Panoramic Photography

[Bret Lucas]

I spent last week shooting stills and video for ExxonMobil at the bottom of the world last week. This image was captured in Bluff at the bottom of New Zealand. Around 17 images processed in Lightroom.

 

[JohnK]

Nice!!

 

[feethea]

Stunning!

 

[BinaVision]

Love Lightroom for stiching photos together to build a panoramic. I shot this last week after a rain storm.

 

[RoyVa]

Nice shots to be able to get them into one phot with full view. Beautiful!

 

[Meta4]

The P3 is the perfect tool for aerial panoramas.
Here's a 6 image panorama ...

And a 12 image panorama

 

[sj liew]

Beautifully done, would like to do this in my next flight, thanks for the share

 

[samivu]

 

[apsphoto]

This is 3 frames and 3 shots per frame. stitched in ptgui. love how stable this is, this was my first test of the pano taking, wish it would write the dngs faster for the brackets.

Laguna Niguel sunset pano by Alan Smallbone, on Flickr

Alan

 

[SouthernPhantom]

I love these!! Thank you all!

I've been a big "pan fan" for years, but hadn't thought of trying the P3 for this until now.

My only comment is, if the DNGs are writing too slowly, why not try JPEGs for this purpose, since the light values seem pretty even? I too shoot RAW (with all cameras) for most purposes. So I'll try both and see how they look.

Another fun experiment is to try time-lapse videos, by shooting stills at 5-10 intervals (there's an option for that), and then using a program like Premiere to import them as a video sequence. Got a great sunset shot that way.

 

[apsphoto]

All stills write slowly. The jpgs are really compressed and I want to be sure I get the dynamic range I want, also with Lightroom there is a lens distortion correction. So I shoot DNG only not DNG and jpg that takes even longer. The lens has a moustache type distortion that will show up when you shoot straight horizons. The time lapse would be fun, but only every 10 seconds now, I wish we could do more. That is 6 per minute and if you get 18 min flights that is only 4.5 seconds of video at 24fps not a lot. I wish it would write faster and then be able to set 2 or 5 seconds between exposures. There is some drift but not a lot. I need to try the timelapse but I wish I could a lot more, I can see a fleet of P3 all sequenced....

Alan

P.S. If you have After Effects you can use that for generating the timelapse and work directly from the DNGs. AE has masking etc. if you are not on the CC (credit card) bandwagon.

 

[SouthernPhantom]

All stills write slowly. The jpgs are really compressed and I want to be sure I get the dynamic range I want, also with Lightroom there is a lens distortion correction. So I shoot DNG only not DNG and jpg that takes even longer. The lens has a moustache type distortion that will show up when you shoot straight horizons. The time lapse would be fun, but only every 10 seconds now, I wish we could do more. That is 6 per minute and if you get 18 min flights that is only 4.5 seconds of video at 24fps not a lot. I wish it would write faster and then be able to set 2 or 5 seconds between exposures. There is some drift but not a lot. I need to try the timelapse but I wish I could a lot more, I can see a fleet of P3 all sequenced....

Alan

P.S. If you have After Effects you can use that for generating the timelapse and work directly from the DNGs. AE has masking etc. if you are not on the CC (credit card) bandwagon.

Thanks! That all makes sense.

I think the interval options are 1, 2, 5, and 10 seconds. It's been a while since I looked. I chose 10 the one time I did it. Will experiment more!

 

[Bigdz]

I spent last week shooting stills and video for ExxonMobil at the bottom of the world last week. This image was captured in Bluff at the bottom of New Zealand. Around 17 images processed in Lightroom. View attachment 27705

Here is my most recent pano of Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, still learning...

 

[ksavoie]

My Neighborhood. Neat little trick using Microsoft ICE.

 

[Bret Lucas]

View attachment 27766
Here is my most recent pano of Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, still learning...

Good start, might want to open the blacks a little.

 

[Wilfros]

Let me first say how beautiful all these photos are.

Now ... could someone direct me to instructions on how to shoot and then how to process these large photos. It seems to me like you have a number of rows of panoramas and then stitch these to each other. Is my guess close?

 

[Bret Lucas]

Yes close, settings first. Setting first. Shoot RAW. Pick a White Balance. (Don't use auto). Overlap each image capture by at least 20%. Capture a wider view than you think so the cropping process doesn't get tight. Import into Lightroom. Pick the first image and apply the white balance you like. Select lens profile to reduce the distortion. Select all images and apply sync all the settings you've just changed on the first image. Then as the images are still selected, right click on the first image and select merge to panoramic. Make minor adjustments to final pano image to suit your style. Job done.

 

[Meta4]

All stills write slowly. The jpgs are really compressed and I want to be sure I get the dynamic range I want, also with Lightroom there is a lens distortion correction. So I shoot DNG only not DNG and jpg that takes even longer. The lens has a moustache type distortion that will show up when you shoot straight horizons.

I see a lot of people recommending shooting raw but really I can't see a need for it in panoramas.
Most of my shooting is panoramas - often big ones with 20+ images.
The .jpg files aren't that bad at all but the delay shooting raw is.
I've tried Raw but can't see that it's worth it.
The distorted horizon was corrected out several firmware versions ago.
Here's a 3 shot panorama done in jpg - like all of mine are.

 

[Bret Lucas]

RAW has a lot more headroom. You can move sliders around more before the histogram starts breaking up. And when I mean headroom, I'm talking a huge different. 256 shades of grey verses 4096!

 

[Meta4]

Yes .. I know Raw has more/is better .. but my testing shows that the jpg files are all I need and the time to shoot 20 Raw files is unacceptable.
Have a look at the panoramas in my gallery and see if they are lacking anything.
There are 45 individual images stitched in this one. My batteries don't last long enough to shoot Raw.