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View Full Version : Photostitch - Too Much Data/ Too Much Lens?


CoolToolGuy
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 11:08
I am trying to take a panoramic image from my parents' balcony and then create a print. The horizon covers areas of Baltimore City within 5 miles to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge which is 35 miles as the crow flies.

I went all out with my lenses, and I set up my FD 600 f4.5 with the FD-EOS converter, which results in a 756mm lens. Including the crop factor it factors out to the AOV of a 1210mm lens. I set it up on my tripod and tried to get decent points of overlap. I used portrait orientation to get more height and accommodate the varying landscape. The view is certainly less than 90 degrees, probably more like 60 or less. I took 56 images to get the entire field of view.

I stuffed this all into Photostitch, and the first issue is to set the focal length of the lens (in 35mm equivalent). I first plugged in 1210mm, but it didn't seem to like that much at all, so I tried 756mm.

Photostitch chews on it for a while and comes back with a message about not enough virtual memory (I don't have the exact message as I type this). I have tried rebooting in case the culprit is a memory leak, trimming back the size of the image, and every other option I can think of to try and get the pano image. It produces an image file the correct width (number of pixels), but the right half of it is black. The left half looks normal at the top, but has a vertical streak effect below the normal area of the image.

Before I go back and try again with a shorter lens I would like to know what is happening here. Is it too much lens (756mm)? Or is it too many pixels (portrait orientaion, 6 MP, 56 images)?

I did the search here about using PS versus Photostitch, so maybe I'll try that, but it seems like Photostitch has some advantages over PS/CS.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Have Fun,

UncleDoug
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 14:29
Way too many images for the application.

Stitcher or PT will chew on it.

If you are using JPEG files....
6mp JPEG is about 17mb x 56 = 952, almost a gig!

Unless you have about 2G worth of RAM and the application will allow you to allocate that much RAM, try frewer images.

CoolToolGuy
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 14:50
Thanks for the tips.

Small issue, but the JPGs are about 3-6 MB each.

Do you think if I tried this is in stages it might go better? Left half of view, then right half, then marry them together?

Have Fun,

UncleDoug
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 15:07
"Small issue, but the JPGs are about 3-6 MB each."

Unopened....
Open the JPEG in PS and check the file size in the bottom left corner of the window(or save off the JPEG as a TIFF and check the size. If taken at full size(6mp) the file you will be dealing with will be around 17mb.

"Do you think if I tried this is in stages it might go better? Left half of view, then right half, then marry them together?"

Probably not. The calculations for dealing with lense distortion need to be applied to the image size that came out of the camera. I.e. you would be applying the distortion calcs to 2 panoramas that have already had these calcs applietd to them... make sense?

But give it a whirl. It will come together but it will not be perfect....

CoolToolGuy
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 15:16
"Small issue, but the JPGs are about 3-6 MB each."

Unopened....
Open the JPEG in PS and check the file size in the bottom left corner of the window(or save off the JPEG as a TIFF and check the size. If taken at full size(6mp) the file you will be dealing with will be around 17mb.

"Do you think if I tried this is in stages it might go better? Left half of view, then right half, then marry them together?"

Probably not. The calculations for dealing with lense distortion need to be applied to the image size that came out of the camera. I.e. you would be applying the distortion calcs to 2 panoramas that have already had these calcs applietd to them... make sense?

But give it a whirl. It will come together but it will not be perfect....

Doh :o Sorry, not thinking. . .

Hmmm, I can't get back to my parents' place today, so maybe I'll give the stages a try this evening.

What I really want is a print for them so they can point out landmarks to the family and friends when they come over. Even if I had to make it two or three panoramas it might be good enough for that purpose. The Bay Bridge is 35 miles away, and until I made a print for them I couldn't get them to 'see' it, even with binoculars.

Have Fun,

Todd Jacobsen
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 17:33
Are you sure the 6MB images are jpeg? That seems closer to RAW vs jpg.

PhotosGuy
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 19:39
Are you sure the 6MB images are jpeg? That seems closer to RAW vs jpg. I think Todd has hit on the answer. ;-)

CoolToolGuy
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 20:10
I think Todd has hit on the answer. ;-)

Not unless 'raw developing' has been eliminated.

No, they are JPGs.

Have Fun,

CoolToolGuy
5th of April 2005 (Tue), 21:36
Well, I got something - I chunked them up into groups: 1-12, 12-24, 24-36, 36-48, and 48-56. Photostitch took them, and now I have 5 images. I originally tried half (28 JPGs) and Photostich barfed, so I just made smaller groups. With the overlaps i used, the first group printed (portrait) on 8 - 8 1/2 x 11 sheets. I may try to merge two or more into one.

I have to get some paper tomorrow. All I had was Photo Paper Pro, and for a project this large I think Photo Paper Plus will be good enough.

I noticed some of the hazards of panoramic shots, and if I do this over I'll use manual exposure and keep them all the same. This one has some images lighter than others. But for now I think Mom & Dad will be able to use them - if they're not too big. The whole series will be between 20 and 25 feet long!

Thanks for the help and tips.

Have Fun,