Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: dchew on September 25, 2014, 06:53:37 am
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Very nice article Bernard, and nice selection of images that challenge traditional limitations on "stitch-able" scenes.
One point that is obvious but not brought out in the article is that stitching allows one to do more with fewer lenses. This is a real benefit in MF. I recently took two lenses with me into the mountains, a 60mm and 90mm. Although I stitch differently than you by sliding the back in my Alpa, stitching with the back vertical gives me virtually a 28-60mm range (in equivalent 135 format).
So it increases the versatility of what you carry, in effect lightening your load. In your case, the Otus is a relatively heavy 55mm lens, but your creative use of that lens turns it into a svelt 15-55mm wonder-zoom.
Dave
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Thanks Dave, very kind of you.
It is indeed a very good point that I should have mentioned.
That's exactly how I look at the weight and cost of the Otus and it does indeed also apply to other forms of stitching.
Cheers,
Bernard
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I have enjoyed both the stitching articles which mentions some techniques I might not have attempted with it.
Stitching is a lot more flexible than many people realise; I have stitched multi row landscape images handheld with different focus points and exposures since the D700 was released without any advanced use of specialist software or anything other than a tripod levelling base. I often use different exposures in the same stitch and occasionally aperture priority when the light is fleeting. I do usually take a one frame 'safe' shot first if I plan to do anything a bit risky though.
I'd also much rather stitch a few more frames deciding the crop in my own time in post when relaxed than kick myself later/lose too much res. Maybe I'm nuts because while people are complaining about 36MP files I still stitch with my D800E.
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Thanks for a very informative article. I have stitched for years with PTGui and appreciate its workflow. I've tried Auto Pano but never achieved the easy results that I could get with PTGui. Your comparison between the two was very helpful and, once again, I'll give Auto Pano a try. Also I've never tried changing the focus from near to far.... that's something for sure I'm going to experiment with.
Victor
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Thanks a lot Bernard, wonderful article.
Alan
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very informative article, thank you Bernard! I'm sure I'll try a few of your suggestions!
One challenge for me with panorama-stitching is sometimes to previsualize the exact composition (since I can't see the final image until I'm back at my computer).
To help with that I sometimes do "previs" with my smartphone's auto-pano-mode.
The image quality of my phone is terrible :) but it's a quick way for me to help with finding an interesting composition (camera position/height/angle, include foreground elements or not, etc.)
cheers,
Tilman
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Thanks very much Bernard, very interesting and very timely. And your Flickr stream is very, very enjoyable.
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Stitching is a lot more flexible than many people realise; I have stitched multi row landscape images handheld with different focus points and exposures … without any advanced use of specialist software or anything other than a tripod levelling base.
Me too, but sometimes being able to attempt such a thing feels more like a curse than a blessing :-)
Currently I'm struggling to put together about 20 exposures (selected from about 120). The upper part was easy enough, 6 exposures put together with stitching software and exposure blending. The lower part is a mass of lupin and paintbrush; in-focus and out, from exposure to exposure as the breeze rippled across the hillside. The stitching software had problems with that, so I've been hand-blending the larger blooms.
I'll be happy when I finish this one, it's taken far too long!
But being able to put together a 60MP picture, with just a Sony A35, will feel like a blessing once it's done ;-)
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Thank you for the nice words my friends.
Glad the article could be of some help. :)
Cheers,
Bernard
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The desire to stitch (for me) is driven by a desire to get more data with which to do a larger 300dpi print.
| Camera | MP | X Pixels | Y Pixels | Width " | Height " |
| Canon 5D3 | 22 | 5760 | 3840 | 19 | 12 |
| Nikon D810 | 36 | 7360 | 4912 | 24 | 16 |
| Pentaz 645Z | 51 | 8256 | 6192 | 27 | 20 |
| Phase One IQ260 | 60 | 8984 | 6732 | 30 | 22 |
| Phase One IQ280 | 80 | 10328 | 7760 | 34 | 25 |
If I'm putting something up on the wall, my goal is to have the image be at least 36" wide. The IQ280 is close enough that I'd probably be happy with that but as an amateur, such equipment is not in my hands. That then leaves stitching which works most of the time. When it doesn't work is when there's too much motion - waves in water are the worst, following by quickly moving clouds and trees. Which reminds me of something I'd like to see in LR...
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Hello bernard,
Thank you for the interesting article...
I use ptGui at the moment for making a panorama that is really time consuming...
It is based on 72 D800 images made with a 85mm lens - sharp over the full range 85cm-infinity...
I use helicon focus as you do but i have plenty of photoshop handwork to do..afterwards....still..
I try to get a hyperrealistic image of a few meters wide at 300dpi...
I think ptGui is a wonderful program using all the cores of my mac pro and now even the GPU !- really fast indeed...( an example to other software engineers... adobe..? )
I never succeeded in getting the points as close as you do, but i believe the program says for stitches below 0.5 pixels ..too good to be true... and i think it is meant serious.
what i have learned from your piece is about the vignetting- never looked into that...but i will..
I tend to straighten my pano's in an other way... numerical transform ... very simple and powerful
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+1
very fast - it takes me about 10x longewr, but from the cold you are in i can imagine you like working fast... also the sky chnging and everything....
Must say that i like the basis photoshop stitch software too.. often you get a decent panorama even if you did not work precise during the shots....
The result is never pixel exact but for a lot of pano's that is not a problem.
PT Gui is very precise but demands from the shots the same precision...
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Thank you for the nice words my friends.
Glad the article could be of some help.
It's very interesting, Bernard. Could you perhaps give a short critique of the pros and cons of PTGui and Autopano? I use the latter, mainly because I came across it first; are there situations in which PTGui does a better job?
Jeremy
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Thanks for a informative article Bernard. I often stitch to get a wider angle of view, which as Dave mentioned, gives me the equivalent of a lens I don't have.
Like dreed, I also like to print at the native resolution of my printer (360 ppi in my case). So for me the 40 MP can be printed at a maximum paper size of 17x22; stitching allows me much larger prints when desired and possible. Speaking of possible, below is an image I would love to have stitched for a wider view. The water I have learned to deal with in many cases, but the clouds were moving so fast that multiple exposures were not successful.
Tom
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+1
very fast - it takes me about 10x longewr, but from the cold you are in i can imagine you like working fast... also the sky chnging and everything....
Must say that i like the basis photoshop stitch software too.. often you get a decent panorama even if you did not work precise during the shots....
The result is never pixel exact but for a lot of pano's that is not a problem.
PT Gui is very precise but demands from the shots the same precision...
The RRS PG-02 head helps working fast. I control it with my right hand and have the cable release in my left hand. 2-3 sec per frame is pretty typical.
It can be even faster when doing DoF stacking when I tune focus with one hand and release with the other too.
Cold helps stay focused. :)
Cheers,
Bernard
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It's very interesting, Bernard. Could you perhaps give a short critique of the pros and cons of PTGui and Autopano? I use the latter, mainly because I came across it first; are there situations in which PTGui does a better job?
Jeremy
Jeremy,
I am bit reluctant to do so because I see them as complemntary, plus I cannot claim to have in depth expertise with every single feature of both apps.
But as a rule of thumb, here are IMHO the strong points of each app:
- PTgui: great control of control points, multi-layer output is ideal to tune blending masks in OS, best interpolation algos result in highest image quality, amazingly fast output with fast GPUs, ability to position automatically featureless frames on a grid (great for high res panos with large portions of featureless skies), great light fall of correction,
- Autopano: best totally automatic experience, best automatic adjustement of horizon/verticals, best pattern matching for subjects with low contrast features.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Must say that i like the basis photoshop stitch software too.. often you get a decent panorama even if you did not work precise during the shots....
The result is never pixel exact but for a lot of pano's that is not a problem.
PT Gui is very precise but demands from the shots the same precision...
I tried the other two maybe 5 years ago (so earlier versions) and PS seemed to do best with exposure and focus point changes with landscapes so I stuck with it. Microsoft ICE was also excellent but couldn't deal with 16bit files.
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Microsoft ICE was also excellent but couldn't deal with 16bit files.
Support for input images with 8 or 16 bits per component (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/) 2011
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Thank you Bernard. Many good tips that I were unaware of.
I have stayed away from getting a proper GPU before but may be getting into more video and when stitching also can benefit I might have to upgrade the computer. Any recommendations on GPUs? What to look for?
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Yet another enthusiastic thanks. I guess it's time for me to start using PTGUI. But first a maybe-dumb question:
Most of my stitches are rather simple: they're from Monochrom files of landscapes, with no critical verticals as in architectural work. And most are three or four files. So I wonder: why isn't PS CC 2014 Photomerge the basic or first-try starting point? It seems to handle all but the most difficult cases and has become pretty sophisticated in the way it blends adjacent frames.
Kirk
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Hi Kirk,
Sure, why not try PS if you own a license already? It is likely to do a perfect job for your applications.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Thank you Bernard. Many good tips that I were unaware of.
I have stayed away from getting a proper GPU before but may be getting into more video and when stitching also can benefit I might have to upgrade the computer. Any recommendations on GPUs? What to look for?
Hi Torbjörn,
Any recent GPU offering OpenCL support in your OS of choice should work I assume, but you may want to check with the targeted software support team whether there is any known issues.
I am using the Dual D700 cards of my Mac Pro 2013.
My pleasure.
Cheers,
Bernard
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hello Bernard,
Thank you for pointing me to the RRS equipment- at the moment i use my own RRS-panorama head made from RRS components, but this one looks very sturdy and fast. Also it eliminates extra connections that could lead to less precision.
I yesterday did some test to see if a 45mmPCE using its full circle has about the same quality as the stitched Sigma art 50mm... and Sigma won hands down...
So i can say i believe in your approach although not everything can be stitched...
about using ptGUI i have some questions...
PtGui calculates the lensdistortion... ( i always make a 360 sphere to exactly calculate the nodalpoint-distortion etc...)
Do you work from a former calculated lensprofile or just let you ptGUI go from scratch
and on stichtching - what blending method and interpolater do you like best... i have noticed the lanczos 16 has the better details...but takes longer..
for blending i use the standard ptGUI blending
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Bernard,
Thank you for the excellent article and sharing your hard earned knowledge on the subject.
For landscape and seascape purposes I'm nervous. It seems to me even a slight breeze would result in ghosting artifacts of branches, grasses. Not to mention the issues with water and waves.
This would not be much of a concern if one shot few panels with a lower res sensor. But I would consider stitching primarily to generate a very high res image with a D810 for example. I would assume this would magnify ghosting artifacts.
Clearly you have come to terms with this issue. I suppose my question is when you rule out pano as an option due to potential ghosting/subject movement?
Secondly, I generally maintain very strict image stabilization techniques; heavy RRS tripod weighted with my backpack, wireless remote, mirror up with EFC, sandbag on camera if needed. This would not be possible with a handheld stitched image. Based on your images I'm sure you take the same precautions when possible. How and when do you decide forgoing such stabilization is worth the blur/benefit ratio?
I hope my questions make sense and again thanks for the awesome (and free) article.
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about using ptGUI i have some questions...
PtGui calculates the lensdistortion... ( i always make a 360 sphere to exactly calculate the nodalpoint-distortion etc...)
Do you work from a former calculated lensprofile or just let you ptGUI go from scratch
and on stichtching - what blending method and interpolater do you like best... i have noticed the lanczos 16 has the better details...but takes longer..
for blending i use the standard ptGUI blending
Hi there,
On distorsion I just let PTGui do its magic, or sometimes use DxO.
I use PTgui stitcher and blender and typically Lanczos2 (Sybc16), sometimes higher.
Cheers,
Bernard
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(Off-topic) Deep felt wishes of calm and safety for your community in the love of nature. At this time of Ontake, its winds reminding us again how fragile our place here. Glad to see you posting, p.
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This would not be much of a concern if one shot few panels with a lower res sensor. But I would consider stitching primarily to generate a very high res image with a D810 for example. I would assume this would magnify ghosting artifacts.
Clearly you have come to terms with this issue. I suppose my question is when you rule out pano as an option due to potential ghosting/subject movement?
It depends on the subject basically. I would not attempt to stitch a forest in a storm. ;)
But I may attempt to stitch the edge of a forest if I can capture the tree in a single image.
Secondly, I generally maintain very strict image stabilization techniques; heavy RRS tripod weighted with my backpack, wireless remote, mirror up with EFC, sandbag on camera if needed. This would not be possible with a handheld stitched image. Based on your images I'm sure you take the same precautions when possible. How and when do you decide forgoing such stabilization is worth the blur/benefit ratio?
I always do all that when I go somewhere to take pictures. Unfortunately (or fortunately ? :-)) that is a lot less frequent recently because of family constraints which forces me to stitch handheld at whatever ISO is required to get sharp images.
Cheers,
Bernard
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An interesting article.
Thanks to Bernard for piquing my interest in stitching again and going to look at the latest version of PTGUI. I last upgraded to version 5, but the improvements in version 10 are staggering, so much faster with so few artefacts. I'll be re-engaging with this now.
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Many thanks Bernard!
It depends on the subject basically. I would not attempt to stitch a forest in a storm. ;)
But I may attempt to stitch the edge of a forest if I can capture the tree in a single image.
I always do all that when I go somewhere to take pictures. Unfortunately (or fortunately ? :-)) that is a lot less frequent recently because of family constraints which forces me to stitch handheld at whatever ISO is required to get sharp images.
Cheers,
Bernard
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(Off-topic) Deep felt wishes of calm and safety for your community in the love of nature. At this time of Ontake, its winds reminding us again how fragile our place here. Glad to see you posting, p.
Indeed Patricia.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Thanks Bernard, for a very good article.
I have had good results with Hugin, a free program. If you can't find a seam even when you know where to look the program is good enough. The only time it has failed me is with very long FLs that it does not seem to know how to shape. Im talking 1200mm. So anyone doing an occasional stitch may want to look at that program.
I have been doing the FL row stitch as well, for a while, with good results. Typically foreground at f8, mid at f8, sky/infinity at f5.6. I am impressed by your speed. My question is what do you consider the tradeoff on MLU? I typically use it, which slows me down a lot. Do you feel that tripod/ head is good enough that MLU is no longer worth the trouble? If I could do the 1ev brackets for each tile in continuous high drive mode it would make a big difference in fast changing light. Any thoughts on the topic (from others as well as our expert Bernard) would be appreciated.
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A couple more thoughts on the subject:
There has always been advise to lock the exposure, I have never done that, preferring to ETTR. The software seems to adjust the expose fine. This is a real issue when the sky is at a vastly different exposure to the landscape. What do people think with modern software?
I also want to agree with the above posts regarding getting more use from fewer lenses. I like the wides I get from the 35 stitched. I also like the 85mm. Two good lenses get me a lot of mileage.
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Team,
Another sample for your review. The image below was shot with the new 400mm f2.8 E FL on the D810. It is a 600 megapixel stitch that is hard to automate because of the limited DoF and many overlapping features. I used ISO64 and electronic First Curtain.
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5597/15247722418_7be859db5f_o.jpg)
I tried this with PS CS6, PTgui Pro 10 and Autopano Pro. In the end, I was only able to get a workable image with PTGui 10 thanks to its PS layered output and close initial proposal. The layered PSB file is 14 GB. PS came up with a 2.5 gigal pixel canvas with orphane images all over the place and a large number of stitching errors in the area it could stitch.
This is one image where using a robotic head would have a huge advantage because of the perfect repeatability of the rotation increments. The grid feature of PTgui would make the pano job a breeze. Food for thought. ;)
Another one in the same series.
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3932/15426501231_6067f5012f_o.jpg)
Cheers,
Bernard
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I'm curious - what do people usually do with the sources images for panoramas?
Do you keep them around in case the software improves to generate better copies?
Or once you've got an output file that you're happy with, do the sources get deleted?
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I'm curious - what do people usually do with the sources images for panoramas?
Do you keep them around in case the software improves to generate better copies?
Or once you've got an output file that you're happy with, do the sources get deleted?
Hi,
I don't delete source files (Raws). Raw conversion quality may improve over time, in fact it has improved. Blending engines also improve. Should the need arise, a new stitch can be made (usually with the same script file as create initially), which is simple if only the reconverted source images are changed.
It is not necessary to keep the individual TIFF tiles around, because they can be regenerated if necessary. Only if there may be tweaks required to the TIFF input images, e.g. White Balance or exposure or to the required output dimensions or projection, I might keep them around for a while.
Cheers,
Bart
P.S. This is also why a very good pano stitching software is so valuable. When the stitching/blending produces good results that do not require additional manual intervention, life becomes so much easier. When a lot of manual work needs to be done in beating the individual warped images into submission, it becomes less likely that a new attempt to create the improved pano from scratch will ever happen.
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I'm curious - what do people usually do with the sources images for panoramas?
Do you keep them around in case the software improves to generate better copies?
Or once you've got an output file that you're happy with, do the sources get deleted?
I typically keep the raw files and delete the tiff generated to build the pano.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Has the need arisen?
Sure. Over time one may develop a slightly different taste, or the source images can be improved before blending them with the pano stitcher. For example, if image tiles have longitudinal chromatic aberration, or high ISO noise, and a better way of removing it presents itself, then I'd redo the pano.
Another example is the improvements that the 'relatively recent' (I've been stitching since the film days, with print collages and later with scanned film files) Topaz Labs 'Clarity' and 'Detail' can add to an image, which may be enough of an improvement to redo old panos.
Another one is when Capture One version 7 was released, the Raw conversion quality made a significant jump ahead. Some panos that were intended to be output large, or got improved tonality, were redone from new TIFFs, with the same stitching project settings.
Because re-using a project-file is so effortless, it is done quicker than it takes to produce the actual output.
Cheers,
Bart
P.S. There are also ongoing developments in Blending engines, that may create better output straight from the stitcher, thus allowing to replace layered Photoshop files.
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I thought I'd share two recent example combining DoF stacking and stitching. ;)
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3938/14971845394_6b2d9c3901_o.jpg)
D810 + Otus 55mm f1.4.
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3939/15568902216_494b7833b4_o.jpg)
D810 + Leica 180mm f2.8 APO.
Cheers,
Bernard
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I thought I'd share two recent example combining DoF stacking and stitching. ;)
Hi Bernard,
The result is, an immersive experience ...
Cheers,
Bart
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Another one from the same series, same technique, 200 megapixels.
(https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5614/15608164625_776f471dc5_o.jpg)
Cheers,
Bernard
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The desire to stitch (for me) is driven by a desire to get more data with which to do a larger 300dpi print.
| Camera | MP | X Pixels | Y Pixels | Width " | Height " |
| Canon 5D3 | 22 | 5760 | 3840 | 19 | 12 |
| Nikon D810 | 36 | 7360 | 4912 | 24 | 16 |
| Pentaz 645Z | 51 | 8256 | 6192 | 27 | 20 |
| Phase One IQ260 | 60 | 8984 | 6732 | 30 | 22 |
| Phase One IQ280 | 80 | 10328 | 7760 | 34 | 25 |
If I'm putting something up on the wall, my goal is to have the image be at least 36" wide. The IQ280 is close enough that I'd probably be happy with that but as an amateur, such equipment is not in my hands. That then leaves stitching which works most of the time. When it doesn't work is when there's too much motion - waves in water are the worst, following by quickly moving clouds and trees. Which reminds me of something I'd like to see in LR...
As an admitted pixel peeper, I feel ya. However, this is a limitation of the print process and our anal retentiveness. You can make spectacular 36" prints with 22 or 36MPs. But, yeah, if your looking from 6" away, you can see missing detail. At that point, photography as science has overtaken and photography as Art doesn't see the light of day.
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Bernard, thanks for sharing. I've been leery of stitching images with moving objects, particularly water in this example. Do you have any tips or guidelines when stitching images containing water? My fear of course is the stitching software would make a mess of such objects...
I thought I'd share two recent example combining DoF stacking and stitching. ;)
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3938/14971845394_6b2d9c3901_o.jpg)
D810 + Otus 55mm f1.4.
(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3939/15568902216_494b7833b4_o.jpg)
D810 + Leica 180mm f2.8 APO.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Bernard, thanks for sharing. I've been leery of stitching images with moving objects, particularly water in this example. Do you have any tips or guidelines when stitching images containing water? My fear of course is the stitching software would make a mess of such objects...
Hi,
It depends a lot on the blending engine that's used to blend the image tiles in the overlap zones. It usually is not a big problem, the blending software usually knows how to select the seams that are already very close to identical in both image tiles. A good Pano stitcher also allows to use alternative blending engines, such as Enblend, or SmartBlend.
Things like wavecrests require a bit of timing when shooting, and in the few cases that the blending engine cannot find a good enough solution, we can use Layered output, and manually blend by warping the overlap zones a bit.
Cheers,
Bart
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Do you have any tips or guidelines when stitching images containing water?
I use PTGUI and layers. Manual blending (using masks) is easy and in most cases you cannot see then blend. Here is one example. (There are other problems with this image but thats another story...)