Panorama - now I *really* need some help!

[tommykjensen]

Ok heres the deal.

First have a look at this photo (http://www.highways.dk/danmark/hovedvej1/imagesbig/kbh_zootaarn_fjern_500x375.html)

This tower is in one of my preferred photo shooting places. The Zoo in Copenhagen.

A few days a go the Zoo celebrated that it is 100 years ago the tower was build directly inspired by the Eiffel tower in Paris. In that connection tv had a short segment from the zoo and I noticed that they filmed from the tower without beeing obstructed by the fence.

So I got an idea, I sent an email to the Zoo asking if it would be possible for me to get up there and take photos overlooking Copenhagen (and the Zoo) to perhaps make a 180 or 360 degree panorama photo. I underlined that I am an entheutiastic amateur ;)

Today I got a reply. Yes I could get permission to take those photos if the Zoo could get a copy of the resulting photo. It turned out that they are working on making some signs to put up in the tower to explain what people are looking at when looking out from the tower and so they thought this could be a good idea. Obviously I realize that the Zoo see this as an oportunity to save some money on a proffesional photographer. Since the zoo relies on public donations I could see this as a donation from me to the zoo. And it is also a great oportunity for me to get my photos displayed at a prominent place that happens to be a favorite place of mine ;)

So I need all the tips I can get in order to shoot great photos that can be used to create a great panorama. I don't know exactly how much room there is a the spot where I can photograph from so I don't know if I can bring a tripod or if I have to settle with a monopod or even have to rely on handheld shooting.

Also which software should I use afterwards to build the panorama? I have only really tried once with PS CS and this was not perfect.

Of the lenses I have which lens would be best to shoot with? And should I shoot in portrait mode and thus have to shoot more or should I just shoot in landscape mode? Which aperture would be the most appropriate for something like this?

I have following lenses to choose from:

EF 17-40 mm f/4L
EF 24-70 mm f/2.8L
EF 28 mm f/1.8
EF 50 mm f/1.4
EF 85 mm f/1.8
Tokina 17 mm ATX Pro (on the way in the mail).

My initial thought is to use one of the primes.

[neil_r]

Tommy, this is not going to be much help as I have never done this type of thing either, but I could not pass up on the oportunity to wish you good luck and to say that I am sure you will do an excellent job.

Once again good luck.

N

[CyberPet]

Can you mount the camera on the sphere, sort where the danish flag pole is? Cuz you will get some evil distortion with a 360 panorama, since you can't really move all the way around to be sure to get a perfect pano. But it would be cool if you shoot from each corner, a 180, and then from each "side", and see if you can eventually stitch that together somehow.

Photoshop has a built-in software to stitch panoramas, but it's not really great. But it can give you a pointer into the right direction, so if you set it to save the layers you can then fine tune it in Photoshop.

There's also some software floating around. An idea is to search for the word "QuickTime VR" and see if you can find some software that does the stitching better.

Also read up on panorama photography, there's some great pointers on how to set up the camera to not get too much distortion. I'm just a plain amatuer and have only hand-stitched photos in Photoshop (since I had no access to it's built-in software at that time, older versions).

Here's a link to a panorama (probably almost 180°) I did from my old hometown during midsummer (i.e. midnight on June 21st). My hometown doesn't see the sun over the horizon, but it does just dips under the horizon for an hour, so it's still pretty bright:
http://the-halls.se/photoalbum/panorama/images/midnightpanorama.jpg

[tommykjensen]

I don't know yet how my access to the tower will be but I think I will have to go out on the roof of the platform http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/smilies/scared07.gif

My thougth was to shoot maybe 3 shots in each direction, north, south, east and west. Stitch them to 4 panoramas and then maybe stitch those to two 180 degree or one 360 degree panorama.

What time of day would be best? The rule of thumb says to take photos in the morning or afternoon because lighting is best at these hours but the duration would be a factor here. I guess the lighting could change a lot from the time I shoot the first photo to the last?

As for software I tried this (http://www.arcsoft.com/en/products/panoramamaker/) and it created a much better panorama than PS CS did. Do You know if CS2 is better than CS in this department? (I should receive CS2 today or tomorrow).

Thanks Neil, I think I need the luck ;-) I did not expect the Zoo to come back with a proposal like this so they sure raised the bar a lot, one thing is to take photos I like myself another is to take some the Zoo can/will use.

[Beeclose]

A tripod is a "must" otherwise don't even try, make sure you overlap the image by about 1/3 with the previous one, the tripod should have a levelling bubble on it so that the camera doesn't run down on an angle, all shots should be at the same level,You can get expensive programs to do the stitching together but I have had success with Photoshop photomerge, give it a try and good luck. EW

[tim]

I can give you a few suggestions, that may or may not be helpful:
- Photostich, which comes with Canon cameras, is great. Photoshop's kinda crap at this.
- Meter everything you want to shoot, then shoot in manual mode. If you don't you'll get ugly banding.
- You *have* to use a tripod.
- Instead of doing a 360 degree panorama, consider doing three 120 degree ones, or two 180 degree ones. Unless you can mount your tripod somewhere where you can see 360 degrees it won't come out so well.
- Shoot in portrait orientation.

Hope that helps.

[Beeclose]

I tried the canon photostich and it was B!!!!!! terrible , hope you have better results

[djtowle]

HI, What a great oppotunity. I've had a passing interest in Pano's but haven't got really good at it yet. Here's some tips I've picked up. (please excuse my horrific spelling)

1. Use a tripod.
2. Position the camera so the 'nodal' point of the lens is over the pivot. (more later)
3. do about 30% photo overlap.
4. shoot in portrait mode. (vertical)
5. Point the camera level (if you don't it will induce more distortions and be harder to line up later)
6. Use close to a normal/slight telephoto lens, I like 50-85mm, but have had good (amature luck) with a 135mm. Wide angles I find tougher to line up.
7. Get some stiching software, the plug in Photoshop, even CS2 I find woefully inadiqute.
8. The photo of the tower looks like the ground is fairly flat? When keeping the camera level this will give you a lot of sky, and emphasises the need to shoot vertically. If you can get hold of one a Canon 50 or 90mm Tilt/shift lens (they also make a 24) would be perfect for this location. you could keep the camera/film plane level and shift the lens to take in more of the ground and less sky.

9. Set your exposure manually otherwise if on auto the camera may set a different exposure for each frame giving you stiching headaches.

10. Early /late in day is the toughest time to shoot for a 360 because of the varying light conditions. I have found 120-240 deg panos much easier from an exposure comensation point of view.

11. mid-day on a nice overcast day would probably give the easiest images to stitch (exposure wise) though perhaps the most boring sky. :)

12. Shoot several test runs before going up, and get a feel for how much of the picture (s) need to be cropped out after stiching. Sometimes the stiched photos form a big bowtie and when you crop to a rectangle there is'nt much left.


To find the nodal point of the lens ... I'll try and recount a technique I read last year but haven't really tried yet. Set your camera up on a tripod, place a stick vertically about 2 meters (? I think) in front of the lens. Now looking through the viewfinder rotate the camera back and forth. The stick (foreground)will probably change position in relation to the background. Now slide the camera/lens back so the pivot point is somewhere under the lens. and try again. Repeat until the stick doesn't change position in relation to the background. Skip all that there is a much better explanation (and lots of tips) here: http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/tutorials/pano/index.html

I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I did buy their rail to help me with this problem.

Good luck with your shoot, sounds great!

PS just saw your lens list: I'd probably try the 50 & 85 1st, but in keeping the camera level you may need to go to the 28 to get enough fore-ground in the shots.

[tommykjensen]

Great tips, thanks. I will probably go for either three 120 or two 180 degree.

[tommykjensen]

As for shooting time if I wanted to shoot in the morning or afternoon would it make sense to shoot the west direction in the morning and east direction in the afternoon to keep the sun in the back?

[Wazza]

Shooting two times of the day could be interesting. Each set of 180* would be nice, and you would just need some photoshop skills to merge them together, when clearly they would be out of colour sync, and levels etc.

Last weekend, I tried my first 360 degree Pano, just for a laugh. I had photographed an event, and on the way back, I saw this nice rugged scene. I put it on M mode, scanned around, got a pretty decent shutter speed guide, and went shooting around. Very little experience with this, but the Canon utility did its wonders, and it didn't come out too bad.

http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/woodhill-pano.jpg

There's a nasty join line 1/4 from the left.
And it's actually about 340degrees, as I've cut out my car, which was parked on the road. :p
I could have kept it in, if it was a Ferrari, or something special. But I doubt everyone wants to see a Toyota.

This was handheld. But if you have a decent tripod, set it perfectly level, so you don't get a wave motion during movements, it should come out good.

Sounds like a fun thing to shoot. Did you discuss who is paying for their copy if they want it printed? Could cost a fair bit, if done large.

[tommykjensen]

The Zoo will be printing it themself since they want to add information about what can be seen in the city from the tower so no worries there.

I was just out shopping, I was checking out tripods with panorama heads. But the cost is :shock: about $500+ ! But I do have a good tripod it just lacks the ability to check it is in level so I bought one of these small thingies to put in the hotshoe to level the camera, I think that will do just fine though I had a bit of trouble handing over almost $40 for a little plastic thing with two bubbles inside.

Nice panorama :D

[osa_20D]

Have you checked http://www.tawbaware.com/
His guide for making panoramic head is not bad: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/panhead_d60.htm
I have used the Arcsoft quite alott and find it vastly superior to Canons suplied SW ...

My 2c

[Beeclose]

Have a look at the LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE Web site He is an expert and has a lot of tutorial pages, there is one on Stitching in Photoshop , it could help

[RichardtheSane]

SO much good info here already Tommy.
My addition is I recommend trying to use the 50mm if possible.

For me this is the panarama lens

[tommykjensen]

SO much good info here already Tommy.
My addition is I recommend trying to use the 50mm if possible.

For me this is the panarama lens

Yeah I am sucking all the info to me and try to apply it.

I went on a little reckon today to test which lens I should use and to see if I could get an idea as to how much space there are in the tower. I sure hope that it is possible to take the photographs from inside the dome at the top of the tower because on the outside on the roof I think there is only about 50 cm to walk on http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/smilies/scared07.gif

Anyway here are 3 photos shot with my Tokina 17 mm, Canon 28 mm and Canon 50 mm, all shot on A-dep and using all focus points. These are just to see what kind of view each lens will give me. I also testet all tree lenses in Av from lowest aperture to 14 to see which aperture would be best to use.

http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/photohtml.php?n=zootower_17mm.jpg
http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/photohtml.php?n=zootower_28mm.jpg
http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/photohtml.php?n=zootower_50mm.jpg

and combined in one

http://photo.klein-jensen.dk/photohtml.php?n=zootower_172850mm.jpg

[RichardtheSane]

Looking at those I am thinking the 28 would possibly be a better option now. It gives more foregroud to play with - but you could also be affected more by the issued parallax will present too.

I would recommend trying to stich some images from your lenses before you start. That would give you a better idea of what sort of lens distortion you will have to cope with too. Lens distortion is a bad thing on pano's

[PeterTaylor]

Hi
For software I use - Panorama Tools by Helmut Dersch's. I also use a later-generation of the pano12.dll file that works better than Dersch's last version. I use this with PTGui software as a front-end for Panorama Tools.

At present I don’t use anything like a special Panoramic Head, Just use a normal Manfrotto Tripod with a Manfrotto 141RC head.

I shoot in landscape mode and not portrait, as the fixing for my tripod mount is central on the base of the camera, so when you pan with the camera the axis point is in front of the film plane. I would overlap the images by minimum of 10% to a maximum of 30%.
I would normally work out the average of the exposure over the range of the panorama, then set the camera to manual exposure and set it to this exposure. I also shoot in RAW. I would then normally convert all the images which are going to make up one panorama with the same settings to large TIFF files. I normally then use PTGui to stitch these together, outputting the file as a layered PSD file. The image may need some small editing/blending, but this can be done in Photoshop, quiet easily.

Have a look at three panoramas I shot last month using this method. These are the first three done using the brief method I have described.

http://www.petertaylor-photographic.co.uk/photo.php?photo=545&exhibition=36&u=4583|0|...
http://www.petertaylor-photographic.co.uk/photo.php?photo=606&u=4585|1|...
http://www.petertaylor-photographic.co.uk/photo.php?photo=616&u=4585|2|...


Peter
Although I did not use a Canon to shoot these, the methodology should be the same

[UncleDoug]

Tommy,

The wider the lense the fewer images you will need to take.
However, if you are not using a head that allows you to position your rotation over the nodal point use a lense that will not pick up any of the tower you will be on. The close in foreground elements will make stitching a bit of a challenge.

Since you are in the higher latitudes, mid-day shooting will not give you much of an advantage. Just pick a point in your pano "sweep" that is mid-exposure to the hi & low points, set the exposure, lock everything down(no automatic anything) and away you go.

[jscotti]

I'm coming into this discussion a little late, but hopefully can still be helpful. I've used a program called Panorama Factory to stitch pans together. I like using portrait mode so you get a wider pan, though I've shot both ways, portrait and landscape. As long as the image doesn't include foreground elements, rotating the camera about the center of the lens is not quite as critical. Since you are at the top of a tower, the nearest element is probably at least 100 feet away, so you can probably get a way with a portrait mounted camera attached at the side with the tripod camera mount tilted 90 degrees. Getting the tripod level should be relatively easy, especially if the tripod has levels built in or if you have one of those hotshoe mounted levels (do they work if the camera is in portrait mode?). I use more like 50% overlap, putting something at the edge of one frame into the center of the next frame. Panorama Factory corrects the individual frames for the inherent distortion caused by the spherical view of the lens - which is especially noticeable in wide angle lens and also allows you to tweek the fade in the overlap between frames. Definitely set the camera in Manual mode and I'd lean towards the 50mm lens myself - you get a lot more detail depending on how large the print is - it takes more frames to do the 360 degree pan, but in the days of digital, that isn't really a problem. I think Panorama Factory can stitch more than just a single band of images so you can get a taller pan. I've seen a very high res image made (I think with PF) using a telephoto and very small patches stitched together.

Best of luck.

Jim.

[djtowle]

Here is a quick small pano I stiched in Photoshop CS2 from 3 tilt/shift lens images. I kept the camera stationary on the tripod and shifted the lense left right and center. If you zoom in you can see how the lens looses sharpness and has some purple fringing when shifted. Overall on a 19" wide print (the limit of my printer) I am quite happy with the image. You can see that photoshop does a pretty good job stitching images from this lens. I have not tried stiching images in CS2 made by rotateing the camera, but if I am out this weekend I will try to shoot a set. I was not impressed with the stiching in PS CS1.

Note the guy teleporting between the center and right image :)

http://www.pbase.com/djtowle/ts_pano

Canon 20D 24mm TSE lens.

[Beeclose]

Did You look at LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE web site , I had a look last night and it has a section on it, it is one of the best sites I have come across, the panoramic looks OK to me . EW.

[Poco]

I'm no expert with advice on how to take the shot, but autostitch does an amazing job with my no-tripod stitches. Much better than I've ever acheived with PS Photomerge or Canon Photostitch. I'm sure a tripod would help those two programs, but autostitch is amazing - and free.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html