Panoramic photography without panoramic head

[Compaq]

I visited a view point yesterday, and I think I got some decent shots. However, I'd like to include more of the view. My 11-16 wasn't wide enough to get it all, so I'd like to do a panorama with my 50/1.8. But I don't own a panoramic head for my tripod. So how will I be able to swivel the camera around the entrance pupil then? Should I just try to rotate around the middle of the camera as it is?

Nothing in the frame would be very close to the sensor, it'll all be around 40 metres away. So parallax error probably wouldn't be huge anyway. But I'd like to make it as good as possible. Decent panoramic heads cost a lot, it seems. What would be better. Buy a cheap one, or make one myself?

 

[480sparky]

I have yet to use any special pano heads and I haven't had any problems.

 

[Compaq]

Which focal length are you using for your panos? And are you often having things in the foreground?

 

[snowbear]

I've only done a few panos but I'll frame up a shot and pick a landmark in the viewfinder that is just inside the right edge (I pan from left to right) - about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way over. When I frame up the next shot, I'll put that landmark just inside the left side of the viewfinder. Sometimes I have trouble keeping the horizon level, but I can close enough that leveling in post is easy. I shot one of the DC Cherry Blossoms using a bridge abutment as a tripod.

 

[tirediron]

Don't worry about the pano head and entrance-pupil/nodal point issue. Unless you're doing relatively close panos, or stacking in two dimensions, I doubt you will notice it. I've shot pano with everything from ~18 - 200+ and as long as they were of reasonably distant subjects, never had a problem. Get your camera level, use 25-30% frame overlap, and you'll be fine.

 

[Compaq]

But what if I want to include more than what a leveled tripod can give me? I will be pointing the camera slightly down, around 30 degress perhaps. What I mean is having two, or three, "strips" of photos. Three "stories", each of maybe 5-7 pictures. And everything can't be leveled, or else I can't get what I'm after.

 

[tirediron]

Shoot vertically. That should give you lots of 'top to bottom' coverage! I've got an inexpensive Manfrotto macro rail that I use to offset the camera when I absolutely have to, but I think shooting in vertical should give you lots of coverage, especially with that UWA.

 

[480sparky]

I use a 10mm and shoot in portrait orientation. I move the camera 10° per frame. Rarely have any issues using a standard Manfotto head.

etc........ gives me:

 

[Garbz]

The principles are quite simple. If you don't rotate your lens around the nodal point you end up with parallax error. That is objects that are in the foreground suddenly appear to be in a different spot than objects located in the background. The other issue is lens distortion, because even if you correct for parallax with the correct tripod if you use many of the lenses available you'll end up with barrel or pincushion distortion. Both of these mean your images won't line up.

How field relevant this is depends on your software and the extent of the problems. I show you an example below. In this case I said "Nodal point? I spit on your nodal point!!!" I actually rotated my body shooting handheld. The nodal point was about 25cm behind where it is, and not the 3-6cm a tripod will put you out by.

Here's the result:

Ok I lied. That's not the result it's an interim stack. It shows just how bad the parallax error was in this case. Notice the background is completely unaffected, but the poser in the foreground was made somewhat less pretty?

Well after simply hitting "render" on the software. I get the following result: (I lied again, this result was after a bit of colour correction in photoshop too):

What is actually scary is that this was a 100% perfect stitch when I was done. I did not find a single stitch mark. A few weeks later I shot something from a long way away with zero parallax and there were some frames I simply could not correct for some reason and ended up manually aligning things in Photoshop, which is also an option if your rendering software can't figure out who's supposed to be where in the frame.

 

[Edsport]

I've never used a tripod for a pano. Just take the shots of 3 stories and you should be good to go...

 

[Compaq]

snip

Great reply, but I'm not sure what the moral is :lmao:

 

[Buckster]

snip

Great reply, but I'm not sure what the moral is :lmao:

The moral of the story, and of the rest of the replies you've gotten so far, is that today's stitching software is so good, you probably don't need a panoramic head, nor will you miss it.

 

[480sparky]

Great reply, but I'm not sure what the moral is :lmao:

Yummy mushrooms.

 

[Skaperen]

The moral is ... just go for it. Just make a reasonable effort to keep the pupil at about the same point. Only close in panos, like a room, matter that much.

I did this one on a regular 3D head tripod. The first pass at stitching in AutoPano Pro didn't come out well lining up the pews. After tweaking the stack to reduce the overlap (cropped each image narrower) it came out decent. It's not perfect, but you have to look for the stitching flaws to find them. They do not detract from the image although the lighting kind of does. The altar shots are rather hot. But I did use a manual exposure all the way around so the boundaries would have the same lighting.

Vance Memorial Presbyterian Church Sanctuary Panorama

So go for it! Do consider posting the whole pano stack somewhere if your stitch has problems, and maybe someone else will give it a try.

 

[coastalconn]

For easy panos you have to try Microsoft ICE (goggle it). It's free, easy and automatic. I never use a tripod. I shot this in IR. I set AE-L and swung around and took 9 pictures in under a minute. The ICE program stitched it all together. You just choose your crop and save it. Then process it however you would like...