I just grabbed a number and got in line...