Stitching is not ideal in all situations but it can have adantages over an ultra wide. One you get more resolution and two you can select different 'projections' that will reduce or remove the stretched edge distortion ( at the expense of horizontal straight lines). Good stitching apps like PTgui will work near miracles when it comes to aligning, joining and blending images even if you don't use a pano head. I agree though that it's sometimes difficult to think and see panoramas and that a single shot composed in a viewfinder is what most people like. The compromise I would therefore suggest to Peter is to shoot a reference image with your wide Sigma to capture the composition and framing and then zoom in and cover the frame with single shots for stitching later.
Herb, you have missed the point of the thread and seem to be agressively proselytizing the stitching method. It should be sufficient to say that I'm not fond of the process and leave it at that - you're happy with your stitched results, and fair play to you. I'm not crazy about the process, and as such choose not to do it on a regular basis. This, despite the fact that I own and have used to good effect an Agnos panoramic head.
This thread was started to ask about and discuss alternative UWA lenses for the 5D, not to argue the merits of stitching vs. single shot.
To show that I'm not a total philistine and do know how to stitch:
Pontoon and Nephin, Co. Mayo
The Pigeon House, Dublin
Spyro: Customs and VAT can be a real pain in Ireland - you pay up to 30% duty on imported items, plus 21% VAT. As for the locations - in the photographs in my original post, the top two images were made in Iceland, not Ireland. The bottom image was made on Inis Oirr, one of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway.
At any rate, the general consensus seems to be that I'm not going to find anything else at 12mm. I may have a look at the Nikon 14-24 in the future, but for now I'm happy enough with the images I'm getting with the Sigma. Corners are indeed soft, but that's never stopped anyone from buying one of the images made with it!
you want wider than any lens you can buy, even at unreasonable prices, and give bogus reasons for not stitching. say you don't like it but don't say it can't be done.
Herb...
petercox wrote:
Herb, you have missed the point of the thread and seem to be agressively proselytizing the stitching method.
Herb -
Your enthusiasm is a joy to behold. If you had read my post you would have noticed that I'm not looking for wider than I have, just something in the same focal length, or even a bit narrower if there was nothing available at 12mm. I'm sorry if you took that as an attack on your particular area of interest.
As for bogus reasons, I don't see how me saying I personally don't like stitching is bogus at all - it's a personal preference. I accept that the points I made regarding subject motion and light changes are probably not as big of an issue as they used to be, given what you've said. I simply don't really care.
I'm not trying to convince you to stop stitching, so please stop trying to convince me to start. This isn't the Church of Digital Stitching, it's the alternative gear forum.
Spyro mentioned a couple that you might want to look into. Many people love the Zuiko 18mm. Look for posts by Hrannar (hauxon) and Simon Kennedy.
I'm satisfied with my (2) Tamron SP 17/3.5 Adaptall mount. Sharp enough corner to corner (certainly better than your copy of the 12-24), very little CA, nice colour and contrast. The only downside is the waveform distortion (like the CZ21) but for landscapes it is rarely an issue. If you'd like samples, let me know.
HerbChong wrote:
details. you mean like this? a button click on the rendering program and nothing more. StevenPA wrote:
Herb, your first panorama of the river in the woods there, it does NOT have the distorted edge perspective that a UWA with a similar field of view would give.
I totally agree with Herb. Seriously, how is UWA different from a stitched pano? The only thing that could be different is barrel/pincushion distortion, CA, and poor corner sharpness. And that could be emulated in software. Unless, of course, stuff moving around between shots is a problem, but I guess it's not the case here.
And I have a CZJ Flektogon 20mm f/4 for all my UWA needs.
I find the Zeiss 16mm fisheye to be more than acceptably sharp across the frame, and it renders clouds with the dramatic effect only an ultra-wide can give you. It's downside is that of all fisheyes, unless you put your horizon dead center in the frame, you get distortion. You also have to be very careful about your frame edges. Trees, for example, don't really arch that way. So the fisheye presents some framing and compositional challenges.
For your "wide open spaces" shooting you ought to take a look. I picked one up a few years back for less than the price I got selling a Sigma 16mm fish. Ooops, forgot. That Sigma fish had AF...
Anyone know if the Voigtlander 12mm f5.6 Ultra Wide Heliar can be mounted on a 5D? Looks like the rear element would probably interfere with the mirror. Seems to be a nice lens, though.
I think a few people have mounted the Heliar and other such designs by putting some foam on the protruding rear element, lifting the mirror and allowing it to sit on the foam. Of course, you then need a shoe-mount VF to go with it.
Here are a couple of samples from one of my Tamron 17s:
I too use a 12-24 on a 5D for single shot wide images and I too have been searching for a solution to the sloppy corners. I recently rented a Nikon 14-24 (of which I understand you are aware) and can highly recommend it. I just wanted to point out that in my testing of the Sigma vs Nikon, I found a couple interesting things: 1) the difference in the FoV between 12mm and 14mm is much more than I had thought it'd be - the difference is pretty large - just something to keep in mind if you like really wide FoVs, and 2) cropping a 12mm Sigma image to match the FoV of the Nikon 14mm yielded a very, very similar file since the sloppy corners of the Sigma had been cropped away (altho I realize you're also cropping away pixels/file size).
Oh, and while I stitch some images that call for it, I too understand that some images just call for a single really wide frame (and frankly there are times when I just don't want to deal with making the multiple images with which to stitch). FWIW, when I do stitch I use PTgui, PTAssembler or CS3.
Paul -
Thanks for those. Pretty convincing corner sharpness for such a wide lens.
Hm, not sure if I'd go that far with the Heliar. Good to know it's an option, though.
akclimber:
Thanks for that feedback, that is a big help. I just did a little experiment with the Sigma, and the difference between 12mm and 14mm is definitely a big one. Hm. Anyone know how the Nikon 14-24 stacks up against the Canon 14mm?
HerbChong wrote:
you want wider than any lens you can buy, even at unreasonable prices, and give bogus reasons for not stitching. say you don't like it but don't say it can't be done.
Yeah, I'm digging that Siggy 12-24 - might be just the ticket on my 1.3 sensor...
Get rid of teh "bad corners" and still be much wider than I currently have. Hmmm...
I'm rather amazed by those Tamron 17 pics you posted.
Tamron? Whoda' thunkit?
Several of their SP series Adaptalls are excellent lenses. The 90/2.5 and 300/2.8, for instance. Even the modern AF SP series are pretty damned good lenses. Everyone knows about the 28-75/2.8 and 90/2.8, but even my 24-135/3.5-5.6 is a surprisingly good lens for its range (and price!).
cog, the Tamron looks nice, but where did all the micro-contrast go in your files? They look like 5 megapixel files uprezzed to 12. Are you doing a lot of aberration correction?
brainiac wrote:
cog, the Tamron looks nice, but where did all the micro-contrast go in your files? They look like 5 megapixel files uprezzed to 12. Are you doing a lot of aberration correction?
No, just not sharpening much at all on the 100% crops. Remember, Bibble does absolutely no hidden sharpening. These 100% crops are straight from Bibble with only 150 sharpening (out of 400).
Also, it isn't a CZ21, after all. It definitely has finite resolving power. What I like about it, though, is how consistent it is across the frame, much like my Zuikos. A 20x30 is typically all I ever need to do, and this one prints beautifully at that size when interpolated and sharpened properly. The corners look basically identical to the centre, which is something I much prefer over something like the 17-40L.
It basically performs exactly how it should, according to tests listed on Adaptall-2.com. Their tests show the SP 17/3.5 resolving 54 lp/mm centre and 54 lp/mm corner at both f8 and f11. With a 5D, this is plenty of resolution for me. There are lenses out there that resolve between 70 and 80 lp/mm centre, but then only 40-ish in the corner. No thanks.
The Nikkor 18 test is shown on the site as well. A perfect example of the type of lens I don't want on my FF body. At f8 it resolves 68 lp/mm in the centre (outresolves the 5D sensor) but the corner only gets to 43 lp/mm.
Another huge benefit of the Tamron is the nearly complete lack of CA. So no correction is required at all. Ever. The only fault I can find in it is the waveform distortion, which is irrelevant to me for this type of work, so I have no need to correct it. So, to answer your question more thoroughly, there has been no aberration correction of any sort applied at all.
