Shooting panos with the 70-200mm f/2.8

[derek_thornton]

Has anyone shot panos with this lens? Just wondering how it performs. The way

I understand it is you need a lens with little to no distotion to stitch

photos, right. I am not sure how the distortion is on this lens in the 70mm

range. I imagine it is fairly good.

[trunfio]

just curious why you would want to use a telephoto lens?

[Ed_Ingold]

The 70-200/2.8 VR would work very well for a stitched panorama, provided the field of view were appropriate for the subject. This lens is very sharp and has little distortion or chromatic aberation. As a practical matter, I find I take most panoramas using the range of 35mm to 50mm. Considering the limited FOV, a long lens will tend to exaggerate atmospheric problems if the subject is far away.

 

Other than fisheye lenses, which deliberately distort the view, most lenses do not have enough distortion to affect a panorama. I suspect you are referring to convergence, which is related to the point of view, not a flaw in the lens. Dedicated stitching programs like Panorama Factory and PTGUI do a good job dealing with convergence.

[buck_rogers1]

I have a wide array of wide and normal lenses yet my 85 is hands down the best lens I have for panoramas. Giving me great distance from my subject, it really flattens out the architecture that I've used it for (like ankor wat). I recently got a 50mm copy lens that might give me even better results. IMHO I think your 70-200 should give you wonderful results but watch out for overloading your computer. Many of my files end up being >500MB. FWIW I do all of my stitching in CS2.

[bill_chiarchiaro]

Longs lens for a panorama? Take a look at:

<a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-8739-8964"><b>

13 Gigapixel photo</b></a>.

 

<p>

--Bill

</p>

[daan_barnhoorn]

Bill, did you notice the banding effects in the sky..?

[erik_loza]

I have never had a chance to try it, though the idea has occurred to me several times. I actually think this lens would be ideal and give an interesting twist to the cliche'd WA's. Please post a sample if you do it.

[jason_tanner]

There is no banding in the sky if you zoom in. Its a layered pano and the intermediate layers aren't as fine as the final layers.