I have a possible gig shooting food for local hotel. I'd like to be able to provide files larger than possible with my Leica DMR (10 mp) and was wondering if would be possible to achieve MF results by stitching, using a bracket like the RRS Ultimate-Pro Omni-Pivot Package. I'll be using Pro Foto lighting with soft boxes. Any thoughts/advice would be much appreciated as I was planning to buy the RRS bracket for stitching landscapes for personal work and was curious if it could do double duty stitching food images where larger file size is the goal?
Lawrence

I think it would be possible, but could be prohibitively time-consuming... I've used that technique to make hi-res architecture shots, and you can quickly get to the point where you wish you hadn't bothered!

If you want to try it, you'll have to get your nodal point set just right, and I would recommend a longer lens than usual and shooting from a larger distance than usual. In order to avoid distortion in the final image, you'll want to stitch the images in a planar projection (rather than the cylindrical projection normally used with landscapes). In order to make a planar projection work, you need to be careful of the field of view of the final stitched image. Too wide a field of view, and the edges of the final image will end up looking stretched.

See one example of what I'm talking about here... I used a Canon 5D and 85mm f/1.8 to shoot a series of images, and stitched them in Autopano Pro, planar projection. The end result has the field of view roughly equivalent to using a 35mm TS-E lens on a 160 megapixel camera. That image took around 5 minutes to shoot, and somewhere in the region of 40 hours of post-production. I imagine you'd probably be stitching fewer images than I did, but don't underestimate the amount of time required to produce a perfectly stitched result!

Thanks Stuart,
The resolution in that file you posted is just nuts! Really nice job.

I was thinking of using my 100 APO macro and shooting 8-10 vertical frames with a bracket such as the Really Right Stuff Ultimate-Pro Omni-Pivot Package. It's designed for multi row stitching and the nodal point would have to be carefully calculated so as to avoid parallax. Since the sensor is cropped on my DMR, the focal length would be 137mm... so I'd have to shoot from farther back as you suggested. Not having any experience with dedicated panning brackets I was curious if it could be done before I shell out the funds for the bracket.

How much did you overlap your shots? I've read that some photographers overlap as much as 40%. I don't understand why so much overlap IF the nodal point has been determined?

Lawrence

I should have said, I use the RRS ultimate pro package, expensive but nice!

I normally overlap around 30%, mainly because the stitching software blends the seams together, and it makes a better job of that when you have generous overlap. If you're thinking of shooting panoramas commercially, you should get the kit and practice lots! You eventually learn what works and what doesn't. You'll also get a feel for how much time is involved, so you can better judge your pricing!

It might be more efficient to rent a high-MP medium format digital camera like a Sinar or Hassy, especially if you're only going to do this a couple of times.

My client wanted product photos that she could blow up to 40" X 60" posters for an exhibit booth. A little experimenting with stitching lead me to my local pro rental shop and a 39MPix camera. A one-hour shoot and a one-hour post processing session yielded perfect results. Something I couldn't come close to with stitching.

<Chas>

Heck, it might be more efficient to just rent a high-MP DSLR (24MP in Nikon D3x and Canon 5D2 and a Sony, 21MP in Canon 1Ds3, etc.) with a great lens. Once you step back to do the pano, the macro capability is not necessary... the only advantage of a macro lens is that it's really very sharp. But then, so are others.

I'd step back as far as conveniently possible, so that the rotation of the camera is minimized. With that, and a proper nodal point, your pano should come out gorgeous. And with a high-MP body, you can just do a 3x2 pano and get a huge image. If you're going to do stuff that needs to be blown up a lot, you may want to consider starting to move in this direction... then, just pick whether you prefer Canon or Nikon or whatever. They leapfrog each other in technology every couple of years, so in the end you need to shoot with what you love.

Chas and Rodolfo:
Thanks for your input. First, Chas' suggestion to use MF digital is a good one if you have experience with shooting food with that system... not to mention processing files in Capture One. I don't. There is significantly less depth of field with MF optics than with a 1.37 cropped sensor on the DMR. Not being familiar with the system being rented, I'd be a fool not to rent the camera for several days (weeks?) before the shoot to try and learn the ins and outs of shooting with a new camera and attempting to learn the software. Any time saved over stitching with the Leica would be lost 3X over while attempting to deal with the limited depth of field on the MF digital camera (not to mention trying to understand the software for processing images). If I were familiar with a particular MF digital system and it's requisite software this would be a no brainer. I have 5 lenses from 50 to 135, all fixed focal length and none with internal focus, for the Leica so there will be no shifting of the nodal point depending on focus (as there can be with internal focus lenses). These lenses are sharp wide open and I'm intimately familiar with them.

W/respect to Rodolfo's high megapixel Nikon, Canon or Sony suggestion: again I am unfamiliar with these cameras. All three will have less depth of field than my cropped sensor Leica and none will have the color rendition the Leica has (16 bits). Stitching 6-24 megapixel images will take much longer than six to nine 10 megapixel images. Then there is the aspect of being completely unfamiliar with these cameras. This is not something you want to be doing for a paying job at a large hotel where you're under the gun.

Another point is that it only makes sense to focus manually for such subject matter. The Leica is a manual focus camera and I have focus magnifiers and viewing screens that will aid with focusing. I'd rather not let a Nikon, Canon or Sony choose my focus (not that you can't manually focus with them as you can... but why try and reinvent the wheel when the Leica is optimized for manual focus?)

Thanks for the suggestions though. I think I'll stick with what I'm familiar with. The initial question was about whether stitching with a RRS bracket would work with food photography. I'm satisfied with Stuart's answer that it will... and that there is no substitute for spending sufficient time to practice, practice and practice with the bracket so as to make the best use of it.

One question I still have w/respect to stitching is concerning overlap: given that I'll be working in a controlled lighting situation, will it still be necessary to overlap by 30%?

It's possible to argue against several of your opinions, but pointless since the idea is simply to help you get done what you want to get done, more easily and better.

Yes, the pano gear will work and will work very well. No, it's not necessary to overlap by that much. But yes, I always prefer to overlap heavily since it gives the stitching software more material to work with in developing a smoother stitch with no artifacts or issues. Overall, I try to overlap by about 1/3 when doing a pano... I feel that the additional images to be processed are less work than fixing or improving a difficult stitch.

Thanks Rodolfo,
I hope I didn't step on any toes here. I'm here to learn and appreciate any suggestions that will make things flow more smoothly. If there are holes in my argument (understanding), feel free to point them out. What little I know about stitching is from what I've read on various forums.
RRS has a very good return policy so the best course of action might be to buy the RRS bracket and run some tests. I'd be doing extensive testing prior to putting together an abbreviated portfolio so its probably a good idea to just dive into it and see firsthand if this setup will work.

no, I don't think you have anything to worry about in terms of upsetting people. I simply understood from your post that you are pretty clear on what you want to do and how you want to do it, therefore, it wasn't worth pursuing a theoretical argument when you're looking for practical solutions.

RRS makes very good stuff, so you will probably not be disappointed. But if you haven't done much (or any) stitching before, I would really suggest that you get some practice before going out to the specific shoot. I know that my first few efforts showed me that certain kinds of movement and certain compositions gave me more trouble than others. I'd be happy to tell you which ones... but I frankly don't remember.

But if you haven't done much (or any) stitching before, I would really suggest that you get some practice before going out to the specific shoot.

+1

You may want to bring the mosaic out as a layered psb file. Reworking the masking on the layers can make the joins better, simply.............

papageno wrote:
But if you haven't done much (or any) stitching before, I would really suggest that you get some practice before going out to the specific shoot.

+1

You may want to bring the mosaic out as a layered psb file. Reworking the masking on the layers can make the joins better, simply.............

+2
While Rodolfo and others have noted the challenges of stitching, I suspect you may be underestimating just how much work and aggravation you are getting into here. You haven't mentioned how wide your shoot is nor how many frames are involved, but as n (the number of frames involved) goes up the complexity is exponential not linear. You would be well advised to do a two frame stitch before you commit yourself to your current equipment. If at all possible, I always prefer to work from a single frame rather than multiples. It is quite possible, for example, that a Canon 5D MKII with a 17mm TSE (just one example) would give you what you need using manual focus and LiveView. I understand dedication to equipment one knows and loves, but sometimes the right tool for the job isn't the one you normally use.

Just food for thought,

Robert

Hi Lawrence
I must give credit to your guts to get into this only from reading from forums about stitching.
And please I am not trying to be a clever dick but I do shoot food for a living and if you for example are talking about a salad you will notice that probably salad leafs will wilt slightly during you shoot ice cream will melt and so forth and render your multi shoot technique all in vain.
Also from doing qtvr panoramas a long time a I discovered what a nightmare it could be when stitching elements very close to the camera and and dealing with parallax issues and faulty node points, its a very different issue when shooting a house across the street to dealing with something one meter away from the camera, every adjustments becomes critical and your tolerance is fractions of millimeters.
I would definatly go with the rental option since a camera is a camera but a different software is a whole new set of difficulties.
And when it comes to the medium formats dslrs autofocus compared to a 35 dslr is a very different kettle of fish and for studio close up work manual focus is very much an option in those cameras.
Otherwise you might want to look at PTAssembler from Tawbaware (if you are on a pc) that is specifically done for achiving high res stitches.
Good luck, you will need it. :-)
karl