Never done any stitching

[hasselbladfan]

How the hell do I start? What software do I use?
What is the best lens to use?

[graeme]

How the hell do I start? What software do I use?
What is the best lens to use?

1. Hold your camera in portrait orientation.

2. Take some overlapping shots of the scene you want to capture (about 20 - 25% overlap ).

3. Lightroom's pano merge is pretty good but if that doesn't work try Photoshop's merge function.

4. Try the lenses you've already got ( but probably not the very wide angle ones ).

5. Bernard Languillier is the LuLa Stitching Guru, check out:
https://luminous-landscape.com/stitching-an-advanced-aproach/

6. Ignore replies from forum member's who are obviously having a bad day.

Have fun.

Graeme

[Torbjörn Tapani]

Rotate the lens around the nodal point.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Rotate the lens around the nodal point.

That's necessary only in some, restricted circumstances. Most of the time, just taking overlapping shots, even handheld, and feeding them to LR, PS, AutoPano or PTGui will produce excellent results.

Jeremy

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Rotate the lens around the nodal point.

More correctly, rotate around the entrance pupil of the lens (AKA the No-Parallax-Point or NPP), the apparent position of the aperture as viewed from the front of the lens. This is  important if the image has significant amounts of predictable detail in the foreground that needs to remain in the same relative position as the background features. Casual shots may tolerate a more sloppy shooting style.

Cheers,
Bart

[Kevin Raber]

Just do a search on this site.  Here's one I did a while back.  Doesn't get much easier.

https://luminous-landscape.com/having-fun-with-panoramas/

[hasselbladfan]

1. Hold your camera in portrait orientation.

2. Take some overlapping shots of the scene you want to capture (about 20 - 25% overlap ).

3. Lightroom's pano merge is pretty good but if that doesn't work try Photoshop's merge function.

4. Try the lenses you've already got ( but probably not the very wide angle ones ).

5. Bernard Languillier is the LuLa Stitching Guru, check out:
https://luminous-landscape.com/stitching-an-advanced-aproach/

Thanks. Very useful. I had not thought of the portrait view.

[hasselbladfan]

Just do a search on this site.  Here's one I did a while back.  Doesn't get much easier.

https://luminous-landscape.com/having-fun-with-panoramas/

Thanks, Kevin. I am going to give it a try this weekend with the autumn leaves.

[PeterAit]

why would anyone waste their time explaining this to you when you've obviously done zero research.  Heck I don't really even have time to say this much

Are you competing in a jerk contest? It is too precious that you include a statement that you don't have time to "say this much" in a post that you obviously had time to write.

[BobShaw]

The entrance pupil of the lens is not the nodal point (unless it's a pinhole camera).

Rotating around the nodal point is great if you are shooting something that is obvious if distorted, like buildings. For most landscapes and similar subjects nobody will ever know if you carried the tripod and micro adjustment device up the mountain, even on a metre wide print.

Stitched panoramas are often an overused fad, (a bit like long exposures). I have seen photos of things that the photographer has raved about it being a 10 shot pano and my reaction was that a good photographer would have taken it in one.

[Torbjörn Tapani]

You learn something everyday. You are absolutely right. You will still find the term nodal point in a lot of tutorials about stitching, but it is the no parallax point being discussed. Someone should probably tell Nodal Ninja :-)

[BernardLanguillier]

Stitched panoramas are often an overused fad, (a bit like long exposures). I have seen photos of things that the photographer has raved about it being a 10 shot pano and my reaction was that a good photographer would have taken it in one.

Are you referring to the usage of panoramic aspect ratio, or to the usage of stitching as a technique meant to increase resolution?

Back to the original question, in terms of software, I find Autopano Pro/Giga to be the best compromise between ease of use and quality of results.





Stitching was used here to increase resolution (around 100 megapixels if I recall) in order to enable larger prints. The aspect ratio is close to 4x5 one.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Torbjörn Tapani]

Stitching is just a tool. http://www.samhurdphotography.com/miscellany/epic-portraits

[BobShaw]

Are you referring to the usage of panoramic aspect ratio, or to the usage of stitching as a technique meant to increase resolution?
Stitching was used here to increase resolution (around 100 megapixels if I recall) in order to enable larger prints. The aspect ratio is close to 4x5 one.

Panoramic aspect ratio can be achieved simply by cropping. The only reason to use stitching is to give a greater resolution image when needed or to give a wider angle.
I am not sure what the purpose of the two images posted is. If the purpose is to demonstrate the benefits of high resolution then IMO they failed. How much resolution do you need for leaves and blurred water?
I believe that you would have got a better shot with a single click simply because things like leaves, clouds, water all move between shots. If you look at images by Ken Duncan of trees then you can see the leaves are crisp on the other side of the valley. They were taken with a single shot on a panoramic camera.

A single shot from a 20MP camera can printed at a metre wide and most buyers would not notice a lack of resolution unless it was pointed out. I stitch images, but there has to be a reason and usually it is a wider angle. I just use Photomerge in Photoshop.

[BernardLanguillier]

I am not sure what the purpose of the two images posted is. If the purpose is to demonstrate the benefits of high resolution then IMO they failed. How much resolution do you need for leaves and blurred water?

The purpose, as mentioned, was to demonstrate the usage of stitching for non panoramic aspect ratio images.

My personal view is that landscape containing leaves is, on the contrary, one of the subjects needing the highest possible resolution. Without that they look like a blurry mess to me. It really depends on the level of technical quality you shoot for relative to the media you print on, the sizes you are targeting,... This pretty much ends up being the defining factor for the whole photographic approach. Just like some people think they need 8x10, others a 80mp phase one back, I think there is a need for more and find it fun to try to achieve more. The next sample is another stitch captured in the same location with a 400mm f2.8.



As far as the water fall image, does it only contain blurred water? Do you truly believe that blurred water is what makes this image work (at least work for me)? That's not at all how I vizualized it in front of the scene, that's not at all how I designed the image, selected the point of peak focus,... The whole image is designed around the contrast between the extreme resolution of the sharp areas as opposed to the blurred water. The water serves the sharpness.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Colorado David]

While I don't expect the OP is a beginner in photography, this sub-forum is called Beginner's Questions and is described by the following:

A "safe house" where beginners can ask the most basic of questions about photography.
Knowledgable members answering should remember what things were like when they were starting out.

If you don't have time to answer, or to answer cordially, just don't post.

[Tarnash]

Well said David!  Research is, to me at least, one of the pleasures but, unless you know who to trust, it can also be an overwhelming challenge just to work out which of the conflicting information or contradictory sources to believe. From my limited experience of pano stitching the major lessons have been:  1. Prepare well, make and follow a check list to ensure you haven't missed anything.  2. Time spent in prep is time saved in post.  3. Enjoy the challenge!   

[graeme]

2. Time spent in prep is time saved in post. 

Good advice for life in general.

[pcgpcg]

3. Lightroom's pano merge is pretty good but if that doesn't work try Photoshop's merge function.

The most common beginner problem is not providing enough overlap. 25% is minimum. I usually use 33%. If there is not enough overlap for either of the above to work, the go into PS, create a new file that is large enough to encompass all the images you want to stitch, then copy and paste the images into the new file and manually align them. You can do this precisely by zooming in and using the arrow keys.

This method only aligns pixels, it does not blend differences in hue, illuminance, etc. due to different exposures. If you need to fix that then use graduated filters to manually blend.

[jferrari]

Time spent in prep is time saved in post. Enjoy the challenge!

I'll offer this, being the consummate contrarian that I am: Ansel Adams said: "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

Some other famous person at work on a movie set said: "We'll fix it in post!"    - Jim