UWA vs. stitching images (includes six 225x150 images)

Finnish version of this text is available in http://jylitalo.homeip​.net/blog/?p=104
However, here is english version, for those who don't understand finnish.

During last weekend, I made some experimentation on whether or not it would be possible to replace UWA lens with more normal focal range and simply take multiple potraits and combine them as landscape (or reverse), when you just want to grab maximal field of view.

Experimentation covered shots on three separate locations with Canon EOS 20D + Tokina's 12-24/4 lens. UWA part was done at 12mm and 24mm was used as "normal" focal length, since 35mm's field of view seemed to be bit too narrow for the job. Locations were Senate's Square, Railway Station and Kiasma in Helsinki.

Before the test, I would like to note that UWA is hard to replace, if
- you need that focal length for shooting moving subjects,
- you want to use polarizer and/or GND on lens
- you don't want to do any cropping afterwards
- you don't have time for postprocessing
- you need to play with UWA lenses perspective

My work flow for stitching images was following:
- lock WB in camera to sunny or something else than AWB
- take multiple readings and select shutter speed for f/8 aperture
- set camera into manual with f/8 and wanted shutter speed
- take shots
- use BibblePro to transform RAW into JPG
- use hugin to stitch images and save result into JPG
- use BibblePro to crop image into 3:2 (or 6x4) format.

This is bit more complicated, but until they write PhotoShop for Linux ... (or I switch my photoediting to my Mac Mini).

Now the part that most of you have probably been waiting for:

IMAGES

Senate's square (@12mm vs. 3x@24mm)

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For me, the main advantage of stitching, is when you need a high megapixel count for a big landscape print. Or, you want extreme angles, like 180°+ images.

I've done a 360° horizontal x 120° vertical panorama and it was weird!

And remember, even if you stitch 24mm images to have the same FOV of a 12mm,
you wil not have the same perspective. Sometimes, you need the effect of 12mm some times you don't. It's a matter of what you want in your picture.

But Congratulations, your stitch are very good! And demonstrate easily the main difference between 12mm and 24mm

Stitching gives more pixels.
Stitching can give you *fits* if you have parallax issues, so...
Stitching can be a pain requiring more expensive gear like a pano head (or limiting your shots, since you won't be able to take every shot you see without a pano head).

So.... UWA unless you need the pixels for printing.


And note that I do a decent amount of multi-image stitching, so I'm very familiar with what goes into it. In a nutshell I think that UWA is 5-10 times easier, and much more likely due to the parallax/pano-head issue.

But nothing beats a 220-megapixel print.

I use CS3 and photomerge is my favorite feature after ACR 4.1. I use it to increase pixel count, more images zoomed in. The technique allows me more room to crop, which my left side brain needs.

CS3 makes up for a lot of poor technique, you can handhold with an IS lens.