What’s Your Preference?

retina · #1 (**permalink**) 12-12-2007, 02:07 PM

Hi everyone!

I'm new to this forum and relatively new to photography as well, althought it's a budding passion of mine.

I want to get a nice panoramic shot of an art room we have at school, and I was wondering what the best way to do this would be. I'm a little shaky with photoshop and the like.

I have a Nikon D40 dslr, but I don't have a tripod i can attach it to.

Any advice?

Thanks!
-Mary

wulf · #2 (**permalink**) 12-12-2007, 05:50 PM

Do you have a beanbag? Something soft enough for the camera to rest safely on will hold it steady while you take the shots you need. The only downside is that it may be harder to look through the lens to check things like focus.

It doesn't even have to be that soft, as long as you keep a firm hold on your camera. I know people who have created "ghetto tripods" by using things like a stack of books.

Wulf

inkista · #3 (**permalink**) 12-13-2007, 03:12 AM

Autostitch or PTGui might be worth getting a hold of and using, rather than Photoshop. Or find a friend with a Canon and Photostitch.

If you can't use a tripod and have to go handheld, I'd recommend choosing a spot to stand where everything's an equal distance away from you. Try not to have any close-by objects, which could cause parallax error problems with stitching. One trick I recommend is to stick a finger into the tripod hole on the bottom of your camera, and then rotate the camera on your finger. You may still have parallax error, but at least you won't have moved the frame of reference.

Use manual settings: lock down the focus, the f-stop, shutter speed, iso, and use a non-auto white balance setting, so all the shots will match when you stitch them.

If there's no way you can get the pano to stitch, you might want to rethink the approach and maybe try something more like a Hockney joiner collage.

Nathan deGargoyle · #4 (**permalink**) 12-13-2007, 08:10 AM

"a Hockney joiner collage"

I didn't know there was a proper name for this. Thanks.

inkista · #5 (**permalink**) 12-13-2007, 08:56 PM

Actually, I think they're more known as "Hockney Joiners". David Hockney is a painter who has also done some experimentation with photo collaging, both with polaroids and prints from a 35mm p&s film camera (iirc, he just had them developed at the local drug store). If you ever get the chance to see one in person, I'd say grab it. Some of them are cubist in the way they play with time and space--like this portrait he did of his mom:

It's not just a simple pano technique.

wulf · #6 (**permalink**) 12-14-2007, 10:23 AM

Yes - I looked at Hockney's work a while ago (see my blog for the post I wrote reflecting on a book by Hockney). I think the essence of what he has done is different from a traditional panorama shot.

The panorama is about extending the viewpoint from one point so that it freezes a moment in time as far (or further) than the naked eye can see. Hockney's pictures are not taken from a fixed viewpoint but use the medium of photography to explore time and space. For example, you might take pictures of the famous twisted spire of (?)St Mary's, Chesterfield and blend them together so you see one side lit by warm sunrise and the other by golden sunset; another approach would be to use pictures from different positions to emphasise the twist of the spire.

Wulf

retina · #7 (**permalink**) 12-14-2007, 01:00 PM

Thanks all for your advice! I'm going to try doing it today and using one of the free softwares you suggested. If it doesn't work out, I may go for the stitching method.

Another thing I was thinking, however, is that I have a very small point-and-shoot canon which has a panorama "setting" on it. Would it be better to use that? (This is for a high school yearbook, by the way).

Thanks again
-Mary

wulf · #8 (**permalink**) 12-14-2007, 01:22 PM

I suspect that the panorama setting just crops the top and bottom off the picture, making it look wider. You can do that yourself very easily on your computer so I would be inclined to ignore that setting (do check the manual though and maybe even give it a quick test before you go out).

Wulf

inkista · #9 (**permalink**) 12-14-2007, 07:57 PM

If you're talking about a "Stitch Assist" mode, if you've never shot panos before, it can help you make sure you've got appropriate coverage, but as long as you can actually tell that you've got a third of the frame or so overlapping, it really doesn't make much difference.

Wulf--my Canon P&Ss have always had a "Stitch Assist" mode, where the frame you just took is juxtaposed with live view so you can line up the subject as you shoot. It can typically only handle one row or one column of images, (although there's a mode for documents that allows you to do four in a two-by-two grid). It also names the image files with a different suffix so you can easily pick out the pano group, and Canon's Photostitch software (which comes with the camera) can recognize the naming convention and line the images up appropriately.

Photostich, however, is pretty braindead if you do anything but a single row in landscape mode. I once just flipped the camera into portrait mode to get more vertical coverage for a pano, and the software couldn't handle the new FoV. I had to resort to Calico (Kekus's port of Autostitch) for that one.

wulf · #10 (**permalink**) 12-15-2007, 09:09 AM

Ah - that is a little bit different to what I had read about; I've never had a camera with either.

As you say though, the main thing is to remember to take shots with a good overlap - picking a feature about a third of the way across from one side and moving so it is now a third in from the other side is a good rule of thumb. This is particularly the case if using a fairly wide view, which tends to be more distorted at the edges (thus harder to line up without further manipulations).

Wulf