Panoramic photography with 20D

[charles_krallman]

I have a 20D, a Gitzo carbon fiber tripod and Arca Swiss head and

would like to get into outdoor panoramic photography. From what I've

seen online, it appears most photographers use a "normal" focal

length lens, orient the camera in portrait format with a special pano

bracket, and then stitch together half-a-dozen shots. I've noticed

these panoramic brackets are widely priced from under $100 to over

$1000. I have two questions: a) Does anyone have recommendations

for a lightweight (but sturdy under the weight of the camera and

battery pack), easily portable panoramic bracket; and, b) What focal

length lens will yield the best results?

 

Thanks!

[awindsor]

I have a Pano-saurus but now I think I would go with a Nodal Ninja if I was looking for low cost. I don't know if the bottom arm is long enough to accommodate the 20D in portrait orientation with the BG-E2 (check the dimensions) especially if you add a AS QR platform to make mounting easy (though you need marks to ensure that you mount the camera in the same way each time - this is one of the disadvantages of the AS QR system).

 

If you only want single row panoramas then you can use a rail from either Kirk or RRS and and L bracket on the camera. This is (relatively) cheap and extremely portable. It is best if you level the head since you will be using the pan base of the head to rotate through the nodal point. Add a panning platform from RRS to the QR platform makes level a snap. The RRS panoramic set up is very nice and breaks down flat but it costs 3 arms and 2 legs !

[gluteal cleft]

I choose the focal length based on the angle of view for the final image and how much detail I need. However, I find that a 50mm lens on a 1.6x body usually yields as many or more shots than I need to capture what I'm after.

 

Just wait until you're preparing a file for print at 3 or 4 feet wide, and realize that you have to size your image *down* by 50%. =)

 

steve

[mark u]

I'd plan NOT to shoot with your battery pack, since this only increases the accommodation that any panoramic bracket has to make and the leverage applied by the camera to it on both weight and lever arm length grounds (see the review of pro panoramic heads linked below for a good illustration of this).

 

When shooting a series of shots for stitching you are seeking to rotate about the point defined by entrance pupil of the lens and the lens axis to eliminate parallax differences of viewpoints between frames. This becomes critical if you include foreground elements, but is less critical if you are shooting the far side of the Bryce Canyon:

 

http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm

 

You will find reviews of some of the alternatives here:

 

http://www.tawbaware.com/panosaurus_review.htm

 

and here:

 

http://www.vrphotography.com/data/pages/casestudies/vrheadreview1103.html

 

It's probable that once you graduate to using a panoramic head you will find that using a levelling base is a better way to go rather than using an Arca Swiss ballhead, since it allows more precise levelling adjustment.

 

So far as focal length is concerned, you can use anything from a 180 degree fisheye (taking about 5-6 shots to produce a 360 degree spherical panorama) through to a telephoto (though bearing in mind weight considerations and the need to achieve rotation about the entrance pupil, 200mm is probably the practical limit). Primes can be preferable to zooms for several reasons other than weight. You gain by minimising the work that your stitching software has to do. That means minimizing lens distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration, since these all need to be corrected prior to stitching. The greater the degree of correction that has to be applied in software, the greater the loss of final image resolution. There can be some tradeoff here with scenes that might change significantly during shooting (e.g. due to scudding cloud or other moving elements in the scene, fast changing light), when fewer, wider angle shots will produce a better result than more telephoto ones. Another advantage with a wider angle lens is that you get greater depth of field at any given aperture, and potentially avoid having to stitch a multi row panorama, although it is also possible to circumvent the DoF problem using a tilt/shift lens, or through stitching a stack of images shot with different focus (if you do this, lenses which change their field of view and degree of distortion least when focussed at different distances are advantageous, since you will be stitching component views for focus and then the components for panorama):

 

http://www.helicon.com.ua/forum/viewtopic.php?t=121

 

An alternative technique using a shift lens is described here:

 

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_58/essay.html

 

In addition to shift lenses that can be mounted on an EF mount (Canon TS-E, Nikon, Olympus, Hartblei etc.), medium format lenses can also be used with the Zoerk shift adaptor. Tilt adds the ability to take advantage of Scheimpflug principle to make the plane of sharpest focus align more closely with the receding subject, avoiding the need for using a diffraction inducing small aperture to gain apparent depth of field.

 

Whatever route you go on camera related hardware, it is important to ensure that your software and computer hardware is up to the task of all the image processing involved in producing a well stitched result. There are useful resources at this site:

 

http://www.panoguide.com/howto/panoramas/

[awindsor]

Normally I agree with Mark U entirely but in this case I will take issue with one half of his suggestion.

 

Provided the panorama head has a panning base you can use the tripod head to level it easily to within any reasonable level of precision (especially if your platform already contains a level). If you mount the pano head on a QR platform you end up the tripod head between the panorama head and the tripod which is not ideal (though the tripod head is very rarely a source of vibration in the tripod setup) but dismounting your regular head and mounting the panorama head directly on a leveling base every time you want to use it is a pain in the arse and of dubious benefit.

 

The comment about the battery grip is absolutely right. Sag is a problem, especially on cheaper pano brackets, and reducing the weight is a big help. However the computer will take care of a little sag during the stitch and dismounting the battery grip, putting the battery in the camera, and attaching the battery door every time you want to use the pano head is inconvenient to say the least. This is one reason I stopped using the Panosaurus. I love vertical controls and so have the battery grip on usually.

 

If you go out intending to shoot only panoramas then do as Mark says since it will improve everything but I am a lazy guy who is willing to sacrifice a little for a lot of convenience (that is why I shoot 35mm and not 8x10 or 6x17 for landscapes). Faster set-up means more shooting opportunities.

[christian deichert]

I have an old Nikon panorama head. It has three modes with click-stops for 35mm, 50mm, and 105mm lenses. It also has a click-free mode for other lenses, so if you know the angle of view of your lens, you can use the head alone as a guide. Cost me less than $70 used.

 

If you are using the battery grip, there is one other thing to look out for other than stability, and that is whether the mount is centered on the "film" plane and on the lens axis. On my grip for the 5D, I'm not sure if the mount is along the film plane, but I know for a fact that it's not on the lens axis because it's not directly below the tripod mount of the camera. There will always be differing perspective in a panoramic shot, as you are representing an arc fiend of view on a flat piece of paper (or computer screen), but if you are not rotating from the center of the intersection of the film plane and the lens axis, you'll have additional perspective change.

[charles_krallman]

Thanks, everyone. Does anybody have any experience with the RRS pano heads? I read the reviews on the Panosaurus and other inexpensive heads, as well as reviews on the more expensive professional ones and the RRS heads seem like they might be a good compromise...

[chrisjb]

Hi, I`d just like to hop in, I have seen some large panos, and have done some up to 8 shots 2high 4 wide with a 50mm ok. I`d like to ask those that know a little more. Is it true that the longer focal length used the more frames put together that more detail would be in the final print?. I see pics of nearly 200 frames using 400mm by the gigabyte site, plus someone sent this to me the other day, for which I guess being perfectly level a serious business.

 

See Paris at night.....

 

http://framboise781.free.fr/Paris.htm

 

Thanks

[awindsor]

Christian,

 

The nodal point of the lens is not solely dependent on the focal length. I have several zooms and primes which cover the same focal length and all their nodal points are at different distances.

 

Making sure the base is level is important. Sag just rotates each frame (which can be corrected in post processing) but having a non level base causes the whole panorama to rotate which is much harder to fix.

 

If you make these giant gigapixel images plan on paying a fortune to get them printed.

[larry_vaughn]

The wider a lens you use, the less photos you need. As your pano approaches a wider image, the view tends to look the same regardless of the lens. How big do you want the file to be?