Archive 2014 · For landscape, what is worth stepping up to from m43?

kwalsh
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p.6 #1 · p.6 #1 · For landscape, what is worth stepping up to from m43?

@Sal - I do stitch occasionally already (the Denali shot in the my first post is stitched actually), but as Tariq points out it can become very cumbersome in the field for certain cases. Awkward at UWA I find. A lot of recomposing and retightening. If I did a shot just once not a big deal, but a lot of my shooting is in changing twilight and so I take a lot of exposures as the light changes. Most of the time a single exposure time ends up being just the right light, but sometimes I actually have to composite a few exposures from slightly different times to get good light across the entire scene.

For example that salt flat shot is composed from four exposures at different times over a period of about 15 minutes. One kind of lighting is best for the salt flat and then since it is mostly north facing and wide angle it required three different blended exposures for the sky/clouds as the light swept over them. Rescanning the pano each time might be testing my patience! And introducing a lot of chances for error. I can usually successfully hit the shutter release repeatedly and double check the exposure is doing what I want it to with the camera safely on the tripod untouched. Not sure I have faith in my technique tinkering with stuff over and over in fast changing light without screwing something up along the way. Maybe practice would make perfect though.

You are right however, within reason you can get excellent resolution from stitching. I've considered something like a NN with click rings to make scanning easy combined with an appropriate prime. It hasn't seemed that workable in my head but maybe it is something I just need to try.

I'd estimate based on reasonable overlapping and accounting for cropping after applying an appropriate projection that four exposures (2x2, 1/3 overlap) would get me in the range of 30MP equivalent performance - so that's manageable if everything is done just perfectly. But giving a safety factor for underestimating projection cropping and not having to use the weaker edges of the m43 zooms means probably 3x3 which is getting a bit burdensome.

All that said, if it comes to hiking 10 miles to a location and I want it big I suspect I'll take m43 and stitch rather than haul a D810 kit and tripod

Aug 23, 2014 at 09:29 AM

Sal Baker
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p.6 #2 · p.6 #2 · For landscape, what is worth stepping up to from m43?

The pano head is what makes it do-able IMO. I tried shooting without a proper head for a couple of years and the images would stitch ok, but the shape of the image was all over the map and I had to concentrate too much. Now I have the camera set on 5-sec timer, take a shot, push the camera to the next detent, and shoot very quickly. I can capture 9 images in under a minute and a half.

I shoot the sky row(s) first which takes about 7 seconds between shots. Unless clouds are moving at a storm rate, or the sun is constantly in and out, the images blend nicely in PT GUI.

Again, I'm just saying this is an option. The pano head is so small and light you can just throw it in the bag and use it when something special pops up. Although everything you shoot looks special! Nice work.

Sal

Aug 23, 2014 at 11:04 AM

Tariq Gibran
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p.6 #3 · p.6 #3 · For landscape, what is worth stepping up to from m43?

Sal Baker wrote:
The pano head is what makes it do-able IMO. I tried shooting without a proper head for a couple of years and the images would stitch ok, but the shape of the image was all over the map and I had to concentrate too much. Now I have the camera set on 5-sec timer, take a shot, push the camera to the next detent, and shoot very quickly. I can capture 9 images in under a minute and a half.
Sal

I think the issue is that he is often taking sort of unconventional, and quite beautiful, HDR type shots over a prolonged period of time. Not the sort where capturing a bunch of frames in under a minute, two or even five works. That sort of throws a monkey's wrench into the process of stitching.

I have used the Nodal Ninja head before for pano stitching projects - one for a huge store sized window that involved 20 or so frames and it worked out great. If I had to bracket ea. of those frames 3+ times (each frame for an HDR blend), I'm sure I would screw up somewhere. Add the other variable he has of time (he wants to wait for the light to actually change in some cases so not what many of us probably think of as typical HDR) and it seems daunting.

Aug 23, 2014 at 11:36 AM

kwalsh
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p.6 #4 · p.6 #4 · For landscape, what is worth stepping up to from m43?

@Sal - Thanks for sharing your experience with pano head vs. no pano head, that's really helpful. I've eyed the NN3 for a few years now always wondering how much more effective it would be since to date the little stitching I do is either just on a ball head or handheld. It sounds like it improves shooting in the field quite a bit so I'll give the whole system another look now. Even if I think it is unlikely to do the job for many of my shots there are certainly a few cases I can think of it being the lightest weight way to get a very large print in remote locations.

@Tariq - Yeah, you've captured my concerns. Glad to hear the NN worked well when there was the time to use it without screwing up!

Aug 23, 2014 at 01:22 PM

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