Alain Briot's stitching technique articles

[Nelsonretreat]

Can I be the only person to read these articles and speculate that he could have saved himself a whole heap of trouble and taken a decent image to begin with?  (BTW..  go easy on the saturation slider Alain!)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Wow.. An object lesson in how to dismiss someone's article with condescension and discourtesy....

 

[luxborealis]

Can I be the only person to read these articles and speculate that he could have saved himself a whole heap of trouble and taken a decent image to begin with?  (BTW..  go easy on the saturation slider Alain!)

When one "pays the piper", as newbies are now doing, one has the right to be critical. However...

While I can agree with you on your last point about over-saturation, your first point makes no sense to me. You seem to be implying there is way of making a perfect final photograph more directly, say, right out of the camera. Perfect lighting matched with the ideal technical set-up (which he admitted at the beginning he did not have) and perfect composition can get you most of the way there, but a camera can only produce a machine image. What Alain, and many of us, are working towards is not a JPEG spit out by the camera (which, at times, can be technically perfect), but a photographic rendering that more closely matches our vision as artists.

If that's not what you're implying, then perhaps you are saying less post-capture processing should have been used. Panoramic stitching (collaging) aside, Alain didn't do much more than a great many photographers do to turn the machine image into the vision they had for the scene when they first photographed it.

This is art, not snapshooting. — Welcome to the forum!

(Edited for spelling)

[Jens Peermann]

Is there a link to that article so I can read it and form an opinion? Thanks!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Is there a link to that article so I can read it and form an opinion? Thanks!

https://luminous-landscape.com/merging-images-%E2%80%A8in-lightroom-and-photoshop-cc-2015/

[stamper]

Can I be the only person to read these articles and speculate that he could have saved himself a whole heap of trouble and taken a decent image to begin with?  (BTW..  go easy on the saturation slider Alain!)

Probably.

[AreBee]

Nelsonretreat,

Can I be the only person to read these articles and speculate that he could have saved himself a whole heap of trouble...

Faced with a situation in which you were:

...using a Phase One digital back on a Hasselblad SWCM-CF camera and the fixed 38mm Zeiss Biogon lens did not allow [you] to capture the entire scene in a single frame.

What would you have done?

[Nelsonretreat]

Nelsonretreat,

Faced with a situation in which you were:

What would you have done?

I'd have brought appropriate equipment for a landscape shoot. Would have saved countless hours in post stitching everything together.

[Nelsonretreat]

How is it discourteous to suggest someone could save themselves a whole heap of time and trouble by shooting one shot instead of several and spending hours stitching?  If I'd written an article about how I'd brought the wrong equipment to a portrait shoot and then had to stitch several photos together to make a face I wonder what you would have made of it.

Having read a bit more, this newbie now realises that M. Briot was creating a "photographic rendering that more closely matches our vision as artists." rather than 'snapshooting' which is apparently what people like myself do.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I'd have brought appropriate equipment for a landscape shoot...

Which would be...?

For instance, what would be the "appropriate equipment" for a shot like this (that wouldn't require stitching)?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

How is it discourteous to suggest someone could save themselves a whole heap of time and trouble by shooting one shot instead of several and spending hours stitching?...

discourteous = showing rudeness and a lack of consideration - dictionary definition

You apparently failed to consider why photographers stitch in the first place. It doesn't have much to do with "failing to bring appropriate equipment." A good primer is here:

https://luminous-landscape.com/stitching-an-advanced-aproach/

[ErikKaffehr]

A tripod?

Best regards
Erik

Which would be...?

[Nelsonretreat]

You apparently failed to consider why photographers stitch in the first place. It doesn't have much to do with "failing to bring appropriate equipment." A good primer is here:

https://luminous-landscape.com/stitching-an-advanced-aproach/

My comment about taking the right equipment was in respose to a poster here who asked the question of what I would have done given that the equipment M. Briot had brought was unsuitable for the task in hand. I simply posted that I would make sure I had the right equipment.  The field of view looked no wider than could be captured by a wide angle lens.

I have no problem with stitching photos when it's a panorama, just seems to me there is an easier way for M Briot to capture the scene.

To be honest when I looked at his stitched Grand Canyon photograph I was hard pressed to see how it differed from the thousand other photographs I have seen of that overphotographed location. I don't disapprove of all that stitching effort just wonder why its not possible to take a decent phoho without all the palaver of stitching! But then I'm not an 'artist' like M. Briot. I'm just a snapshooter!

Obviously us newbie snapshooters have quite a lot to learn here!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...I would make sure I had the right equipment.  The field of view looked no wider than could be captured by a wide angle lens...

As they say, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you have." In other words, practicing photographers use the equipment they already have and know well. Very, very few photographers can afford to always have with them the latest and greatest model of everything. And even if they would have a wonderful collection at home, it is a matter of trade-off (weight and volume vs. needs) when you venture out, especially to such a remote and inhospitable location as Death Valley (noticed the word "death" in its name?).

The lens and camera Alain used is considered to be one of the best super-wide angle lens and body combinations ever designed. There is no wider lens for his camera (except a fish eye), plus it is very compact. The use of a digital back with a crop factor in combination with that body and lens reduces the view angle even further. Hence stitching.

One can use a single super-wide angle lens for panoramas, but that also results in a lot of unnecessary foreground and sky, which need to be cropped in post, reducing the file size for larger prints (just look at my Chicago panorama and imagine just how much more water and sky there would be if it were taken with a single, super-wide angle lens). Besides, a file captured with a single super wide-angle lens will always suffer from less edge sharpness, chromatic aberrations, and other issues, in comparison to a stitched file. Also, if one needs to print big, stitching provides better files, more pixels and more details.

[Nelsonretreat]

As they say, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you have." In other words, practicing photographers use the equipment they already have and know well. Very, very few photographers can afford to always have with them the latest and greatest model of everything. And even if they would have a wonderful collection at home, it is a matter of trade-off (weight and volume vs. needs) when you venture out, especially to such a remote and inhospitable location as Death Valley (noticed the word "death" in its name?).

The lens and camera Alain used is considered to be one of the best super-wide angle lens and body combinations ever designed. There is no wider lens for his camera (except a fish eye), plus it is very compact. The use of a digital back with a crop factor in combination with that body and lens reduces the view angle even further. Hence stitching.

One can use a single super-wide angle lens for panoramas, but that also results in a lot of unnecessary foreground and sky, which need to be cropped in post, reducing the file size for larger prints (just look at my Chicago panorama and imagine just how much more water and sky there would be if it were taken with a single, super-wide angle lens). Besides, a file captured with a single super wide-angle lens will always suffer from less edge sharpness, chromatic aberrations, and other issues, in comparison to a stitched file. Also, if one needs to print big, stitching provides better files, more pixels and more details.

Thanks for the useful advice Slobodan and also the reference to the stitching primer.   I looked at some old snaps I had and decided to experiment. In the pic below I have used three images, one each for bird, sky and mountains. I also did a fair bit of work with Topaz to make the mountains look more interesting with mist etc.

Would appreciate any pointers you have

thanks

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... One can use a single super-wide angle lens for panoramas, but that also results in a lot of unnecessary foreground and sky, which need to be cropped in post, reducing the file size for larger prints (just look at my Chicago panorama and imagine just how much more water and sky there would be if it were taken with a single, super-wide angle lens)...

To illustrate what I had in mind above, this is what an image taken with a single super-wide angle lens would look like, with simulated extra sky and water areas. To achieve the same level of detail, the camera would have to have 300 Mpx... we are not there yet.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...In the pic below I have used three images, one each for bird, sky and mountains. I also did a fair bit of work with Topaz to make the mountains look more interesting with mist etc...

That is an interesting image, though I suspect it is rather a composite than a stitch. I wish I could see a bit more of the mountain, if for no other reason than to make sure it is a mountain, rather than, say, sea waves. I like the mood, though.

[shadowblade]

Can I be the only person to read these articles and speculate that he could have saved himself a whole heap of trouble and taken a decent image to begin with?  (BTW..  go easy on the saturation slider Alain!)

Yes.

There are many reasons to stitch, and it's almost never due to lack of a wide-enough lens. If you print big, you need a lot of pixels. If you want an aspect ratio other than 3:2 (for SLRs) or 4:3 (for some other cameras) you lose pixels from cropping. A 5DSr, cropped to 3:1 format (same as 617-format film, a common aspect ratio for landscapes), only gives you 25MP. Even an 80MP IQ280 image, cropped to 3:1, only gives you 35MP. When printing at 32x96", or even 24x72" or 20x60", you can use more resolution than that.

Re: saturation - viewing it on a wide-gamut monitor, the image looks oversaturated in the browser (Firefox, supposedly with colour correction turned on...) but appears correct in Photoshop. I think it's just a colour control/gamut space issue - viewed on a monitor which doesn't extend past the boundaries of sRGB, it probably looks correct.

[Petrus]

For instance, what would be the "appropriate equipment" for a shot like this (that wouldn't require stitching)?

Rotating lens panorama camera… I used to have the Widelux F7 with 120 degree sweep, we also had 120 format panoramic camera at work the name of which I forget (from East Germany?).

One thing we should remember when comparing stitched panoramas and super wide lenses, is that there is a limit on how much edge/corner distortion we can accept when using a rectilinear wide-angle lens (regardless of the image quality itself). Stitched panoramas are almost always cylindrical projections, which can be wider than a rectilinear projection ever can (at 180 degrees a rectilinear projection width approaches infinity…). So these methods can not be directly compared, unless you choose a rectilinear stitch, of course, which suffers the same distortion problems as a single shot WA photograph has, of course, because we are talking about descriptive geometry, not optics.

[shadowblade]

Rotating lens panorama camera… I used to have the Widelux F7 with 120 degree sweep, we also had 120 format panoramic camera at work the name of which I forget (from East Germany?).

That's just stitching by a different name, with all the limitations of film and much less adaptability in terms of focal length, shutter speed, focal plane, etc.

It exposes the image in sections, using a moving slit like a scanning back, rather than all at once like a standard camera. This is much more similar to stitching multiple frames, where you have to deal with things like subject movement and the fact that an exposure of several seconds may take several minutes to complete, than it is to taking a single shot with a standard panoramic camera.