Indoor/outdoor lens question

[kate.si]

Not sure how to describe it in the title. I've been asked to photograph an inn both inside and outside. The bedrooms are pretty small and for the most part I'll be taking the photo from as far into a corner as I can to get the whole thing. I also need to take pictures of the outside. It's two stories plus an attic and a cupola, there's also a large veranda, yard and front entry way to take pictures of. All of it will be taken in ambient daylight.

I have three lenses, two of which I already know are too big to really get the entire room in one shot. They're also too big to get the inn in one shot without taking the picture from across the road. The third lens is a 50/1.4 which I haven't gotten to try out much yet, and definitely not at this inn, but I'm worried the distance may leave a lot blurry. All of the rooms aren't square and some are very large while others are much smaller.

My question is, what kind of lens is really best for this? I realize wide angle is an option but I don't want one because of the distortion. Stitching photos together is also undesirable. Cost is somewhat a factor.

[OsmosisStudios]

What lenses do you have besides the 50mm?

Generally speaking I'd recommend a wide-angle or, if possible, a Tilt-Shift lens.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by kate.si

My question is, what kind of lens is really best for this? I realize wide angle is an option but I don't want one because of the distortion. Stitching photos together is also undesirable. Cost is somewhat a factor.

Sorry, but I think you're looking for the impossible. If you want to use a longer lens, you have to stitch. If you don't want to stitch, you have to use a wider lens.

I'd say if you're shooting with a crop body, rent an ultrawide, and the fix the distortion in post with a tool like PTLens. Or, alternatively, rent a a full-frame body and the 17-40L or 16-35L. And fix the distortion in post with PTLens.

Nearly all wide angle lenses are going to exhibit barrel distortion of some kind.

And I know why most folks don't want to walk into the tar pit of panorama stitching, but VR photography was made for showing off tiny spaces: example. If you're going to be doing a lot of architectural/real estate type photography, it might be worth learning.

[lil red bird]

Originally Posted by inkista

S
And I know why most folks don't want to walk into the tar pit of panorama stitching, but VR photography was made for showing off tiny spaces: example. If you're going to be doing a lot of architectural/real estate type photography, it might be worth learning.

Wow just wow that is some thing i would like to learn.

[kate.si]

@Osmosis - 18-105 and I think 3.5 and 70-300 with 4.6 or something.


@ Inkista - I guess, I'll check out that program. I was hoping there was a lens that you could get a shorter focal length with but it wasn't as distorted as with a wide lens. I mean I expect a little distortion, my camera has the option to fix it a bit in camera but the wide would be way too much.

It seems I may have to go with some stitching but VR's not at all an option for this and I wouldn't even know where to begin if it was. That was pretty awesome btw. Where can I learn it?

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by kate.si

@Osmosis - 18-105 and I think 3.5 and 70-300 with 4.6 or something.

wow, okay. 18-105 f/3.5-5.6 VR? And the 70-300 comes in several flavours, most commonly as a f/4-5.6 or as a f/4.5-5.6 VR.

Use the 18mm end and correct for distortion.

[inkista]

Originally Posted by kate.si

@ Inkista - I guess, I'll check out that program. I was hoping there was a lens that you could get a shorter focal length with but it wasn't as distorted as with a wide lens. I mean I expect a little distortion, my camera has the option to fix it a bit in camera but the wide would be way too much.

It's the nature of the beast--especially when you use a crop body camera. You need shorter lenses to cover the same field of view on a smaller sensor--and the shorter the lens, the more distortion you're going to run into.

As I said, you could rent a full-frame body and put a 24-28mm lens on it, and that would be the "equivalent" of using a 17 or 18mm lens on a crop body--but with less distortion. But for a small room, you really need extreme coverage, even with your back to the wall. I go for a fisheye at that point, and that's distortion city.

Originally Posted by lil red bird

Wow just wow that is some thing i would like to learn.

Originally Posted by kate.si

It seems I may have to go with some stitching but VR's not at all an option for this and I wouldn't even know where to begin if it was. That was pretty awesome btw. Where can I learn it?

Well, it took about a year of my life to learn how to do that and to get all the equipment, so this isn't for everyone. But essentially, you use a very wide angle lens, take enough photos to cover the sphere (usually using a panorama head so that you eliminate parallax error--the "shifting" of objects due to the point of view changing--between member images), and then stitch them all together in software that can handle it. The shorter the lens--the fewer images you have to stitch together. For example, if you use a 10-22 ultrawide, you'll probably need at least 20 or so images to cover the sphere. I use an 8mm circular fisheye, so I can cover the scene with four shots handheld (although the staircase one I did with 8 shots, a tripod, and a Nodal Ninja panohead).

Hugin is a good starting point. It's an open-source stitcher, and their website has a ton of tutorials on how to use it. If you're happy to throw money at the problem, PTGui (which is around $100) might be easier to use.

You stitch the images together to form an equirectangular mapping--which is a way of representing a sphere in a 2x1 rectangle. The latitude of the globe maps to the y axis, and the longitude to the x-axis. That equirectangular can then be fed into any number of programs to generate an interactive view. I used Seb Przd's Flash viewer, which lets you use images on Flickr as input.

The forum to go to for information on VR pano creation is the Panoguide forum. But it can be a little deep swimming there as a beginner. I learned a lot from this tutorial, but it's a little out of date, now, and Mac-centric. I'd recommend starting with the Hugin or PTGui tutorials--most of these stitchers are based on PanoramaTools and have similar interfaces, so both sets of tutorials should be useful for either application.

I'd also recommend starting out slow and easy. Maybe use something simple like Autostitch or Canon's PhotoStitcher to combine two or three images. And then work your way up to doing the same thing in Hugin/PTGui, multirow panos, and then to making a 360° cylindrical, before attacking a spherical/cubic pano.

I give a mile-high view of the process on this thread.

[kate.si]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

wow, okay. 18-105 f/3.5-5.6 VR? And the 70-300 comes in several flavours, most commonly as a f/4-5.6 or as a f/4.5-5.6 VR.

Use the 18mm end and correct for distortion.

It's what I used before and it wasn't able to capture enough of the room. It's probably what I'll be using again though with the tripod for longer exposure. I'll stand in the bathrooms.

[kate.si]

@inkista - Oh but I am a fan of learning. I'm bookmarking all of that, reading it, and saving it for a time when I can devote more effort and money to it. I have a mac but since it's not the fancy bells and whistles one it would probably also be a good idea to wait to have the processing power and memory for it. Thanks so much for all the links.

Thanks for the input both of you!

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by kate.si

It's what I used before and it wasn't able to capture enough of the room. It's probably what I'll be using again though with the tripod for longer exposure. I'll stand in the bathrooms.

THen you need either a wider lens (10-24?) or stitching.