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Author Topic: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?  (Read 2835 times)

Chockstone

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5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« on: March 30, 2011, 09:47:22 pm »

I've only recent got into stitching, still learning and could use your help.

What I'm trying to produce are deep DOF 3x1 landscapes packing in as many pixels as I can from my Canon 5DII. With the camera mounted in portrait orientation a single row of 7 shots left to right and stitched with CS5 yields around 50 to 90 megapixel depending on which focal length I use and how much I crop away in post.

My problem is with DOF and wide angle distortion. Shooting wide (16mm to 35mm) I can usually get everything in focus but the resultant pano tends to suffer, being somewhat distorted particularly if there is close foreground interest. Shooting long (100mm) the resultant pano looks correct in terms of distortion, but I lose that sense of “depth” and the "reach-out-and-touch-it" feeling that comes with shooting wide, which I really like. I also loose DOF making it impossible to have close foreground interest. What I'm thinking is that something around 45mm or 50mm might offer the best of both worlds so long as I can get the large DOF I want.

Enter the Canon 45 TS-E. I have no experience with tilt-shift lenses, so I'm only going on what I've read. I'm hoping people here can help me. What I'm thinking of doing is buying the 45 TS-E and NOT using the method of stitching 3 shots by shifting left and right in landscape orientation, because that would yield only about 30 megapixel after I cropped to 3x1, but instead sticking with shooting in portrait orientation and moving both the camera & lens to get a single row of 7 or so shots as per my normal practice. However, and this is the bit I need help with, ALSO using the tilt feature gain maximum DOF from close foreground to infinity. (Aka grass at my feet to mountains in distance).

Is this going to work? Or is there some technical reason why it will fail causing me to regret buying the lens?

I don't currently use a pano head on my tripod to rotate around the nodal point. Thus far CS5 has not given me any ghosting from parallax, so I was kind of hoping to avoid the need for it, but I’d appreciate advise with this too, with respect to the using the 45 TS-E titled and panned as mentioned.

Thanks for any help.

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2011, 03:33:24 am »

Enter the Canon 45 TS-E. I have no experience with tilt-shift lenses, so I'm only going on what I've read. I'm hoping people here can help me. What I'm thinking of doing is buying the 45 TS-E and NOT using the method of stitching 3 shots by shifting left and right in landscape orientation, because that would yield only about 30 megapixel after I cropped to 3x1, but instead sticking with shooting in portrait orientation and moving both the camera & lens to get a single row of 7 or so shots as per my normal practice. However, and this is the bit I need help with, ALSO using the tilt feature gain maximum DOF from close foreground to infinity. (Aka grass at my feet to mountains in distance).

Is this going to work? Or is there some technical reason why it will fail causing me to regret buying the lens?

Yes, this will work just fine, especially if you use a good Raw converter to suppress the Lateral Chromatic Aberration that the lens exhibits. Alternatively you could consider focusstacking with a non-tilting lens, but that will produce a much larger number of images per scene, an subject movement becomes more of an image. Using a tilt lens is a very good solution, especially for single row stitches.

Quote
I don't currently use a pano head on my tripod to rotate around the nodal point. Thus far CS5 has not given me any ghosting from parallax, so I was kind of hoping to avoid the need for it, but I’d appreciate advise with this too, with respect to the using the 45 TS-E titled and panned as mentioned.

The longer the focal length, the larger the parallax due to a moving entry pupil (because the magnification factor is larger). It depends on the foreground structures whether you can get away with it. I always use a pano head for these scenarios, but then my subjects usually include interesting foregrounds to accentuate the depth sensation.

Cheers,
Bart
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Chris_Brown

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2011, 09:00:06 am »

With the camera mounted in portrait orientation a single row of 7 shots left to right and stitched with CS5 yields around 50 to 90 megapixel depending on which focal length I use and how much I crop away in post.

Is this going to work [using the 45mm TS-E]? Or is there some technical reason why it will fail causing me to regret buying the lens?

Yes, it will work. However, you may find that by tilting the lens to shift the focal plane you are causing soft focus on other areas of the image. Consider using the hyperfocal distance of the lens/aperture to acquire maximum DOF.
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stever

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2011, 10:33:40 am »

it should work fine, you'll need a pano head, L-bracket, and nodal slide only if the foreground is really close with recognizeable sharp-edged features --try without first

in general, i'd recommend against focus stacking panos as being very time consuming, tedious, and often frustrating -- however if your goal is everything in focus, you should only need 2 or 3 shots at f16

lensrentals.com has the 90TS if you're in the US

there's at least one other thread about using tilt for panos so try a search
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Marlyn

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2011, 10:02:13 pm »

It should work just fine, although you will have to get used to the manual focus lens, and ensuring the tilt/shift are set correctly (and havn't been bumped !) 

I currently shoot with a DS3 and Tilt shift lenses to do exactly what your proposing, although I use the 24 Mk II, the 45 TS-Eand the 90 TS-E depending on what I'm shooting.
Using the shift lens, I always shoot with he camera perfectly level, in portrait mode, and then adjust the vertical shift to compose for sky or ground. 
Rotation is around the entrance pupil, using a combination nodal slide/rotation base from RRS.

Single row pano's are done this way, sometimes using tilt for near/far focus,  often not.  Multi row pano's are shot by shift down, do a row, shift middle, do a row, shift up, do a row.  (or some combination of that, depending).
Corrections are done in lightroom,  and Sitching these is dead simple for any decent pano software, previously I used PTGui, but mostly now I use CS5 to do it and works just fine.

I find this produces sufficient resolution for 20"x60" prints.

Most stitched pano's are done with either the 45mm or the 90mm.   If longer is required, I'd use the 70-200 f4 which also works quite well.

Regards

Mark

Regards.
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stever

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2011, 11:21:49 pm »

sorry, Lensrentals has the 45TS also.  for me, 50 to 100mm for panos is the most useful range and i like the 90TS a lot as it is also a wonderful lens for flowers and is about as sharp as anything Canon makes

using liveview and a TS lens on the 5D2 gets close to view camera capability and the image is even right side up
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Chockstone

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2011, 12:49:07 am »

Marlyn,

Can you show me some of your work that's been done from a single row pano with the 45 TS-E mounted vertically? A lanscape with close foreground as well as distant material would be nice.

Thanks!

Chockstone

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Re: 5DII & 45TSE for Stitched Panos?
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2011, 12:10:13 am »

I've managed to find a copy of the 45 TS-E second hand. After being perplexed for a while I've done some reading and realise I need to modify it so I can shift down (to reduce sky while remaining level as suggested by Marlyn) and also tilt in the same direction for max DOF. I've found an article explaining how, so I'll have a crack at it.

I've also managed to find a manfrotto elbow bracket that places the vertically mounted 5dII nicely over the centre of my tripod, but I can see it's going to need to be slid backwards about an inch or more before it reaches any kind of nodal point, so I've ordered the manfrotto micro sliding plate. Should get here this week. Hopefully, (fingers crossed), the two components will screw together somehow and not need yet another piece of hardware to join them to each other and my tripod head.

All very exciting, I think the plan is slowly coming together.

Thanks for your help!
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