shooting panoramas/stitching - tips and suggestion

[pco98]

Having a go at panoramic stitching but am finding that there is a noticeable change at the seam due to the lens and light resulting in a darker band. With Healing tool it is less obvious. Any way to avoid this?

I did shoot both images in landscape orientation. Is it better to shoot with portrait orientration? Is it better to stitch the RAW files or processed files?

Any other tips for successful panoramas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ,

Ross
Canon 5D, CS3

[Keith_Fitz]

Having a go at panoramic stitching but am finding that there is a noticeable change at the seam due to the lens and light resulting in a darker band. With Healing tool it is less obvious. Any way to avoid this?

I did shoot both images in landscape orientation. Is it better to shoot with portrait orientration? Is it better to stitch the RAW files or processed files?

Any other tips for successful panoramas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ,

Ross
Canon 5D, CS3
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=196982\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi Ross,
Using Photoshop ACR open the files to be stitched all together (command click on the mac), when camera raw opens click the "select all" then "synchronize"  - both on the upper left side of camera raw. Make your changes as normal then save all file into a folder named for the pan. Then close camera raw and go back into photoshop and use photomerge to make the pan from that folder. This technique works for me, bear in mind to allow plenty of overlap for the stitch. Here is an example of a 14 picture stitch using the above technique
hope this helps
keith

[Paul2660]

If you are getting the darker band, then you must be using a shift device such as the zoerk?  or other.  Or just a normal shift lens?  

If so, when you shoot, you need to make sure you have enough overlap to cover the darker area of the image.  Also if using a 5D, not sure how it reads WB, but if it's like the 1ds MKII MKIII, then as you shift and reduce the light, the WB reading will change.  This will make it very hard for any tool to automatically stitch the images due to the color changes.   The 1ds MKII reads the WB off the sensor, no external reading, so I always manually set the WB, this way all the image shot will be the same WB.

The use of a shift lens, or zoerk adapter will leave the darker band, and the more you shift the more the inside edge will be dark.  For the work I do, I will most times just manually stitch the images together in CS, but as was previously posted, if you have a large number, of image, its best to use software, CS3's or autopan, or panotool, or stitcher.  Most will put together a good image.  However many of these tools will get confused if you have the darker area, on one side of the image and try to merge that, which will not result in a good image.

Paul C

[Dr. Gary]

If you are getting the darker band, then you must be using a shift device such as the zoerk?  or other.  Or just a normal shift lens? 

If so, when you shoot, you need to make sure you have enough overlap to cover the darker area of the image.  Also if using a 5D, not sure how it reads WB, but if it's like the 1ds MKII MKIII, then as you shift and reduce the light, the WB reading will change.  This will make it very hard for any tool to automatically stitch the images due to the color changes.   The 1ds MKII reads the WB off the sensor, no external reading, so I always manually set the WB, this way all the image shot will be the same WB.

The use of a shift lens, or zoerk adapter will leave the darker band, and the more you shift the more the inside edge will be dark.  For the work I do, I will most times just manually stitch the images together in CS, but as was previously posted, if you have a large number, of image, its best to use software, CS3's or autopan, or panotool, or stitcher.  Most will put together a good image.  However many of these tools will get confused if you have the darker area, on one side of the image and try to merge that, which will not result in a good image.

Paul C
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=196998\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I am having the same problem. On the night shots I set the color balances to the same temperature and equalize the exposures and am having the same problem with dark banding. Could it be because I am not leaving enough overlap in the images?

drgary

[Paul2660]

What are you using to capture the stitch with? adapter, lens, other

Paul C

[AlanG]

If you want to make it easy on yourself, I suggest you try out Autopano software.

[NikoJorj]

Having a go at panoramic stitching but am finding that there is a noticeable change at the seam due to the lens and light resulting in a darker band. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=196982\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Just in case... Didn't you forget to fully correct vignetting before stitching?
Some mild, hard-to-notice vignetting can become quite visible in this case...

I did shoot both images in landscape orientation. Is it better to shoot with portrait orientration?

Yes, definitely : vignetting and other corner defects (sharpness, coma...) are then reduced along the seam.

[David Sutton]

Can I second the Auotopano software? Shoot any number of rows and columns hand held (if the light is good enough), and if you are travelling with a laptop, set it going while you have dinner and the results will be ready for viewing when you come back.
Cheers, David

[Panopeeper]

am finding that there is a noticeable change at the seam due to the lens and light resulting in a darker band. With Healing tool it is less obvious. Any way to avoid this?

If you are using a decent stitcher (there are three of them: PTGUi, Panorama Tools Assembler and Hugin, all based on Panorama Tools), you can use a blender after stitching: Enblend or Smartblend. That takes care of that, if the difference is not too large.

However, banding in the sky is a PITA. Forget about healing brush and clone stamp, it gets much worse. I guess you have shot all frames with the same exposure beginners always should do so. Still, optical vignetting causes a problem. Some lenses are better, some worse. Tests usually measure the vignetting, look up your lens.

Beginers are usually told to make large overlays. That is not required (though sometimes useful), but in case of vignetting in the sky, the more the overlap, the worse the banding.

Shooting with long focal length in portrait orientation, not much overlap, very small aperture - these together may help.

Saving such panos is almost hopeless, except by using a planted sky. I shot lots of sky with different lenses, stitched them and use them for plastic surgery. However, this can be painful if the joins between the sky and the rest are fine, like through the leaves of a tree. The planted sky has to be of the same color and darkness; this can be achieved through separate adjustment. Furthermore, clouds have to be at the same locations.

[AlanG]

[attachment=6766:attachment][attachment=6767:attachment][attachment=6765:attachm
ent][attachment=6764:attachment]I'll suggest it again. Autopano has a demo version.  I have been doing a lot of work with Autopano.  Commercailly and personally. I am working on a major personal project that is made up of stitched images using Autopano.  (I don't want to show any of these images yet.) I usually convert the files, but I also sometimes work directly from the raw files.  Vignetting, exposure variations, color shifts can still blend well.  It is absolutley amazing what that program can do.  

I won't say it again, but you REALLY should check it out.

Here are a couple of my non-commercial shots that I did just for fun while I was at the symphony.  I used a tiny Canon SD800 p&s handheld on automatic - 28mm equivalent lens.  Autopano automatically stitched these together without any adjusting on my part. The full size files are very large and detailed.

[Ronny Nilsen]

Having a go at panoramic stitching but am finding that there is a noticeable change at the seam due to the lens and light resulting in a darker band. With Healing tool it is less obvious. Any way to avoid this?

I did shoot both images in landscape orientation. Is it better to shoot with portrait orientration? Is it better to stitch the RAW files or processed files?

Any other tips for successful panoramas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks ,

Ross
Canon 5D, CS3
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Unless you want to merge many images to get really huge files, I have found the use
of T/S lenses useful for this. I have written about it [a href=\"http://www.ronnynilsen.com/Essays/Essay/ViewCamera/]here[/url].

Ronny

[vandevanterSH]

Unless you want to merge many images to get really huge files, I have found the use
of T/S lenses useful for this. I have written about it here.

Ronny
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198019\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

After reading your method and the Digital Outback article, what is the result if the images are obtained just using the "rail" without the lens shift.  What is the result if the pano is stiched from overlapping horizontal images rather than rotated images?  I assume there is a parallax problem but for a landscape at infinity is there a problem?

Steve

[AlanG]

After reading your method and the Digital Outback article, what is the result if the images are obtained just using the "rail" without the lens shift.  What is the result if the pano is stiched from overlapping horizontal images rather than rotated images?  I assume there is a parallax problem but for a landscape at infinity is there a problem?

Steve
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198052\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Using the sliding rail without a shift lens won't lead to much difference between the images.  Of course this will also cause parallax on any near objects.  You could get a stereo effect this way but not a pano.

As for the idea of overlapping horizontal images to form a pano, this will work if you were shooting a large two dimensional object and you could somehow relocate the camera to all of the various places required for your point of view.  On a distant landscape, each shot might need to be taken miles apart and in any case your foreground and sky won't reconcile.

[Ronny Nilsen]

After reading your method and the Digital Outback article, what is the result if the images are obtained just using the "rail" without the lens shift.  What is the result if the pano is stiched from overlapping horizontal images rather than rotated images?  I assume there is a parallax problem but for a landscape at infinity is there a problem?

Steve
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=198052\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

As AlanG said, just using the rail wont accomplish much. But using the shift ability
of the lenses or rotating tha camerea works well as long as there is no overlapping
objects near the lens. PS CS3 is getting good at this, and there is other SW that is
even better.

For images with near/far compositions both the shift lenses and the rail used together
will make sure that flawless stitching is possible.

Ronny