Either PE8 doesn't stitch or I can't figure it out. Would anyone be willing to stitch some photos together for me? I'm not even sure if they will be able to be stitched, but I would like to try. Please reply or PM me for details. Thanks in advance!
Did a Google search and discovered I have photostitch that came with Canon's bundled software. Unfortunately, I shot at 29mm on my 1.6 crop camera and the images can't be stitched. Looks like I'll have to shoot it again with a 50mm and be more careful with the angles. Problem is I'm shooting a dorm room door with railing 4 feet behind me so I can only back up so far. The images will be used for a friend's memorial on Friday. Thanks for the help.
no_surrender wrote:
Did a Google search and discovered I have photostitch that came with Canon's bundled software. Unfortunately, I shot at 29mm on my 1.6 crop camera and the images can't be stitched. Looks like I'll have to shoot it again with a 50mm and be more careful with the angles. Problem is I'm shooting a dorm room door with railing 4 feet behind me so I can only back up so far. The images will be used for a friend's memorial on Friday. Thanks for the help.
29mm focal length on a 1.6 FOVCF camera is equivalent to 48mm on a full frame camera, which makes it "normal perspective" focal length. I see no reason why such images cannot be stitched. If there is some guideline saying you must use a longer focal length then that probably only applies to full frame cameras, and is only because there is a fair bit if distortion near the edges and corners of wide angle images. If the software actually prevents it then it must be crappy software.
WA lenses are not well suited for stitched images because of anastigmatic correction. That's the name for the stretching seen on the long dimension of images. As the root of the word implies the root cause is astigmatism that occurs with any simple dual convex lens, like the one in the eye. That's why the eye is ball shaped. If flat like a camera sensor our field of vision would only be sharp in the center. When you suffer from astigmatism in your eye sight it's because the shape of the eye isn't round and in focus on the edges.
Complex lenses use concave "correcting" elements to eliminate the astigmatism that would otherwise occur on a flat film plane rendering the edges out of focus (front focused). But that correction stretches the image. It's noticed only on WA lens because they are much more difficult (and expensive) to correct.
So next time you plan to stitch use a nifty 50mm and make more exposures. If stitching a panorama shoot in portrait mode which puts any distortion on the top and bottom not the overlapping edges. Also you need to be aware of other optical properties such as the nodal point (where the image inverts as it passes through the aperture of the lens) and use pano head that will rotate your camera around the nodal point of the lens, not the tripod attachment point on the bottom of the body.
A long folcal length lens will produce higher resolution final stitched image then a wide angle lens. With good software any focal length can be used. In all cases you need good overlap.
Alan321 wrote:
29mm focal length on a 1.6 FOVCF camera is equivalent to 48mm on a full frame camera, which makes it "normal perspective" focal length. I see no reason why such images cannot be stitched. If there is some guideline saying you must use a longer focal length then that probably only applies to full frame cameras, and is only because there is a fair bit if distortion near the edges and corners of wide angle images. If the software actually prevents it then it must be crappy software.
- Alan
28-40mm on the 17-40 is supposed to yield non-distorted images. It may have just been the angle in which I took them. The program that wouldn't stitch them was Canon's Photostitch. I downloaded a free trial version of CS5 and got much better results, but still wasn't able to produce what I'm looking for. I'm going to re-shoot it tomorrow afternoon with my 50 f/1.8.
cgardner wrote:
WA lenses are not well suited for stitched images because of anastigmatic correction. That's the name for the stretching seen on the long dimension of images. As the root of the word implies the root cause is astigmatism that occurs with any simple dual convex lens, like the one in the eye. That's why the eye is ball shaped. If flat like a camera sensor our field of vision would only be sharp in the center. When you suffer from astigmatism in your eye sight it's because the shape of the eye isn't round and in focus on the edges.
Complex lenses use concave "correcting" elements to eliminate the astigmatism that would otherwise occur on a flat film plane rendering the edges out of focus (front focused). But that correction stretches the image. It's noticed only on WA lens because they are much more difficult (and expensive) to correct.
So next time you plan to stitch use a nifty 50mm and make more exposures. If stitching a panorama shoot in portrait mode which puts any distortion on the top and bottom not the overlapping edges. Also you need to be aware of other optical properties such as the nodal point (where the image inverts as it passes through the aperture of the lens) and use pano head that will rotate your camera around the nodal point of the lens, not the tripod attachment point on the bottom of the body....Show more →
Thanks Chuck for the detailed explanation. I used the WA because my distance to subject is <4 ft. I tried shooting with a tele from across the street, but the railing is in the way and a huge tree branch. I plan on shooting again tomorrow, Lord willing that everything is still there, with my nifty fifty on a tripod. I don't know any other way to do it besides place the camera on the tripod and move the entire set-up left to right and up and down. I may even shoot it twice, with the 17-40 at 40mm after using the nifty fifty. I don't have a nodal rail or anything like that and even if I did it wouldn't be useful because of how close I'm shooting from.
One thing I am concerned about though is light and exposure. If the exposure differs will it make the stitched image look off? Would it be beneficial to light the area and use HSS to dim the ambient to get a uniformly lit set of images? If so, how would you suggest I place my Speedlites? I won't get my SB's or third flash gun until Friday.
If you shooting indoors you need to use a high quality tripod and a panorama head so you can rotate the lens about its nodal point so there will be no parallax errors. All exposure should be identical manual everything including WB. Nothing should be change same focus, F stop, ISO, Shutter, etc.
If the dynamic range is very wide shoot several set of images and create a HDR Panorama. Some stitching software like Autopano Pro can create HDR Panoramas and support fisheye lenses. The use of a fisheye lens would greatly reduce the number of images needed with as few as 5 you can create seamless 360 degree spherical Panorama with three images a 360 with a hole top and bottom.
Using CS5 to stitch 717 images. It responded slower than I thought it would at first and accidentally directed it to stitch all 717 images. I shot the scene with my 50mm 1.8 a total of 239 times AEB at +/- 1 stop which equals 717. It processed the first 400-ish images at about 4 seconds each then slowed down to about 40 seconds each and has been running like this ever since. I thought it was eating up the memory on my computer, but then why can I still use LR3 and internet at normal speeds?
BTW-The windows task manager currently says physical memory: 88%, CPU Usage is low...lingering around 1-4% and CS5 has a window in the lower left corner indicating Doc: 46.8M/29.0G but not sure what that means. 47Mb layer with a total of 29 gigs between the 600+ images it has processed thus far to be stitched?
2: Set your camera to Aperture mode and take your pix. This permits the blender to do its job without sweating over the blown highs and black shadows.
3: Run ICE and drop your pix into the workspace.
You should get a decent final image, due to the closeness of your subject and no use of the nodal 'stuff' you will see some parallax errors. Clean up what you can and move on, the memorial is much more important than a perfect print!!
no_surrender wrote:
I don't know any other way to do it besides place the camera on the tripod and move the entire set-up left to right and up and down.
One thing I am concerned about though is light and exposure.
Kevin
This is why you are having trouble stiching it. You cannot move the whole rig. You must keep the camera in the same place and rotate it. If you use the 50 1.8, it is very short and probably can be used pretty well without a nodal slide as its nodal point is probably not to far off from the tripod turning axis.
Set the exposure with a manual shutter speed and manual aperture so it does not change from shot to shot.
Get Hugin. It is free (no cost) and Free (open source). It is now available as part of Google Code Base.
I use it and throw some very challenging huge panoramas at it. I've stitched from 10 mm to 400 mm. HDR, no problem. Multi-row, no problem. Multi-row HDR, no problem.
GOVA wrote:
+1. If there is something better, I don't want to know it. ICE works just great no matter what I throw at it.
I downloaded and used Microsoft ICE, but it still didn't stitch properly due to the method I used to shoot the scene. However, I must say ICE worked much MUCH faster than CS5.
no_surrender wrote:
I downloaded and used Microsoft ICE, but it still didn't stitch properly due to the method I used to shoot the scene. However, I must say ICE worked much MUCH faster than CS5.
I can make a program run as fast as you want if it doesn't have to work properly.
It might actually be easier to take a few images like the one above with a telephoto lens, one of the desired angle, one above and one below and clone out the guard rail with data from the above and below images. It would depend on the actual available angles but would be viable. A polarizer would help avoid having to deal with the guard rail's reflection as well.
crudely:
Daniel Moore wrote:
It might actually be easier to take a few images like the one above with a telephoto lens, one of the desired angle, one above and one below and clone out the guard rail with data from the above and below images. It would depend on the actual available angles but would be viable. A polarizer would help avoid having to deal with the guard rail's reflection as well.
crudely:
