Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: fdisilvestro on September 10, 2010, 02:28:03 pm

Title: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: fdisilvestro on September 10, 2010, 02:28:03 pm
One of my firsts attempts at stitched panoramas. The Aponwao fall is the highest waterfall (>100 m or 300 ft.) in the "Gran Sabana"  Region of Venezuela.

This area is part of "Canaima National Park" where the Angel fall is (It is outside Gran Sabana and comes from one of the flat top mountains known as "Tepuis")

Comments and critiques are very welcome.

Francisco

Title: Re: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: wolfnowl on September 10, 2010, 06:58:42 pm
Interesting... it may be because of the (primary) rainbow across the bottom, but with the perspective of the image it looks as though both the waterfall on the right and the river on the left are pouring into some unknown pool in the middle that is hidden by the rainbow.

Mike.
Title: Re: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: fdisilvestro on September 10, 2010, 07:32:33 pm
Thanks for your comment. The visual effect may be due to the way the images were taken or were stiched. (I mean, there is no pool, the river flows out from the waterfall)

The photos were taken with the camera pointing downward, handheld, and then merged with PS3 photomerge using "cilindrical" perspective.

Title: Re: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: francois on September 12, 2010, 12:11:03 pm
…but with the perspective of the image it looks as though both the waterfall on the right and the river on the left are pouring into some unknown pool in the middle that is hidden by the rainbow.
Agreed, it could  almost be an Escher image!

I quite like the photo and the strange perspective holds something mysterious or unconventional.
Title: Re: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: Dick Roadnight on September 12, 2010, 12:42:03 pm
Thanks for your comment. The visual effect may be due to the way the images were taken or were stiched. (I mean, there is no pool, the river flows out from the waterfall)

The photos were taken with the camera pointing downward, handheld, and then merged with PS3 photomerge using "cilindrical" perspective.
Some try to tell us that "viewpoint is perspective"... but anyone who has used a full-blown view camera to it's full potential will know that that is nonsense, and that perspective can be manipulated with rear movement of a view camera, or in the computer... stitching programs have to be told, or will guess, which way is up, and "project" an image accordingly.

It looks as if the FOV required here to use  a view camera with the back vertical would be well in excess of the 100 degrees you get with an Apo-Digitar 47XL, but it would be interesting to see two images of the same scene taken with a view camera and with cyl stitching to see how the projection and apparent perspective compares.

I stitched two pictures of a 2 story house and an attached 1 story garage, and the garage looked as big as the house!

Title: Re: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: fdisilvestro on September 12, 2010, 03:55:20 pm
Thanks for your comments. I´ll post here resized versions of the individual frames straight out of the camera plus an unedited and uncropped version using the auto or "perspective" mode of photomerge.

I agree that the image would look different if the back was vertical. In this case the camera was pointing downward (APS-C size sensor with a 17 mm lens).

As I mentioned in the OP, this is one of my firsts attempts at stitched panos, so I´m at the beginning of the learning curve here. I´ll appreciate any advise or recommendations on how to improve. Will I get better results if I take more frames with a longer focal length?

The "perspective" mode version gives a distorted view, at least in my opinion

Francisco
Title: Re: Aponwao fall - Venezuela
Post by: Dick Roadnight on September 12, 2010, 05:24:07 pm
Will I get better results if I take more frames with a longer focal length?

The "perspective" mode version gives a distorted view, at least in my opinion

Francisco
Thanks for the pictures... very interesting

¿Where is Bernard when you need him?

Yes, the perspective view looks distorted, but the right (waterfall) side looks more distorted.

A longer focal length should give you more detail, but I do not know how much it will affect the distortion/projection... normally, doubling the focal length makes distant hills twice as big... but, usually when you use a longer lens to get the distant hills larger, you move back so that the foreground subject still fills the view finder, but you could not do that here.

I am expecting to do some panos with 645/300mm... which might need a bigger computer than this laptop.

I hope that Bernard or someone else with experience of the different programs/projections will give  you more constructive advice.