Panoramic experiments

[rxmd]

Hi,

I've done some panoramic experiments recently, taking 12 or so images using a 50mm lens and postprocessing the scanned images with Hugin and Autopano-SIFT. Here's the first result, a panoramic view of the old city of Khiva here in Uzbekistan. 🙂

The original is about 7000x1200 pixels, I guess I'll do some fine tuning and will have it printed for hanging on the wall... Unfortunately RFF's 900 pixel width limit is a bit suboptimal for presenting panoramic images. 🙄

I must say I really like the panoramic effect. I've done some darkroom panoramic work printing sections from 35mm and 6x9 negatives, but the digital version is quite nice, too, and has a lot of detail. The combined virtual "negative area" of this shot is probably like 35x140mm, a bit larger than what you'd get from an FT2. I guess I will do more of this eventually! Have you done some panoramic shots that you're proud of?

Philipp

 

[payasam]

Tedious work, Philipp, but the results may be worth it. Is the horizon really sloped at both ends?

 

[rxmd]

Tedious work, Philipp, but the results may be worth it. Is the horizon really sloped at both ends?

On the left it is, on the right it isn't. It still needs some finetuning, but that's fairly easy to do in Hugin.

The picture here is just from the most basic process: telling Hugin where the source images are, telling it the focal length of the lens, having it generate control points automatically, and having it stitch the final thing. Less than twenty clicks of the mouse and twenty minutes of computation on my laptop. No fine tuning done yet, so actually so far it hasn't been tedious work at all. It's a lot easier now than it used to be, in the good old times PTStitcher/PanoTools times, and a lot of fun to play around with 🙂

Philipp

 

[rxmd]

Here's another one, produced "conventionally" by cropping from a shot with the CV 21/f4:

The wideangle still works well here, but you see the difference between the rectangular projection here and the panoramic projection in the stitched images, which gives them an extra immersive effect, like you would get from a swing-lens camera...

 

[payasam]

Forty or so years back I messed with a spirit level on a tripod and then slogged in the darkroom trying to get three separate exposures of identical density. Damned bore it was.

 

[Tuolumne]

I am totally out of control with my panoramic experiments. I have an Xpan kit (all lenses), a Noblex 150 swing lens camera, and a Seitz 360 degree Roundshot film camera. So far, I have only had time to ue the Xpan and Noblex. The Xpan is a wonderful camera - built like a tank, takes awesome pictures, including standard format 35mm. For sheer negative size, the Noblex wins the day. Looking at slide film shot on the Noblex is mind-blowing. For the first time in my life I realized what larger formats were all about. Since the Noblex covers such a wide angle, it is useful to use the auto-exposure module that varies the exposure across the field, depending on local lighting conditions.

/T