Alignment processes that can overcome lens distortion?

[earlybird]

Hi,
 I was out on a hike recently, and had a Canon 14mm lens mounted on a 5D series camera because I anticipated an opportunity for a nice composition in the setting we were walking to.

 When we got to the destination the composition was pleasant and the lighting seemed beautiful, but the dynamic range was fairly wide, so I made some hand held bracketed exposures.

 I should have brought a tripod, but I did not. On some occasions I have made hand held stacks and it worked ok. For example; framing upon a distant landscape with a mild telephoto lens.

 In this case with the 14mm lens I have not found an alignment process that works well. I think it is because the lens distortion is too complicated and a slight rotation on the primary axis has caused dramatic shifts in the relative X/Y coordinates.

 I tried the aligning option with SNS-HDR, and then I tried aligning a stack of layers in Photoshop. I tried rotating manually and saw how the relative X/Y coordinates are skewed.

 I tried these processes with and without lens distortion correction being applied by Adobe Camera RAW.

 I eventually settled for some old fashioned hand edits, masking, and touch ups, to make a final image.

 The exercise made me wonder if there is some advanced aligning software I could purchase that can churn away at such data and bring a stack of such images into alignment.

 I love using a tripod, but often times can not carry one with me when the primary activity is hiking rather than picture making.

 Do you have any suggestions?

 Thank you.

[mcbroomf]

I tend to agree about a tripod.  I still carry mine (though I bought a lighter model), yet I'm often too lazy to use it ...

But in my experience auto-align in LR and Ps are so good these days that if they failed then the files had elements that were just too far apart.  I would concentrate on your technique rather than looking for a software kludge.

How did you take the images?  ie what setting on the camera.  It's a long time since I owned a 5D and cannot recall if there is an auto bracket option to take the bracketed images in quick succession.  That is what I use now and unless it's pre-dawn and quite dark the capture runs so fast there's no time for me to skew images.   Using auto-ISO is also a good way to ensure shutter speeds never fall too low, although it does not sound as if you were in motion blur territory.

[Rhossydd]

I regularly shoot HDRs with a 14mm Samyang hand held without issue.
Set up the camera for auto bracketing (even the original 5D had this) in aperture priority on a continuous shooting mode.
Lightroom has always handled this very well, unless shutter speeds have dropped below hand held limits or there's excessive subject movement.

Distortion hasn't been an issue and the MF version of the Samyang has hideous complex distortion that gets corrected in LR.

[kers]

You have no problems with telelenses because the angle difference between shots is small and the distortion of the lens is small too.
The opposite with wide angle lenses; often far more distortion and much more angle difference between the shots.
Without a tripod you can do this.
First thing to do is to find out where the actual viewpoint is within the lens to avoid parallax errors.
If you know that point you use one vertical held finger to balance the camera and so use it as a tripod point .
Rotate around it and shoot your panorama. Works very well.

[mcbroomf]

You have no problems with telelenses because the angle difference between shots is small and the distortion of the lens is small too.
The opposite with wide angle lenses; often far more distortion and much more angle difference between the shots.
Without a tripod you can do this.
First thing to do is to find out where the actual viewpoint is within the lens to avoid parallax errors.
If you know that point you use one vertical held finger to balance the camera and so use it as a tripod point .
Rotate around it and shoot your panorama. Works very well.

I thought he was just doing HDR

[earlybird]

Does anyone know where the "Digital Image Processing" forum moved to?

[kers]

I thought he was just doing HDR

You are right...my mistake...
Even than it is good to use some kind of tripod ( like a finger)
and use ptgui or something to do the alignment. Will work...

[mcbroomf]

Does anyone know where the "Digital Image Processing" forum moved to?

Huh?  This thread is in it ...