ppage Loc: Pittsburg, (San Francisco area)

Yesterday at dawn I went do a pano of of a local mountain from a spot where the mountain is fairly close and the sun rises behind me and lights up the mountain perfectly. I shot on a tripod with a 6D II in vertical orientation at 150 mm so I could avoid some clutter in the bottom of the frame.. I took about 20 shots left to right only rotating the camera in small increments for each shot. When I merged the images in Lightroom I got a very short, very wide image. I considered it unusable. I tried again with only the 5 most relevant shots and it turned out great, tall and wide. I hear about photographers routinely taking many shots to make a nice pano. Would you mind speculating as to what went wrong? Should I be using Photoshop to merge or something else?

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I never overlap more than 50% or less than 33%. I will do a multi row pano when I want more "height" to the image, which might help your shot. I am not sure that rotating in small increments is going to help at all.

jak86094

I agree with Gene51 that rotating in small increments is not a good idea. Likewise, overlapping too little is not a good idea. You only need to overlap enough for the software to identify the matching lines and edges to merge the images. I think 20-30% is sufficient. A number of years ago, I did a merge of 21 shots but the software (Photoshop v.3) had no problem merging the individual shots. I first did 3 merges of 7 shots each then merged the 7-shot images together. There were other issues because of moving objects, but it was just a fun exercise anyway (over 270 degrees of panorama). Keep experimenting and good luck. Share some with us when you have one you like or have specific problems. Have a good day.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Here is one that I did, on a tripod, using a 45mm lens - three rows of 5 shots. each overlapped 50% horizontally and vertically. The resulting image is 12939x10204 px or 132mp.

(Download)

ppage Loc: Pittsburg, (San Francisco area)

Wow that is really professional work thanks for showing .

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks! I've been doing panos with digital since 2007.

I did this one with a 150mm lens and a D810, hand held, double row. I think I ended up using 8 frames. I should take out the duplicate people in the upper left side. It was hard to get everyone to stop moving.

(Download)

BboH Loc: s of 2/21, Ellicott City, MD

"...short..." puzzler? Were the individual shots short when you looked at them or were they of the same height as in the good stitch?

ppage Loc: Pittsburg, (San Francisco area)

All the individual shots were normal;tall, shot in vertical orientation of the camera. The first stitch was 20 shots with the foothills well to the left of the mountain and the foothills well to the right. The stitch was incredibly compressed (short) and elongated (wide). The successful stitch was only the six most central shots and came out normal looking.It was shot level on a tripod.

Neil Barry

LONG BEFORE DIGITAL, i HAD PROBLEMS WITH PANORAMAS. ULTIMATELY I FOUND OUT THAT TO GET GREAT PANORAMAS YOU HAD TO PIVOT THE CAMERA AROUND THE FIRST NODAL POINT OF THE LENS, RATHER THAN THE TRIPOD SOCKET. MANY CALLS TO NIKON FINALLY GOT ME SOMEONE WHO KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT AND TOLD ME THAT ON MY SPECIFIC CAMERA THAT WAS 38 MM IN FRONT OF THE TRIPOD SOCKET. I MADE A THREADED PIECE OF METAL THAT ALLOWED ME TO DO JUST THAT AND NEVER HAD ANY MORE PROBLEMS. I AM THINKING THAT THE SAME DIFFICULTY OCCURS WITH DIGITAL CAMERAS. HOPE THIS HELPS.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Caps lock is on. Better to not use it unless you are trying to make a point with something.

The no-parallax point (often referred to as the nodal point or entrance pupil) is the location of the lens's entrance pupil. It only comes into play when there are foreground elements that obscure the background. As you pivot the lens on it's tripod socket, the position of the foreground object will obscure different parts of the background. Finding the no-parallax point will eliminate that for the most part.

The no-parallax point unique to each lens and in some cases focus distance. It is not "38mm in front of the tripod socket". Nikon gave you bad information.

This extensive database shows where the no-parallax point is for popular lenses.

https://wiki.panotools.org/Entrance_Pupil_Database

These videos explains what parallax is, and how to find it for any lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzWbGM8AU8s

Yes, parallax is really no different for digital than it is for film cameras.

dleebrick Loc: Indian Land, South Carolina

This is a gorgeous image, but what do you feel the advantage was in merging multiple shots, vs. a single shot encompassing the full view? Did you need the final image to have more pixels than a single image would have produced?

Neil Barry

In the days when I was shooting film all camera lenses reversed the image. (Actually, upside down and backwards.) Think of what you saw on the ground glass when you looked through a view camera. That was the reason for a Pentaprism on a SLR. This reversal occurred within the lens and was referred to as the "nodal point." At the time on my Nikon F, long gone and barely remembered, this crossing of all the light rays within the lens occurred about 38 mm in front of the tripod socket. The lens I had on the camera that I was using for panoramas, was a so-called "normal" lens so I'm guessing somewhere between 50 and 58 mm. When I took a panorama and made prints, they simply would not fit together properly: tops out of alignment, bottoms, different angles of objects, etc. When I screwed my tripod into the back threaded hold of this metal piece, and then used a short 1/4" stove bolt to go through the front hole into the camera, this problem was eliminated. Since my camera, a Nikon F was not on the table and many of the other digital Nikons gave an offset of around 40 mm I can assume that I wasn't that far off. In short, I can only say that this solution to the problem worked. Sorry about the caps; I started out that way and was too lazy to change it. I hope this clarifies the situation.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

My advice is to listen to Gene - the proof is in the pudding, and his panos are awesome.

ppage Loc: Pittsburg, (San Francisco area)

I got to thinking about this after you posted. This looks like a focusing challenge as well. The closest bluff is sharp but the further ones are softer. One way this is handled is to stop down to f/16 to get everything front to back. But I wonder, since you are doing a pano, can you focus on a different bluff each time to get them all sharp after they are merged? Can focus stacking and panos work together I wonder? Just thinking out loud I guess. :-)

This is different because it is a deep front to back pano. Most panos are shot of a wide landscape all on the same focus plane so this presents a focusing problem.

BboH Loc: s of 2/21, Ellicott City, MD

I'm sure my idea will be shot down but - its sounds to me as if your software was applying its own proportionality in the same vein as when you stretch a rubber band the ban gets longer but its width (height) gets shorter??? Why it would do this, if it is, have no idea.
My first hand held consisted of 56 images. I wasn't sure of my overlapping so I figured more is better than less. Stitched with PTGui and it came out in proportion the way I expected it should.