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Edgars Kalnins Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #1 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format I have not seen much activity in pano thread recently, but remember there were some efforts to create pictures similar to LF through photo stitching. I wonder if results have been satisfactory (on my monitor many of them look fantastic) and what is the best technique and gear for that. Can I get away with using a decent monorail, a modern LF lens and a mirorless attached at the back? I know from reading that the deep mirror-box of DSLR caused vignetting with wider lenses. Would I be able to use movements as well? I know that most shooters use nodal heads or tilt&shift lenses for the purpose. Is it better than the above setup? Besides some shots of my family home in countryside I would also like to attempt portraits. I know it is rather difficult and hope that stitching software has developed to the point that it might be possible if done carefully. Nov 28, 2012 at 10:01 PM

mcbroomf Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #2 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Do you want movement to correct verticals or adjust focal plane? If verticals than I don't think I'd bother. Just stitch enough images together so that you can correct in PS without any concern that you will lose more resolution that your print can handle. If you want extended DOF by adjusting the focal plane then consider focus racking This was about 12 or 15 images I think (kind of hazy) using a 35-70 C/Y on 1ds3, 3 focus zones, 4 or 5 verticals I use Autopano pro and do minor vertical corrections in it as well. I use a simple slide on a tripod to get the nodal pint Mike Nov 28, 2012 at 11:00 PM

Edgars Kalnins Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #3 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Thank you for the answer and the picture ! Would you say that it is not worth investing in a sophisticated pano head or adapting an old 4x5 camera? Knowing that LF lenses are usually lower resolution than 35mm it would make sense to stick to a good native lens. I was thinking of extending the dof rather than correcting the verticals. FOcus racking would make it more difficult I reckon. Have you tried that? ps. Just noticed that pano thread is still alive, it had just managed to escape my attention Nov 29, 2012 at 09:15 PM

wfrank Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #4 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Check some of LeadyGonzales work, with a good tool like FF + Rokkor 58/1.2 it wont take many images to even "surpass" MF look. No tripods/panos or such needed, overlap images row by row or even spiral out in an imaginary larger frame. PS is usually very good in aligning shots taken like that. WA can be trickier but not so much because of vignetting, rather it's a stitch problem because of perspective change. The MF look is a lot (for me) about a central object being separated by DOF from the rest. Leady example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rokkor_58mm_1k2/6962264643/in/photostream/lightbox/ EDIT: forgot the word "spiral" Edited on Nov 30, 2012 at 06:57 AM · View previous versions Nov 29, 2012 at 09:40 PM

Edgars Kalnins Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #5 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format It is not only the look as such I am after. The resolution, amount of details and other things one sees when presented with pictures from, say 8x10. I know that replicating 8x10" with 35mm FF might be too hard. I have never printed large images, but would like to try say 30x40" or similar. And I would love to see the details even when looking at the image from close distance. Can it be done with handheld panoramas? Nov 29, 2012 at 11:26 PM

R.Young Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #6 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Easily Nov 30, 2012 at 12:16 AM

sebboh Offline • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #7 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Edgars Kalnins wrote: It is not only the look as such I am after. The resolution, amount of details and other things one sees when presented with pictures from, say 8x10. I know that replicating 8x10" with 35mm FF might be too hard. I have never printed large images, but would like to try say 30x40" or similar. And I would love to see the details even when looking at the image from close distance. Can it be done with handheld panoramas? yup, given the high pixel density of modern sensors you will get ridiculous detail when you stitch to LF sizes. i have panos made with my NEX-7 and g45 that could be printed to wall sized and look sharp from as close as you can look with the naked eye. file size becomes a much bigger issue when you get images into the gigapixels. i can't imagine printing any of my larger panos without downsizing them first. this post shows a 100% crop from a modest sized panorama with the NEX-7 + rokkor 58/1.2: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/924270/74#11115664 if you want to capture the narrower dof aspect of LF by stitching i would recommend a longer lens in the range of 85-200mm equiv because they will have a more uniform focus fall off than a fast 50mm making stitching of the oof regions easier. on the NEX the lens that works easiest for me in this capacity is the samyang 85/1.4. Nov 30, 2012 at 12:17 AM

mcbroomf Offline • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #8 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format The photo I posted was focus racked as you say (that's what I meant by 3 focus zones). I've shot 4x5 and 8x10 and for a very long time 1ds camera bodies. And now I can easily produce very large prints with stitches from a Sony 5N that would match any of them. The thing is you already (I assume) have a camera/lens that you can try, and PS is much more capable than it used to be for stitching, so give it a go before dropping any more money. If you don't have PS you can download trial versions of PS, Autopano or other apps before you buy. Good luck Mike Nov 30, 2012 at 12:52 AM

Mescalamba Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #9 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Nothin particulary amazing, but its from 6 mpix camera and zoom lens. Original has 25 mpix and its quite decent even at per-pixel level (tho could be better, but thats user error ). Stitched with PS, cause everything else gave me stitching errors on this one. Its freehand and Im sure its possible to do pretty amazing panos even freehand. It needs just good camera, mirrorless prefered and very good lens. You want lens that are sharp to corners and preferably with no field curvate and ofc with no distortion. Its not like you cant shoot with less sharp lens or with lens that do have distortion, it just gets pretty difficult. For example Im using 24-50mm f4 zoom, which has some distortion at every settings. I can get stitched images without errors, but it takes much more work than if it was near perfect from start. Plus Im shooting with dSLR and not mirrorless which makes things even more problematic. And low-res one, which paired with not best resolving lens makes stuff even more complicated. So avoid that. That sample picture went through probably every distortion correction possible, including keystoning. And its still usable for quite big print (if it was worth printing which its not ). So if you had like Sony 5N + some good sharp distortion and field curvate free lens and you were careful enough with making those pics, I think you would have really nice results. Using large format camera and digital camera as stitching back isnt bad idea I think. I saw some quite nice results online, so its probably worth it. Just bit time consuming, but thats every form of stitching. Good thing about large or medium format lens is that they have different "look" even when you dont use whole image circle. Nov 30, 2012 at 03:23 AM

Jabberwockt Offline • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #10 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format ^ very nice picture, i bet the full size version is full of detail. I think in some ways, the ASPC like the NEX is actually better for stitching. On a lot of full frame cameras, the corners vignette depending on the lens, some lens as much as 1-2 stops. It would be more work, but I think a stitch of images that exclude these subpar corners would be better. Photoshop is decent at stitching but is really good for cleaning up distortion and the content aware fill band-aids user error to some extent (IE if I have a gap in the sky or something). Nov 30, 2012 at 03:53 AM

thrice Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #11 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format The limitations to these techniques are obviously dynamic scenes. eg. the original scan is 100megapixel, I'll see if I can dig up a crop: While you can do that on 35mm, you will get some stitching artifacts if you retain detail in the water. You'd also struggle to do this since there simply isn't a 35mm f/0.9 lens out there (135/3.5 on 4x5), and you'll get artifacts if you have a moving subject that dominates the scene. I guess the 35/1.2 nokton is pretty close: Nov 30, 2012 at 04:37 AM

Mike K Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #12 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format How about the use of a WA Tilt shift? This article is not clearly written, but describes Jack Dykinga flat stitching 6 frames from a (24mm?) TS lens to simulate a large format digital capture. http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/how-to/shooting/transforming-large-format.html As an intermediate step One can diagonally (60 deg) shift at Canon 17 TSE to capture 4 frames which are then easily stitched. The resulting file is really WA and has more than doubled the pixel count. The author really is keen on the 17 TSE, and since I have one it tried this technique. The result is enormously WA, its hard to avoid shooting your feet or the balcony railing in front of you. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50302789 Mike K Nov 30, 2012 at 06:05 AM

agentbird Offline • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #13 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format I usually use my 85mm 1.4G on a D800E to make hi-res panoramas, usually wide open to get as little dof as possible. But sometimes I stop down too, to get maximum detail. I shoot hand held 99% of the time, even when I do panoramas. This is one from my 85, wide open, the final image landed at around 170+ megapixels: Nov 30, 2012 at 03:01 PM

Phillip Reeve Online • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #14 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format I use it to get small DOF or a wider view. Technique is as simple as it gets: take images by hand and let PS do all the work. some examples: (there is a small stitching error in the tree) magnify: Nov 30, 2012 at 03:38 PM

Mescalamba Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #15 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format thrice wrote: The limitations to these techniques are obviously dynamic scenes. eg. the original scan is 100megapixel, I'll see if I can dig up a crop: While you can do that on 35mm, you will get some stitching artifacts if you retain detail in the water. You'd also struggle to do this since there simply isn't a 35mm f/0.9 lens out there (135/3.5 on 4x5), and you'll get artifacts if you have a moving subject that dominates the scene. I guess the 35/1.2 nokton is pretty close: Actually, there is Mitakon 35mm f0.95 lens. Sold only via eBay I think. Made for NEX mount, but should be available in m4/3 and Fuji X-mount too. Only APS-C. Plus theres 50mm f0.95 lens from SLR Magic. Which should give really shallow DOF even on APS-C. But as it covers FF, its possible to use it on Leica M too. With new Leica M240, there wont be even need for rangefinder compatibility. Nov 30, 2012 at 03:40 PM

dcjs Offline • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #16 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Since I like to do panos of fairly close-up subjects (no room for parallax error), and low ISO work requires a tripod anyway, I made a contraption that is tailored to the nodal point of my C/Y 35-70/3.4. The tripod socket of the NEX cameras (5N and C3 at least) ist pretty much useless anyway, so the lens adapter got a "tripod foot" for rock solid attachment. All in all a fairly compact and lightweight system when you consider the capabilities, though it certainly isn't beautiful by any standard. Example (@70mm/f4, 3x5 images), this simply wouldn't work offhand (or with any amount of wind, for that matter): UWA capabilities (@35mm/f11, 3x3 images): To be honest, my first thought when I saw a NEX camera was that this would make a great "digital back" for a pano system, and I'm amazed that noone has brought anything like this to marked yet. With some technical (and cosmetic...) refinements, this could be used with a variety of lenses and still be a whole lot more compact and lightweight than the common pano systems for DSLRs that are ridiculously bulky (and shaky) by comparison. Additionally, working in landscape orientation is much more convenient than the usual portrait orientation, especially with tilting screen. Nov 30, 2012 at 03:57 PM

U.C. Online • • Upload & Sell: Off p.1 #17 · Image stitching to emulate Large Format Strictly speaking it's not the nodal point, but the no-parallax point. I find it a quite interesting technique and use it once in a while. For this one I didn't use a tripod or special tools. Clickable And one with a tripod Clickable Nov 30, 2012 at 04:46 PM

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