Canon s70, stitching, hand held shots

[Goldilocks]

Hi,
I've been debating the Canon s70 vs s80 question. Dale introduced me to RAW and a raw converter. Awesome results, not to difficult to use. s80 doesn't shoot in raw. But I do alot of stitching. Hence need for wide angle lens, and still won't always be wide enough. Or if you know someone with experience with stitching with both cameras, is the s80 much better than the s70 as Canon claims it to be? Why or why not.
Thanks,
Linda (Goldilocks)

[kenstrain]

I have had a refurbished S70 for several months.  Got it when the S80 was announced without RAW and was looking for a pocket camera.  From what I have seen from a friend's S80, the difference in quality on jpegs is small, except that there is noticeably less purple fringing on the S80, I think.  We could not see much either way in sharpness etc.  I find the S70 just barely fast enough in RAW with a normal x40 card (to be honest I chose it mainly at it had RAW and CF yet was small, getting quite a rare combination now).

Sometimes I have to underexpose a bit in strongly backlight situations to avoid PF, and then having raw is vital.  As it turns out I stitch about 50% of the images taken with the S70 (pt_assembler, autopano, pt_stitcher, enblend) with reliably excellent blending.

The fight against noise and overall quality pushes me back to my A2 with IS or SLR with tripod except when I cannot carry such.  I don't think the S70 is particularly poor in this respect, it is just limited by the sensor size, and has no IS.  I often find myself leaning on trees or walls or rocks to keep steady.

Semi-serious comment:- you can do even more stitching without a wide angle lens than with one - that helps the battle with small-sensor quality.  Stitch 2 rows rather than one, or turn the camera on its side and stitch more.  

Hopefully that is helpful.

Ken

[HiltonP]

Goldilocks,

You'll remember me from your other thread re. physically disabled.

Shown below are a collection of panoramas, taken with a Canon A80 (4mp) p&s,
and stitched together using PhotoShop. They are not RAW files (the A80 only
takes JPGs), and they are far from perfect, but they were all taken handheld. The
A80, as on many of the Canon p&s's, has a panoramic mode setting which locks
the white balance, and aperture, and provides you with a viewing diagram to aid
in lining-up the photos.

Having a tripod would help, but as you can see it is not essential. Having RAW
capability would also help, but once again it isn't essential.

[jimhuber]

Nicely done panoramas, HiltonP.

Something I don't believe I mentioned before... in Stitch Assist mode the S70 will NOT shoot raw, only jpeg. Like every digital Canon I've ever used, the "creative" section of the mode dial (P, Av, Tv, M, the new A-DEP) will shoot raw, jpeg, or both; but the "simple" side (I forget what Canon calls it) only shoots jpeg: the green "auto", portrait, night portrait, sports, landscape, and stitch-assist (I'm sure I forgot some, and they vary a little from model to model).

You can, of course, convert raw to jpeg and then stitch, but you won't have the on-screen alignment assistance so a tripod would be very helpful, darn near required.

[Peter McLennan]

s80 doesn't shoot in raw. But I do alot of stitching. Hence need for wide angle lens, and still won't always be wide enough. Or if you know someone with experience with stitching with both cameras, is the s80 much better than the s70 as Canon claims it to be? Why or why not.
Thanks,
Linda (Goldilocks)
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If you're serious about your shooting, RAW cabability is essential, whatever the photography task.

Stitch assist may good for learning, but it's not required.  I see this as a marketing gimmick, not unlike "shooting in black and white" camera modes and digital zoom.

Tripods for panos are sometimes useful, certainly not required.  I nearly never use one, yet I make good panos.  It takes a bit of experimenting to learn what not to do.

Wide angle lenses are not required for panos.  In fact, stitching is easier and less problematic with longer lenses.

Peter

[Goldilocks]

Hilton
Beautiful scenes, stitched really nice, great color/tones  too. I've got a few questions. The canon A80 widest aperture is 38mm equiv. Is the widest aperture what you always use or do you sometimes zoom in a little? (I got great cut and paste on my 35mm film Nikon F3 55mm lens. No distortion at all, but that was a perfect lens a different era.) One techie expert in one of the forums was saying that the only true focal lenght on a digital zoom camera is the widest aperture. Of course a 28mm will have more distortion (barrelling or pincushing, whichever).
I realize stitch assist is only in jpeg.
What I would like to know that the online manual doesn't tell me is can you use the stitch assist and LCD viewfinder to help line images up by hand holding the camera in the vertical position as well as horizontal? Have you ever stitched like a 3x3 or 4x4 table and if hand held is there a way the stitch assist view finder can help you? Or have you found a way around it hand held? Also, Canon claims that it  sets everything by the first shot to hold the settings automatically. What if you want a different exposure for your fixed settings, rather than the one it determines automatically. Have you found an easy way around this. Like say your midtones are in the 4th postion on a row of 6 and picture position 1 and 6 are dark shadows?
And last but not least which Adobe Photoshop program did you use to stitch? Does it have an easy to use stitcher? I have 6.0 and don't know how to stitch  with it. Is there a method that I haven't thought of with 6.0.
You've all been very helpful.
Thanks,
Linda (Goldilocks)

P.S. I could use some hand held individual shots from a 28mm camera preferably the Canon s70 or s80 at the 28mm equiv. setting that you can hold the exposure to practice stitching. The only digital camera that I have access to recalculates each exposure with every shot. Any volunteers? I'll contact you back if you feel it is too much to e-mail through this website and you can e-mail me directly.
Thanks again everyone.
Linda (Goldilocks)

[BernardLanguillier]

How to stitch with photoshop:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/stitching.shtml

Regards,
Bernard

[HiltonP]

Goldilocks,

Whether I zoom in, or out, largely depends on the subject matter. I have no rule on this. I find taking a panorama usually calls for some thought anyway, so some "playing around" is tried. I often end up with more than one "set" of photos for a panorama. Post-processing in PhotoShop quickly shows up the better (or more suitable) set of photos.

The Canon A80 can stitch left-to-right, or right-to-left, in "stitch assist" mode (not vertically) . . . but of course there is no reason why you should tie yourself in to stitch assist. When you're familiar with the camera there is nothing stopping you from taking a series of overlapping photos using whatever manual settings are appropriate. A couple of those panoramas shown above were taken without using stitch assist.

I've used PhotoShop 7, CS and CS2 to do panoramas . . . sometimes I use it's batch automated option, and sometimes I set them up manually. I usually give the batch option first go, then if it doesn't nail it too well I resort to taking over myself.

re. Seeing examples of what some cameras can do . . . here's a link to photos taken with the Canon S70 . . . http://www.pbase.com/cameras/canon/powershot_s70  The Pbase camera database is a useful link to have, to see what various cameras (and lenses) can produce in some folks hands.

P.S. . . . I've been looking around at some other cameras which might be suitable for you, and the little Panasonic Lumix LX-1 might be a contender (RAW capability, decent lens, manual overrides). Failing that I'd jump for a Canon S70 a.s.a.p. before the old stock is taken from the shelves. By all accounts it's a helluva ultra-compact.

[Goldilocks]

Thanks Everyone,

Bernard, does that procedure that you linked me to work in Photoshop 6.0. Just want to make sure. Oh, and if you have any recommendations for all my hand held jpeg panoramic shots (done on my friends Sony, auto P&S for each exposure, that has no way to keep the exposure for each shot) in order to correct control color/value for the stitching process I'd be glad to hear. I think my answer for that is just LOL that's the magic of raw.   But I may be wrong. I tried eyeing to correct the values for the different auto exposures, but it only went from horrible to a joke.
Thanks for all your help everyone,
Linda (Goldilocks)

"It's people like you that makes this world a happy place"