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Author Topic: Tilt Shift and Panoramas  (Read 56243 times)

fike

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« Reply #20 on: April 01, 2010, 04:11:03 pm »

I went back through my years of panoramic work, and I tried to figure out what focal length I used most frequently.  Generally speaking I have used focal lengths between 40mm and 70mm for most of my best work.  

For this reason, I figured that the 17mm and the 24mm TS-E lenses would not fit well with my desire to meld some of my pano techniques with new tilt/shift techniques.  I actually decided that the 45mm f/2.8 TS-E would be a better place to begin learning.  At half the cost and 85% the quality-level, I figure it is a better fit for the experimentation I want to do.  

I realize that it doesn't have the flexibility of tilting on an axis parallel to the shift without some minor modifications that aren't appropriate for the field, but that doesn't really bother me too much.  I think I might want to make them parallel, but that should be something I can tackle myself.

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stever

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« Reply #21 on: April 01, 2010, 05:51:58 pm »

that sounds about rite - mine are 50 to 100 on full frame

i think there's a thread on the 45 as a landscape lens not too long ago

why not rent a 24 and 45 from lensrentals.com for a week before making the investment?
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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« Reply #22 on: April 01, 2010, 08:35:50 pm »

Quote from: fike
I went back through my years of panoramic work, and I tried to figure out what focal length I used most frequently.  Generally speaking I have used focal lengths between 40mm and 70mm for most of my best work.

The focal length only determines the number of tiles for a given field of view, and thus the resollution per tile. Perspective is determined by your shooting position.

Quote
For this reason, I figured that the 17mm and the 24mm TS-E lenses would not fit well with my desire to meld some of my pano techniques with new tilt/shift techniques.  I actually decided that the 45mm f/2.8 TS-E would be a better place to begin learning.  At half the cost and 85% the quality-level, I figure it is a better fit for the experimentation I want to do.

I have both (and the 90mm), and use them depending on the desired output resolution. The 45mm is fine, but does exhibit chromatic aberration (which is well adjustable in the better Raw converters). The 24mm II is optically superior, plus the added in-field rotation capability between cross- and parallel tilt/shift, but the 45mm will still out-resolve it per tile due to it's larger magnification factor. The 24mm does exhibit extremely low distortion and flare, which may be important depending on the situation.

The 17mm seems to be a good solution in cramped situations, with restricted stitching opportunities, only.

Cheers,
Bart
« Last Edit: April 01, 2010, 08:36:54 pm by BartvanderWolf »
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fike

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« Reply #23 on: April 01, 2010, 09:08:47 pm »

Quote from: BartvanderWolf
The focal length only determines the number of tiles for a given field of view, and thus the resollution per tile. Perspective is determined by your shooting position.

Cheers,
Bart

Yeah. I am generally shooting to make prints around 24"x40" at 300 dpi.  That ends up being around two rows of five to seven images shot in portrait orientation on my cropped sensor camera.  

Depending on the overlap, with a 17mm lens that is well over 200 degrees of rotation--with the distortion of that wide a field of view, it would not be ideal for realistic rectilinear panoramic prints. It is just too wide in the print size I am targeting.

At 24mm it would still be near 180 degrees...very wide for every day panoramic work.

45mm, on the other hand gets more around a 90 or 100 degree field of view with six or seven portrait frames.

With the 45mm lens I can always go wider by shooting more frames.  I can't do the same with the wide angle versions.  

The 90mm looks intriguing. I see that it has very high IQ, but all these lenses are at least quite good, so I figure for my first foray into TS, 45mm seems the best middle-ground (at $1,200 I don't want to call it a compromise).
« Last Edit: April 01, 2010, 09:10:51 pm by fike »
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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« Reply #24 on: April 01, 2010, 10:01:18 pm »

Quote from: fike
Yeah. I am generally shooting to make prints around 24"x40" at 300 dpi.  That ends up being around two rows of five to seven images shot in portrait orientation on my cropped sensor camera.

The amount of overlap, and crop versus full 24x36mm frame, are important parameters. I shoot with a Canon 1Ds3, but the desired output resolution should determine your choice.  

Quote
Depending on the overlap, [...] 45mm, on the other hand gets more around a 90 or 100 degree field of view with six or seven portrait frames.

These are convenience versus quality factors that only you can decide on. Some jobs require the ability to shoot fast, others require to shoot with an enlargement capability/potential (when in doubt, go for resolution, i.e. longer focal length, if subject movement allows).

Quote
With the 45mm lens I can always go wider by shooting more frames.  I can't do the same with the wide angle versions.  

The 90mm looks intriguing. I see that it has very high IQ, but all these lenses are at least quite good, so I figure for my first foray into TS, 45mm seems the best middle-ground (at $1,200 I don't want to call it a compromise).

This is a recent 244 degree horizontal FOV, cylindrical projection, TS-E 24mm II one (light changes fast around dawn time and the FOV angle and light quality gradient is extreme, hence the choice for 8 tiles with the 24mm). Here is another 5-tile one with the 45mm I shot that same morning as the fog was clearing, but the FOV was determined by my choice of magnification capability and requirements for a FOV angle.

Cheers,
Bart
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pfigen

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« Reply #25 on: April 08, 2010, 02:24:47 am »

Here's three horizontal shots on a 1dsMKIII with a 17mm T/S. Cropped a little off the bottom. I just shifted and did not make any adjustment for lens height. Align layers in Ps was all I used. This gives a very very wide image. I've done a bunch of images stitched like this and they seem to work like a charm every time.
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mike gove

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« Reply #26 on: May 07, 2010, 01:24:36 pm »

Quote from: tesfoto
NO, dont do that if you care about image quality.

Works sort of ok with the 24TS II but not with the 17 at all.

TES

Really?  Most confused as I have been using the 17mm + 1.4 Kenko for quite a while and had really good results.  In the real world, I can't tell the difference between that combo and my regular 24mm TS-E II.  Certainly no clients have complained and the prints have been pretty large.


Mike.
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AlanG

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« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2010, 07:00:47 pm »

I DO NOT shift the lens when shooting panoramas whether they are single row or multi row. Whether they are made hand held or on a panohead. As a matter of fact, Autopano will often produce unacceptably bad results when working on shifted images.  Other stitchers may work ok with them.  Autopano has the ability to correct for convergence from tilting up and also can make a rectilinear image from a panoramic shot (within reason.)  And of course you can adjust for convergence in post if stitching with another program that doesn't do this. Shifting a lens on a pano head will throw it out of whack if you move it off of the rotation axis.  Thus buying a shift lens for this application would be a waste.

Here is an example of several 17mm images stitched together in order to get this entire building in this "impossibly wide" rectilinear picture. This was shot hand held using the 17 TSE unshifted and a 5DII. The resulting file is a 195 megabyte RGB 8 bit tif.

The last image is using the 17mm TSE lens fully shifted and shows what that would take in from the same spot.  So I'd guess that my stitched image is about what one would get from a 10mm or wider shift lens
« Last Edit: May 17, 2010, 11:03:11 am by AlanG »
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mike gove

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« Reply #28 on: May 17, 2010, 03:31:35 am »

Quote from: AlanG
Shifting a lens on a pano head will throw it out of whack if you move it off of the rotation axis.  Thus buying a shift lens for this application would be a waste.

Just a question; in your example, would shifting UP to correct verticals then using the pano to get the width not work?  No movement from nodal point and full benefit of corrected perspective distortion rather than relying on software.

I am only just starting to work with panos so am looking for all the help possible

Mike
« Last Edit: May 17, 2010, 03:32:32 am by mike gove »
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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« Reply #29 on: May 17, 2010, 04:25:18 am »

Quote from: AlanG
Shifting a lens on a pano head will throw it out of whack if you move it off of the rotation axis.  Thus buying a shift lens for this application would be a waste.

Hi Alan,

That's not necessarily the case. Sure, Autopano has problems, Photoshop probably as well. However, programs like PTAssembler (and I assume PTGUI) and Hugin can correct for a shifted lens with the 'd' and 'e' parameters. While they can be found by the optimizer, the solution becomes more difficult to find automatically. Therefore is helps to make a note of the amount of shift and apply it as calculated pixel dimensions. For example, a 5mm shift on a 6.4 micron pitch sensor is 781.25 pixels. Works like a charm.

Quote from: mike gove
Just a question; in your example, would shifting UP to correct verticals then using the pano to get the width not work?  No movement from nodal point and full benefit of corrected perspective distortion rather than relying on software.

Mike,

With the right software, not a real problem, just some inconvenience due to a more difficult solution finding to what's called an ill posed problem (multiple solutions possible, only 1 of which is correct).

Cheers,
Bart
« Last Edit: May 17, 2010, 04:29:36 am by BartvanderWolf »
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AlanG

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« Reply #30 on: May 17, 2010, 11:00:38 am »

I guess it is pretty counter intuitive to me that one would even consider using a pano head and then rotate vertically or horiontally with the lens off the rotational axis.  But perhaps this can be compensated for.  In any case unless there is an object that is near to the camera, it won't matter as these kinds of stitched images can even be produced hand held.
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mike gove

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« Reply #31 on: May 17, 2010, 11:03:34 am »

Quote from: AlanG
I guess it is pretty counter intuitive to me that one would even consider using a pano head and then rotate vertically or horiontally with the lens off the rotational axis.  But perhaps this can be compensated for.  In any case unless there is an object that is near to the camera, it won't matter as these kinds of stitched images can even be produced hand held.

True - stitching software is getting better by the month.

I guess my feeling was, if you are doing a simple horizontal pano, getting the verticals 100% correct with a TS lens first then panning should be better than the s/w trying to fix verticals later.  However, I have yet to play with this in the real world so all theory for me
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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« Reply #32 on: May 17, 2010, 11:58:42 am »

Quote from: AlanG
I guess it is pretty counter intuitive to me that one would even consider using a pano head and then rotate vertically or horiontally with the lens off the rotational axis.

Hi Alan,

The lens is not off the rotational axis (the one that matters). A typical scenario is with the camera in portrait orientation, shifted up to capture height with perfect verticals. Not shifting up would put the horizon in the image center, not a very useful setting in most cases. Then a horizontal rotation through the entrance pupil will allow to get whatever width is required, while maintaining perfect verticals.

Cheers,
Bart
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AlanG

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« Reply #33 on: May 17, 2010, 04:40:08 pm »

Quote from: BartvanderWolf
Hi Alan,

The lens is not off the rotational axis (the one that matters). A typical scenario is with the camera in portrait orientation, shifted up to capture height with perfect verticals. Not shifting up would put the horizon in the image center, not a very useful setting in most cases. Then a horizontal rotation through the entrance pupil will allow to get whatever width is required, while maintaining perfect verticals.

Cheers,
Bart


One could just as likely shifted the lens to the left or to the right.  It's the same principle - rotate left or right on one axis for stitching vs. tilting up and down and stitching on the other.  Yes if you really are determined to use a shift and then stitch, you can probably make it work somehow. I used to do this too, but sometimes Autopano would make a very weird horizon when I worked from lenses that were shifted upwards and sometimes it would do a good job.  It is probably much harder to get it to stitch from shorter lenses that are shifted a lot.

Regarding the stitched image I posted above, I also have 5 shots that were made with the lens perpendicular to the ground and shifted all the way up. I tried stitching those images in CS4 and Autopano and couldn't get it to work.  So even though I own 7 TS-E and PC lenses, I am not tempted at this point to use the shift when stitching.  If I need more resolution, I can simply use a longer lens and composite more images. This is why I have a two axis pano-head that lets me shoot several rows.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2010, 04:52:57 pm by AlanG »
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JonathanBenoit

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« Reply #34 on: June 02, 2010, 09:36:17 am »

Quote from: AlanG
I DO NOT shift the lens when shooting panoramas whether they are single row or multi row. Whether they are made hand held or on a panohead. As a matter of fact, Autopano will often produce unacceptably bad results when working on shifted images.  Other stitchers may work ok with them.  Autopano has the ability to correct for convergence from tilting up and also can make a rectilinear image from a panoramic shot (within reason.)  And of course you can adjust for convergence in post if stitching with another program that doesn't do this. Shifting a lens on a pano head will throw it out of whack if you move it off of the rotation axis.  Thus buying a shift lens for this application would be a waste.

Here is an example of several 17mm images stitched together in order to get this entire building in this "impossibly wide" rectilinear picture. This was shot hand held using the 17 TSE unshifted and a 5DII. The resulting file is a 195 megabyte RGB 8 bit tif.

The last image is using the 17mm TSE lens fully shifted and shows what that would take in from the same spot.  So I'd guess that my stitched image is about what one would get from a 10mm or wider shift lens

This is the oddest thing I have ever seen. I have never seen "pics" so small. Makes me think there is something wrong with them. Everything looks good at that size on the web. What are you hiding?
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fike

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« Reply #35 on: June 07, 2010, 03:20:26 pm »

I ended up getting the 24mm TS-E f/3.5 II.  It is easily the sharpest lens I have ever worked with.  Post-processing sharpening makes already sharp images amazing.  

I have been able to do some hybridized tilt-shift-pano work.

I have used a spherical head (operating mostly in a cylindrical mode) to make two row panos where the lower row is tilted 2 degrees and shifted -5mm while the upper row is untilted and shifted +10mm.  This technique is challenging to work with because the bottom row focus plane (tilted) needs to intersect the top row focal plane (untilted) in a visually logical place. This isn't always easy.  I'll try to remember to post some examples.

PTGUI was able to handle these rotated and shifted TS stitches without problems.
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Mike K

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« Reply #36 on: June 11, 2010, 03:32:26 pm »

Quote from: fike
Do people do this with an L bracket and a focusing rail turned sideways like you would for a stereo photographic setup?  I have a bunch of RRS pano head stuff, but I don't immediately have a way to move the camera vertically to accommodate vertical shifts.  Is this amount of precision needed when you can use a stitcher to clean up minor misalignments?

You simply drop your ballhead clamp in the slot to a vertical alignment.  Assuming you are using an Arca Swiss camera plate, the camera can now be in portrait mode and move vertically for vertical flat stitch panos.  If you have an L bracket on your camera you can keep the camera in landscape orientation while moving it vertically for flat stitched panos or vertically rotate it for traditional rotated panos.  

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elf

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« Reply #37 on: July 31, 2010, 03:37:02 am »

Quote from: fike
I ended up getting the 24mm TS-E f/3.5 II.  It is easily the sharpest lens I have ever worked with.  Post-processing sharpening makes already sharp images amazing.  

I have been able to do some hybridized tilt-shift-pano work.

I have used a spherical head (operating mostly in a cylindrical mode) to make two row panos where the lower row is tilted 2 degrees and shifted -5mm while the upper row is untilted and shifted +10mm.  This technique is challenging to work with because the bottom row focus plane (tilted) needs to intersect the top row focal plane (untilted) in a visually logical place. This isn't always easy.  I'll try to remember to post some examples.

PTGUI was able to handle these rotated and shifted TS stitches without problems.

Do you have any images to share?
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fike

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« Reply #38 on: August 04, 2010, 12:37:22 pm »

Quote from: elf
Do you have any images to share?

As my learning curve with this lens proceeds, I should have some new work this week.  I've taken hundreds of experimental shots, but nothing yet that I am particularly proud to show.

I have to say, this is not an easy lens to master.  I have spent a lot of time trying to work it into my shooting style, and its lack of auto focus is a problem for me.  Manually focusing well, is not as easy as it may appear.  I generally use the focus, recompose, shoot method with the AF decoupled from the shutter button.  I also tend to move around a lot when I shoot.  for that reason, a normal zoom tends to be easier for my style.  If I find that the lens stays home too often, I may sell it and get a 16-35 F/2.8 L II as a more flexible alternative.

With all that said, one thing I know about a new lens (outside of the normal range) is that you don't instantly create excellent quality (technically and artistically) with any new lens.  After I got my 100-400 I was initially disappointed because I didn't know how to get the most out of it.  Some times it takes time to master new equipment, particularly something as complex as a tilt shift.
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OldRoy

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« Reply #39 on: August 05, 2010, 07:01:44 am »

May I be so bold as to introduce a question that I've been unable to resolve so far. I'm still waiting for NPS to answer it. I hope it's not too far off-topic or ill-informed for this august company (pardon the pun, too...)

The last Nikon Pro mag had a piece on the Agnos JMBS - "Jumbo MultiBigShoot" (sic) For anyone who hasn't seen the article it's a lens clamp for the Nikon PCE range of lenses enabling the camera body to be shifted rather than the lens barrel. This - I assume - is to enable stitching without parallax errors or the distortions seen when stitching cylindrical panos even when rotating the lens about the entrance pupil. As such it seems to me like a pretty good idea. I believe it's about Eu 300.

I've previously read a few threads here and there about stitching shots from T/S lenses. As someone who does quite a bit of modest interior shooting (usually VR panos) I'm intrigued by this idea despite having no experience with T/S lenses, much less View Cameras. I currently use the 14-24 a lot for (non-VR) interiors and I'd be interested to know the answers to a couple of questions if anyone would be kind enough to enlighten me.

1) How would the horizontal fields of view compare between the 14mm end of my existing lens and a 3-shot stitch using the Nikon 24mm T/S in landscape orientation on the Agnos clamp?
2) Is the Agnos device intended, as I imagine, primarily to eliminate parallax errors? From what I've read on LL stitching shifted shots is quite a common technique (hitherto shifting lens, and thus entrance pupil, not body I assume) Hence the Agnos clamp?
3) Anyone got any other comments on this device?

Roy

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