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June 30, 2007
[ WIDER YET AND WIDER ]
THE WORLD IS A PANORAMA. At least that is the way we see it – wider than it is high. One of the first photographs that Imaging took with his brand new Kodak Retina back in 1956 was, in fact, four pictures of a cloud filled sky over the Barossa. They stitched together beautifully into one long print.
The best photo we have of the Matterhorn was taken by Mrs Imaging with her point and shoot 35mm Pentax. She swung the camera around, taking a sequence of five photos that show the glacier face on the left and the magical mountain on the right with a Swiss flag neatly placed in the last frame.
We wrote a couple of weeks ago about the new Photomerge function in Photoshop CS3 that takes all the pain out of aligning images and matching tonal densities. It is brilliant but expensive. And there is a free alternative.
Autostitch does a pretty good job of creating panoramic photos. It is the work of students at the University of British Columbia and is available by download in what they call a “demo” version.
Many great panoramic shots have been taken with hand held cameras with the photographer simply swivelling his body. It works, but it is not perfect. Even mounting the camera on a tripod and carefully moving from frame to frame is second best, but it will do.
For the really fastidious the camera should rotate around the nodal point of the lens. Not many people will be too fussed about this, but if you want to know the theory take a look at 1000 Nerds and scroll down to the section headed “The world is horizontal”. There’s a lot of good advice here about the technical aspects of creating stitched panoramas.
Ideally you should take a preliminary meter reading from the brightest part of the intended subject and use that to set the aperture and shutter speed manually so that exposure stays constant as the camera moves.
Once the panorama is created the urge to see it as a big print is irresistible. Epson’s Stylus Photo R2400 ($1600) handles paper in rolls – either 21 cm or 33 cm wide and 10 metres long. The pigment inks guarantee long print life.
Results from the Epson are spectacular. Unfortunately we were restrained in our enthusiasm by a limit on the printed length of about 144 cm, which wasn’t long enough for some of our creations. The technical man at Epson says that this is a limitation imposed by the software (Windows and Photoshop) and not by the printer. There are work-arounds.
The alternative to DIY printing is to take the edited creation to a shop with a wide format printer. Camera House in Lonsdale Street will print up to 60 cm wide and 225 cm long. A print that size will cost $140. The image file needs to be either TIFF or JPEG, 300dpi resolution and already in the dimensions of the print size. Sadly most domestic PCs will choke on a file as big as this so ambition must be tempered with realism.
Making panoramas is easy, fun and satisfying, but there is one fly in the ointment. Where are we going to hang them?
[There is a collection of panoramic pictures taken with various cameras in the Gallery]
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Posted by terry at June 30, 2007 01:11 AM
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Comments
How does the P5000 compare with the Canon G7?
Is there any digital compact with manual settings which is "highly recommended"?
Have you tested the Ricoh Caplio GX100?
Posted by: Malcolm at July 1, 2007 03:27 AM
Malcolm: The Canon and the Nikon are very similar in both their virtues and their vices. Both are good cameras compromised by having too many photo receptors, resulting in image noise. If you can live with a maximum ISO of 200 or you don't mind doing some noise removal in the computer post-processing then both cameras will do the job. TL
Posted by: Terry at July 2, 2007 02:30 AM
Canon supply a stitch function on the CD that comes with their cameras. It can stitch together a matrix of photos, horizontal as well as vertical. My experience with it shows one has to be careful using wide angle shots because the stitched photo ends up bent like a banana. Apart from that trick, it seems to work quite well, and is free (?).
Posted by: Robin Helmond at July 3, 2007 12:46 PM
Terry: But is there anything better (than the P5000 and G7) in a digital compact with manual settings and a viewfinder?
Posted by: Malcolm at July 4, 2007 03:19 PM