Panorama on Rollei TLR

[Vics]

I'm planning a month in southwest France with a Rollei and Tri-X. I have a small tripod, a panorama attachment (between the tripod and the camera) and a yellow filter and a red one. I'm thinking about the panos as wider lenses in a way, so one-frame, two-frame and three-frame pictures. Lots of mountain landscapes, etc. Does anyone have any insight, helpful hints,ets regarding these panoramic pictures with the Rollei or similar?
Thanks for your help in advance!
Vic

 

[Pico]

I do a lot of panos for work, some with film (Hasselblad SWC) and digital of all types. Hint: If you plan to scan and merge images, lots of overlap is a good idea. And be sure the pan platform is level throughout the rotation range. (The Rollei pano head is very good. It places the camera so that the nodal point is just right for the normal lens.)

Photoshop cs4's Photomerge feature is hugely effective. It has come a very long way. Just take the defaults and be happy.

And what he said about one exposure throughout! Very important.

 

[Vics]

Thanks, folks. The Pano head from Rollei has click stops. I assume that they are built to include some overlap. As of now I'm thinking of merging the old-school style: razor blades, sandpaper, glue, matte board, etc. I my wife and I can't get that to work, we'll try scanning and maybe PTGUI. I don't have Photoshop.
Vic

 

[Gumby]

I believe the Rollei pano head gives a 20% overlap using the click stops. That head works well on a Rollei TLR but also worked on a Hassy with 80mm lens. My best advise is to very accurately level your tripod before shooting. I like 3 or 4 frame panos.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Thanks, folks. The Pano head from Rollei has click stops. I assume that they are built to include some overlap. As of now I'm thinking of merging the old-school style: razor blades, sandpaper, glue, matte board, etc. I my wife and I can't get that to work, we'll try scanning and maybe PTGUI. I don't have Photoshop.
Vic

*The Rollei head has 10x36 degree click stops. There is no overlap.
*Photoshop Elements is inexpensive and will do most of what it's costlier stablemate will do. You can stretch and adjust individual frames for better stitching.
*Keep the camera level right around the arc. Check the spirit level at each step before starting to expose.
*Don't tilt the camera down. Keep it absolutely horizontal.
*Watch out for changes in tone in the sky from one side to the other - very hard to adjust afterwards.
*You can take shots midway between the click stops (giving a 50% overlap) but for a three frame panorama you'll use six frames and thus only get two panoramas per film roll.
*Be careful about objects in the close foreground. They can end up misaligned even with the camera level even though the backgrounds line up very well.
* Watch out for vehicles, people, animals etc that are moving. It can make stitching a bit more of a challenge if they can't be excluded.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Sorry.
I should have said that MY Rollei pan head has 10 stops. There have been a couple of different models. Yours could be different.
I should also have said that for a three shot panorama with 50% overlap you'll use five frames, not six. So for a 2-shot pan you'd use 3 frames and for a 4-shot pan you'd use 7 frames.
Personally, I'd take a camera (any camera) with a wide angle lens rather than do all this messing around for a whole month of travel! It'd drive me (not to mention my wife) absolutely nuts!

 

[Gumby]

According to Deschin's Rollei Handbook (page 88), and my experience, "To facilitate joining up the results in the print later, the pictures overlap about 1/4 inch at the sides." (The negs should be contact printed or enlarged uniformly usint he full neg and identical printing time.) "Each print has 1/4-inch edges on each side identical with the 1/4 inch edge on the preceding and succeeding print."

EDIT: my Rollei head is hte "newer" one without the level. I can't recall how many clicks it has, nor can I find it at the moment to see how many clicks it has. It isn't where I thought I left it!

 

[Gumby]

Arggh... can't type. I meant "newer one without the wings". It has a level.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

OK Ed. I'll take your point about 1/4 inch margin, but it won't meet what is generally accepted these days as the necessary 25-30% overlap for easy photostitching in software. Maybe the old razor and glue method still works!
It's a while since I did my last Rollei pan so I can't be 100% sure, but I have examined my head and it's definitely 10 clicks around the circle. Which must mean the FOV of the 2.8/80 Planar is just a tad more than 36 degrees if your 1/4 inch is right. My instruction book doesn't give the specification. I note that conventionally a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera is 39.6 degrees, so maybe that's a clue but certainly not proof.
My suggestion to the OP would be to run a film through his camera pretty soon as a trial run and see what it gives him.

 

[JohnTF]

Igor was telling me he has a user Rollei Wide for sale-- would that give more overlap?

Regards, John

 

[twopointeight]

What about not swiveling the Rollei but rather shifting to the left and to the right on some sort of bracket, similar to the shifts of of view camera. Might not encompass as much landscape but would that have less distortion? A 6X12 in two parts.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Igor was telling me he has a user Rollei Wide for sale-- would that give more overlap?
Regards, John

I just found some old Rollei literature in my files.
The RolleiWide has a 55/4 Zeiss lens and takes Bayonet IV fittings - unique to this model. But the RolleiWide and TeleRollei tend to be VERY expensive!

At one time Rollei also produced a wide angle accessory lens called the Mutar 0.7x which gave an angle of view of 69 deg compared to 53 deg of the standard lens. (Which throws my 36 degree statement out the window!) However the resultant quality was said to be down on the standard lens.

Again, I think the best advice is to take some test shots now using the proposed camera setup - see how convenient/inconvenient it is and also see how much overlap you get.

 

[marduk]

OK Ed. I'll take your point about 1/4 inch margin, but it won't meet what is generally accepted these days as the necessary 25-30% overlap for easy photostitching in software. Maybe the old razor and glue method still works!
It's a while since I did my last Rollei pan so I can't be 100% sure, but I have examined my head and it's definitely 10 clicks around the circle. Which must mean the FOV of the 2.8/80 Planar is just a tad more than 36 degrees if your 1/4 inch is right. My instruction book doesn't give the specification. I note that conventionally a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera is 39.6 degrees, so maybe that's a clue but certainly not proof.
My suggestion to the OP would be to run a film through his camera pretty soon as a trial run and see what it gives him.

Actually the attachment produces 1/4 inch margin with 80mm lens and naturally there will be more overlap with 75mm lens - maybe just enough for stitching. I have this accessory attachment myself but never got around to trying it 🙂

 

[Leigh Youdale]

What about not swiveling the Rollei but rather shifting to the left and to the right on some sort of bracket, similar to the shifts of of view camera. Might not encompass as much landscape but would that have less distortion? A 6X12 in two parts.

The whole point of the Rollei panoramic head is that the nodal point of the lens is correctly positioned to ensure there is no distortion at the centreline of the image - in other words the film plane rotates around the nodal point of the lens rather than using the tripod socket as the rotational pivot point.

 

[Gumby]

Which must mean the FOV of the 2.8/80 Planar is just a tad more than 36 degrees if your 1/4 inch is right.

FOV for the 75mm lens is around 39 degrees, give or take.

I don't know much about stitching in photoshop, nor did the folks at Rollei back then. I'm a bit surprised to hear that software needs so much overlap. 🙂

 

[Gumby]

What about not swiveling the Rollei but rather shifting to the left and to the right on some sort of bracket, similar to the shifts of of view camera.

That's a better methodology for producing stereo pairs for 3-d viewing... if there is nothing moving in the scene!

 

[Gumby]

Check out Issue #3 for some real-world experiences with panoramic shooting using Rollei.

http://www.rollei.org.uk/newsletter.html

 

[mfogiel]

I would throw a new twist to that. If you can scan on a flatbed, then try to fix the camera in a HORIZONTAL position on the left side, and then calculate the degree rotation necessary to create a small interval between frames, in order to get a sequential panorama like this:

This was shot with an Olympus Pen

 

[Gumby]

Creating dyptich, triptych or "quadtypch" like that has a certain visual appeal. If the spacing is even, as you seem to have achieved, it is an interesting look.

I your example but I'd not use 19a and think seriously about using 18. The center two are nice.

 

[Matus]

I did use my Rolleiflex T for few panoramas and have learned following:
- it can be done 🙂 - one example
(click for large version)
- hand held actually (had to clone some sky because of that).
- hand held actually (had to clone some sky because of that).
- do NOT use the rolleiflex bayonet filters - I got vignetting with original Rollei UV filter (OK, the film was Velvia 50) and hood. It was rather hard to fcorrect it in Photoshop not to have darker patches in the sky
- in principle any filter may introduce vignetting - just because the light traverses longer path through the filter glass under different angles. I could imagine that orange or red filter could also leave slightly darker corners, but I can not confirm this.
- a head that has some kind of "clicks" could be helpful, but most ball heads have separate panoramic movement with degrees on it just check mow much overlap you want to have and how much rotation it needs and remember the number.
- DO NOT USE the Rolleiflex DOF scales - they are way too optimistic. Consult Google for DOF for 80mm lens for 35mm cameras and note the hyperfocal distances for several f/stops

good luck 🙂