wayne seltzer wrote:
Fat people can be on the ends and their bodies can be angled towards the center more.
Actually, this raises another method: get them to stand in concentric circles and tilt their heads back to look up at a camera suspended above the centre of the circle. This way, the radial stretching will make everyone look skinnier. Difficult to organise, but I quite often use this method for tables: http://www.cyberphotographer.com/a/20070515barryangel50th/371.jpg
Another good candidate would be the Nikkor 14-24. Why? Because it has quite strong and simple barrel distortion at 24mm. Barrel distortion has the occasionally useful side-effect of radially compressing objects towards the periphery of the frame, and that should go some way towards cancelling out the radial stretching inherent in planar wideangle designs. The people in the middle will look bigger, and closer, but the peripherals might not look too mis-shapen.
But really you either need distance or a stitch. I seriously doubt that a ptgui transformation is going easily to restore brainy looking eggheads to cranial normality.
This looks like a doddle as the background and foreground are very easy to stitch. Move the group back a foot or two so that nobody's legs are on the chequerboard tiles, and then shoot 5 portrait frames with a 50 prime or better still an 85 prime. You will get away with crooked floorboards in the foreground because nobody cares. That's how I would do it. But make sure you move them back off those chequerboard tiles or you may end up with a very difficult stitch. Here's another example where the foreground was homogeneous enough to get away with a fairly crude stitch: http://www.cyberphotographer.com/d/20060520daveandmel/19.jpg
Of course, judging by that previous example, you could just shoot the whole thing with a 50, but with that many people in the frame it would be more fun to try to get medium/large format resolution out of a weedy DSLR.
G. Thomas wrote:
Stitching... oh my. I've given that a try a few times, but my success rate is pretty low. I think arranging that many people into a good arc might be difficult, but I guess it could be done.
Lighting is taken care of. Arrangement and organization is taken care of. The last thing I'm not sure of is lenses. I'm not at all afraid of going forward with what I have. I'd just like to get some opinions on how to get some more detail out of these pics.
That image looks like it is suffering from movement due to the use of a slow shutter speed. You mention lighting is taken care but it clearly was not taken care of in this shot because there was not enough light to allow a proper shutter speed. I would definitely make a scouting trip to see just what lighting levels you will be dealing with. At least F8-F11 @ 1/125 and ISO 400(if you need large reproductions without noise because noise is going to show up more with tungsten stage lighting and higher ISO's) would be ideal if your not using strobes. Whoever took the previous shot did not have that.
Yeah, this is one where the flash did not fire, so that was available lighting. If I remember correctly, I don't think that photo had any shake since it was not hand-held, but I suppose shutter vibrations are something to consider. The "more info" thingy says it was ISO400, f/11, 1/200, and 17mm. Flash was used, but apparently didn't actually fire.
I've shot at that location before with similar settings with and without flash. I'll have plenty of light since I'll be using multiple flash units. I'll be practicing with that setup since I don't normally do that, but I feel that lighting should be adequate. What I do NOT know is if I'll be able light up that many faces, that evenly, and resolve detail.
I'll probably just get the Zeiss 35/2 and stop it down to f/8-f/16. I figure on about 10 shots before the mob breaks out the torches and pickforks on me!
G. Thomas wrote:
Yeah, this is one where the flash did not fire, so that was available lighting. If I remember correctly, I don't think that photo had any shake since it was not hand-held, but I suppose shutter vibrations are something to consider. The "more info" thingy says it was ISO400, f/11, 1/200, and 17mm. Flash was used, but apparently didn't actually fire.
I've shot at that location before with similar settings with and without flash. I'll have plenty of light since I'll be using multiple flash units. I'll be practicing with that setup since I don't normally do that, but I feel that lighting should be adequate. What I do NOT know is if I'll be able light up that many faces, that evenly, and resolve detail.
I'll probably just get the Zeiss 35/2 and stop it down to f/8-f/16. I figure on about 10 shots before the mob breaks out the torches and pickforks on me! ...Show more →
Wow, thats a really terrible photo given those settings. That must have been one crappy lens and/or the photographer intentionally added a soft focus effect in post.
Maybe its just me but I would pay more attention to the lighting you are going to have. You are a shooting a stage group of 150 people, cast and crew in a theatre? That's a lot of people and the lighting will be the key.
I think if you arranged for a tall ladder and used your 24-105 mounted onto a ball head super clamp (connected to the ladder) looking down on the group will do the trick. Having non camera flash, maybe a two umbrella setup will take care of the aperture. Once you are on the ladder I think you will find having the zoom range very helpful. If you got up on the ladder with some fancy 50mm I think you might find that the group will stare at you while you move the ladder back and forth repeatedly while you try to get the shot framed correctly with a fixed focal length.
Shooting a large group also takes care in setting the group so as not to look like a jumble of people or a large sports team. I would having some of the crew all hanging on props and other ladders as well will create visual interest and a sense of three dimensionality . You will get people blinking so you will need to shoot many exposures.
But its best to know what you are looking for: it can be an ear burning experience to fiddle around while a group of people watches you figure out what you are doing.
I already have a ladder arranged and can figure out distance/location beforehand. I know better than to have 150 people up there while I'm trying to figure out the basics. I've been on the receiving end of that and didn't enjoy it one bit! I have done quite a bit of thinking about this, you know.
Is the 24-105L going to give me enough information in the files to print reasonably large-ish prints? At FL's of 24-50mm? Possibly in the neighborhood of A3 or A4. I'm not handling that. I'm just going to have file on my server for download.
