Panorama

[nee_sung]

Hello everybody

 

I would like to do panoramas using a 4X5 camera. Is there any resources that you

can point me to? I'm thinking of scanning the film and then stitching them

digitally.

 

Thank you all in advance.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Your best bet is to do this with a camera that has rear lateral shift. You don't want the lens to move as that will create parallax issues.

[david_schwartz6]

My own experience with 4 x 5 -- I cropped the image in half so that the upper half of the image was 2 x 5 inches -- it worked for me! Then the only issue is what focal length of lens -- I used 135 mm and it worked just fine to provide a good panorama.

[nee_sung]

Thank you both for your answers.

[van_camper]

"My own experience with 4 x 5 -- I cropped the image in half so that the upper half of the image was 2 x 5 inches -- it worked for me! "

 

 

David, that is just cropping. You have not added any more information to the sides. Cropping a 6x7 film to get a wide look doesn't give you more information, but if you extend the same film out to 6x12/617 using the "same" lens, then you are including more information.That is panoramic. Using a wide angle lens doesn't make it panoramic either, because now the scene (eg- Imperial Point, Grand Canyon) is set farther away, when you actually only want to include more horizontally with the same lens. To have true panoramic, instead of using a wide angle lens, you use your existing std lens and by adding more film to the sides you achieve what the wide angle lens covers. Instead of using a wide angle lens to include a wider area of the scene, panoramic cameras use more film. What Ellis said is correct. You slide the rear back to the left and right, and now you include a wider area of the scene with the same lens. Your way, cropping the top has not added more scenery to the sides of the image (you just cut off the top to get a long look).

[john_galuszka]

Check eBay for various (mostly Chinese) 6X12 to 6X17 backs to fit a 4X5. Or, you can build your own. I built a 6X24 on a 4X5 Polaroid; used a 121mm Super-Angulon lens. Photos at the bottom of this page:

 

www.XtremeDigitalPhotography.com

 

(Note: photos at an early stage of construction; many subsequent modifications made; updates ... eventually posted.)

[profhlynnjones]

It is actually fairly simple, level ALL axes. Rotate the camera directly under the lens aperture, overlap about 10% to 15%. Your biggest problem is that on a 360 degree basis, you will have front, left side, and back, and right side lighting throughout the entire photograph.

 

Lynn

[leonard_evens]

I've been doing 4 x 5 panoramic photography for about a year now. I have a way to go before I will feel I've mastered it, but I have managed to make some pictures.

 

I wanted to photograph building facades that I couldn't get far enough that my widest angle lens, a 75 mm Grandagon-N, could encompass the entire building. So I tried to see if I could do it using two or three exposures and merge them digitally.

 

You have to be somewhat careful about the sort of scene you try to pht ograph this way. If there are clouds in the sky, they may change quickly between exposures. Subject movement, even leaves rustling can create problmes when you merge images.

 

There are two ways you can go about it. The simplest way is to fix the position of the lens, make one exposure with the back shifted all the way to the right and then another with it shifted all the way to left. In principle, it should be easy to merge the two images digitally in a photoeditor such as Photoshop. (But, I use gimp.) It turned out that this was a bit harder than I had anticipated. For example, it may be hard to scan so the intensities match well. You don't want to just match the two images along a fixed line because it may show up in the picture, so you need to use layers and transparency methods to merger the common section. But other than that sort of thing, there is nothing special required.

 

If you can't encompass the entire system that way, you need to swing the lens first one way and use software designed to merge such images. There is a lot of stuff out there on the web describing how to go about it.

 

First, when taking the picture, you need to roatate about the entrance pupil, so you have to find out where that is. You do it by trial and error. You start by placing the turning axis at the lensboard, look at elements of the scene, one in a direct line behind the other and see if one moves with respect to the other as your rotate. That is called parallax. You adjust the position of the rotation axis until you see no parallax shift. I don't see how to do this easily without a panoramic head. There are several on the market, not all of them that appropriate for a large format camera.

I got mine from www.stereoscopy.com/jasper/panorama-test.html and it works fine with my camera.

 

Finally, you need a software package to merge the individual images. There are several different systems based on Panorama Tools, which can do amazing things. I use something called hugin because I work under Linux. I found the learning curve for mastering this software pretty steep, although there are tutorials which show how to do basic operations. I would start by looking at wiki.panotools.org/Panorama_tools

and following the links.

 

An alternative, do-it-yourself method would be to use perspective correction tools in your photoeditor, such as Photoshop, to straighten out your images and then to merge them. But the software packages designed for this purpose do a mcuh better job, if you can get them to work. People use these tools with digital cameras to make impressive panormas from many, many component packages. There is a lively, very helpful listserve which provides a forum in which to ask question. See the Wiki for links.

[nee_sung]

Thank you all! I've learned a lot.

[jim_sandling1]

Interesting comments on potential of 4 x 5 for this purpose. My experience has been with 35mm based rotating lens cameras, which have their problems of foreground distortion ....my thinking is now toward medium format such as the Linhof...and suffer the cost. Many emulsions are available , and unless one is seeking 40 x 60 , or 40 x ?? prints.....120 format could be a viable approach. Was just looking at the 4 x 5 Cambo wide angle with 90 MM Schneider. Simply the wrong format in my humble opinion for even wide angle. Just a few thoughts.