CurtisBilly wrote:
I hear the 24-105L vignettes and has quite a bit of distortion, which I assume would make post-processing panoramas difficult. I'm guessing I'd probably want to bump up to 28 or 35mm on the 24-105 on the 5D. Should I just use the 35L instead if I'm shooting panoramas?
One hears a lot of things if one reads enough threads. They aren't necessarily true.
I make stitched panoramas all the time using my 5D and 24-105. The 24-105 doesn't vignette that much differently than other similar lenses, and you probably wouldn't notice it at all unless you shoot at f/4 and have large areas of uniform brightness in the frame. If you are shooting landscape panoramas on a 5D you should probably be stopping down to at least f/11 and you won't see any vignetting there.
The 24-105 does have some pincushion/barrel distortion, at the ends of its focal length range. If you try to stitch an image from a 24mm or 105mm shot you will perhaps need to adjust for this in post, or else using a stitching application that takes care of this. If I'm concerned about it I run LensFixCI on the image and all is well.
I'm a bit confused by your using of the term "panorama," especially when you then mention using really wide lenses. Do you simply mean "wide angle photographs?" If so, then my comments about stitching must strike you as odd - as your use of the term "panorama" rather than simple "wide angle" seems a bit unusual to me.
I use the 24-105 a lot for landscape work on a 5D. It is really a very excellent lens for this application. On the FF 5D you will (at least if you are a typical landscape photographer) want to stop down to f/11 or so, which seems to generally be the sharpest aperture with this camera and this lens. f/16 shows the tiniest bit of additional diffraction softness, but it really wouldn't be visible in a print at all. At these apertures the 24-105 is a very sharp lens and it exhibits no vignetting at all.
If you really did intend to so stitched panoramas, you would not likely want to use extremely short focal lengths.
Edgar Maguyon wrote:
Im thinkin of just getting the slide and using it on an ordinary clamp, and use it without that expensive round pano 360 clamp.
Will the panos still turn out great without that round RRS clamp...its kinda pricy at 250ish, and all I can see it do is keep panos level.
The slide part seems the most imprtant, and since it has a bubble level, maybe you dont really need the round expensive clamp, no?
By round pano clamp, are you referring to the PCL-1? The PCL-1 attaches to the ballhead and allows you to level the tripod/head in a matter of seconds. Once level, just clamp the camera to the PCL-1 and you're all set. No more fiddling with tripod leg adjustments on uneven terrain, etc. The PCL-1 is probably one of the best 'tools' that I have purchased. Don't know if you 'need' it, but its generally included in some the RRS pano kits also.
I have rrs pano gear, and it is exceptional. Panoramic heads are a must if you are going to shoot anything with a foreground. Parallax errors are not repairable in post, without extensive cloning and masking.
Also, I shoot almost all my panos at 17mm, but it just depends what your style is. I love ultrawide, especially in landscape settings.
Linda Baldwin wrote:
What software are folks using to stitch multiple row panoramas?
Thanks,
Linda
You will get a lot of opinions but I will give mine first. PTGui has never failed me and is so easy to use. It does a great job of blending the sky as well.
PTGui does such a good job.. never fails me. Well, sometimes it gets a little confused, but then you can just export the layers and blend manually in the spot that it does get mixed up. And you can save the stitch settings, allowing you stitch bracketed exposures really easily so you can blend afterwards.
roberto1979 wrote:
I've never had much luck with that Floris. For some reason when I save the settings, it's always a bit off. Any tips on what I might be missing?
I save the PTGui project file, then replace the images with a different set (they need to have the same names, but can be different images). Then they should stitch together in exactly the same way.
I very rarely shoot below 50mm with the pano's I shoot with my 5D. However, there are a few exceptions. I generally use my 70-200 and/or 24-105 to shoot pano's. I use the RRS "pano elements kit" and it has made shooting pano's so much easier for me. I absolutely love it! Coupled with CS3's improved "photomerge" feature has made shooting pano's real easy for me.
abqnmusa wrote:
A hotshow buble level is very useful for setting up panoramic shots, or stitched landscapes using multiple shots. It helps to get the horizon level.
A leveling head is even more useful... makes sure the camera is rotation parallel to the horizon. Acratech makes a cheap ($150) leveling head that is really light (as light as well made tripod gear can be of course), and works incredibly well. I use this, a ball head, and an RRS rail to do my panos... about $600 cheaper than the full RRS head, and for single row panos it does a super job.
~270ish degrees, 5D + 17mm, vertical orientation, 13 images, and there's quite a bit of foreground there :P Had to fix on curve a little bit after stitching in PTGui.
roberto1979 wrote:
Interesting. Mine don't have the same names, maybe that's my problem.
Make sure you're doing it by *replacing* the images, ie. go to the images tab, select all, then hit replace, and it will let you select a folder that must contain images with the same name, then it will apply the same stitching parameters (ie. it doesn't change anything).
