panorama warping fun

[robertdfeinman]

Here's a bit of twisting that I did with a recent panorama taken with the swinglens Noblex camera.
The first image is as shot, notice the pronounced barrel distortion which is a characteristic of all swinglens images.

I decided to make the image look more normal, so I ran it through the Photoshop plug-in: Panorama Tools, and set it to unwarp the image. I also did a slight amount of fixing of the tilt. This is a great tool not just for panoramas, but other types of distortions, and it is free.

There is still some keystoning distortion which I didn't correct in the prior step (but I could have if I had wanted to do a bit of trial and error). So I applied some perspective correction to the image in Photoshop.

Here's the final image with some added cropping.

The image looks "normal". As far as I'm concerned this is all legitimate. I'm just correcting for image distortion. Before the digital era we used to do similar things by tilting the easel when making enlargements, but the warps were beyond our capabilities.

I sometimes prefer the original look, just because it is different, and sometimes I go for the conventional one. It's nice to be able to have the choice. I've go some other examples in the tips section of my web site, with more detailed explanations.

 

[pfoto]

I think it is legitimate too, you're just correcting the image. Personally I think cropping is legit too although others may differ. The panoramic 6x17 is an interesting aspect ratio that I would think is difficult to compose for. I've seen some wonderful photos by Josef Koudelka in the format though. Thanks for showing these.

 

[Zenjitsuman]

I had posted a question just last week asking if anyone knew of software that would correct Noblex or Horizon swing lens distortion. Can you tell me about the software that corrects the way a leveled cameras pano looks with a swing lens to make it look rectilinear?

 

[lZr]

Google "rectilinear panoramics" and you shall be given
I do that on Phoroshop CS2, visually

 

[robertdfeinman]

Software

Software

Here are several sites that have the software:
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/pano12ml.htm

http://www.all-in-one.ee/~dersch/

The first one has a slightly tweaked version.
The second is by the original author and contains samples and instructions.

This software can also correct for things like vignetting and chromatic aberration.

 

[europanorama]

rectiliniar of altostorm or panoramafactory

rectiliniar of altostorm or panoramafactory

in panoramafactory(stitching) you can choose between cylindrical and rectiliniar. i dont know yet how to use it when you have nothing to stitch.....maybe you could ask them. btw: up to 160 degr. are suitable. i would like to know if there is an avantage of using swing-lens-cam and doing the rectiliniar way comparing to superwides. anyone?