Stitching vs true wide angle

[kram]

Hi,

can stitching shots give the same output as shooting with a true wide angle lens.

Yes, one does lose the immediate idea of what the output is going to look like and there's a lot more post processing.

But will the resulting snaps have a different feel?

[rent]

i don't see why not. aside from the tremendous amount of stiching required, i think the outcome would be the same and you will get a lot more resolution too!

for example, stiching up four frames taken with a 50mm would roughly produce the equivalent of a shot taken with a 20mm, and with 4 times the resolution!

-alex

[joeseph]

One downside to stitching, is that anything moving causes problems. Apart from that you have to get exposure & WB exactly the same to get a clean end image without any "joins"
On the upside, you can stitch a lot of detail together effectively increasing the mega-pixel capacity of what you're shooting. I've done a couple using the 100-400 and been quite pleased with them, although think getting a pano head would make life easier.
Give it a go! would love to see some night pano's shot from Kowloon side looking over the harbour...

[mdr]

Try out PTAssembler http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm for a month to stitch some images together. It gives you fantastic 'manual' control and produces results the automatic programs such as the one included in your Canon software cannot achieve by a long shot.

You'll find that using a wideangle requires cropping by about half to achieve the popular letterbox panorama format, so the resolution of 4 images stitched horizontally together is more likely to be 6x to 8x the resolution, depending on the amount of overlap.

[tim]

Sure, for landscapes or buildings stiching would be great, but if anything moves at all you'll need a wide angle.

[kram]

Joeseph, the first stitch snap I will be making is the HK skyline from the Kowloon side!!

Of course, it will have to wait for my decision on which tripod to get - and the totally unpredictable HK weather during the current season.

[nosquare2003]

and the totally unpredictable HK weather during the current season.

http://www.kata-bags.com/category.asp?id=61&perentId=4&ProdLine=4

Will it help?

[raylks]

Joeseph, the first stitch snap I will be making is the HK skyline from the Kowloon side!!

Of course, it will have to wait for my decision on which tripod to get - and the totally unpredictable HK weather during the current season.

Well, stitiching panorama for skyscrapers along Hong Kong Island coastline is an excellent topic!

http://images3.fotop.net/albums3/raylks/Panorama_Harbour/VICTORIA_HARBOUR_AT_CHRISTMAS_20041211.jpg

[shiato storm]

an important thing with stitching to create a panoramic picture is that you must get the point of rotation right. called the 'nodal point', this is usually over the center of the lens not the center of the camera (where the tripod mount is). if you rotate from the tripod mount point you get parallax error creeping in...

[kram]

Is that something that can be avoided with practise or is there some special attachment or head type on a tripod that is built for such shots?

[joeseph]

I think you could probably do this okay hand held and pivoting the lens/camera around the "nodal" point if you're really careful, but anytime you need really slow shutter speeds you're going to have to use a tripod, and that'll need some sort of bracket to move the pivot point closer to the front of the lens in most cases. The longer the lens used and the further away the subject, the less visable the parallax error becomes, so depending on what you're shooting you may get away with using the normal camera/lens mount to pivot from.

[raylks]

A tip for successful stitching is to shot in portrait instead of landscape form. Have a stable tripod with a pan head at best. First make sure that the ball head of tripod is placed horizontally, i.e. parallel to the horizon line, and then so the camera. Roll your camera to preview the horizontal movement. Shot from the left and allow one third overlapping area and make sure that your horizontal movement of the camera is still there when you pan for successive shots. And make sure that you use the same exposure for all shots otherwise you will find difficulty in making a natural color in your stitched panorama.

My further advice for using wide angle lens in shooting panorama is to choose a focal length (say, 40mm of 17-40mm L lens) that doesn't produce distortion. If you have no choice, and have to shoot in distortionary focal length (such as 17mm end of 17-40mm L), then use software such as photoshop, PTlens, panotools to correct the distortion first before you stitch the images.

Happy shooting.

[mdr]

If you use a tool like PTassebler rather than the Photoshop or Canon automatic stiching, the software will allow correction for focal length. PTassembler is really neat, as it picks up the focal length and camera magnification factor from the EXIF data.

[BobL]

No one has mentioned Apple's QTVR software which does a great job in stitching and produces a QTVR in the process. I have a Manfrotto 303 Plus tripod head but only use that indoors and when there are close up objects in outdoor scenes. My panos are amongst my most treasured images. I have shot 90% of my 500+ panoramas handheld (since 1975) and only occasionally had a problem. Even my wonky sequence of the Grand Canyon or the Chinese cemetary that don't line up at all are worth much more to me than a squishy wide angle shot.

I don't care about movement, I actually enjoy tackling moving subjects in panos. In the band shot I deliberately chose the joins to be between the band members and managed to capture plenty of movement. You can tell it's a pano, look at the guy wearing the cap in the lower left of the photo - he appears twice - he moves in between the shots. Original shot was 1512 x 4516 pixels.

Occasionally one also gets real lucky. In the 300 degree bridge shot, look at the dark car in middle/LHS of the photo - it consists of one half of one car combined with the half of another. Original shot is 600 x 8000 pixels

Both panos shot with the Manfrotto 303+ and a Kodak DC150 in 1999 - absolutely aeons ago on the DC timescale.