Panorama example: There is a panorama section but this might be of more general interest. Image in next post. I was at Fort Clinch yesterday with only an 85mm lens and a Z7. The...

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

There is a panorama section but this might be of more general interest. Image in next post.

I was at Fort Clinch yesterday with only an 85mm lens and a Z7.

The original images overlapped a lot so the merging was relatively easy with Capture One (Lightroom and Photoshop can also do this).

The people were moving but not fast enough to show up more than once. The final result was over 100MP (19,948x5,307 pixels).

If I had had a tripod I might have avoided the one imperfection that's visible about 1/3 of the way from the left edge. I previously used PTGui to do this but keeping it all in Capture One was easier and under the circumstances it probably would not have been better.

The downside is the amount of resources used. I started with five raw files that were over 50 megabytes each and ended up with a stitched DNG that takes up 660 megabytes. If I had used a Nikon Df (16MP) rather than a Z7 (45.7MP) the numbers would have been proportionally smaller and the image would have looked the same.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Reduced image.

(Download)

charlienow Loc: Hershey, PA

Looks good. The imperfection is barely noticeable. I mostly use lightroom to merge for stacking or pano

Chuck

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

The 85 gives it a nice flat perspective. No distortion.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

selmslie wrote:

Reduced image.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

The horizontal centreline seems to run at about 5 or 6 ft high, which indicates that the camera was held with zero tilt throughout the sweep. It's probably worth mentioning that the stitching would probably not have worked if there had been any significant upward or downward tilt, and that's especially true with wide angle lenses. A tripod would have held the camera on a smooth arc but as you said, this was hand-held, so extra carefulness would have been required. In that situation I would use the centre rectangle in the viewfinder to aim the camera along a line that ran at the same height as the camera but on the other side of the yard.

Doing the above can result in a shot that has more foreground than you would like, but that can be cropped out later.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

selmslie wrote:

Reduced image.

Pretty darn good for a handheld pano. I have not found the "defect" yet. Yup, panos like focus stacks can produce huge files. I have done 8 image stitched panoramas with a 14 MP camera shooting RAW that were initially 1.3 GB! They could be crazy huge with a 24 to 45 MP camera.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Architect1776 wrote:

I moved the image from the first post to the second to foil a certain troll.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

R.G. wrote:

The horizontal centreline seems to run at about 5 or 6 ft high, which indicates that the camera was held with zero tilt throughout the sweep. It's probably worth mentioning that the stitching would probably not have worked if there had been any significant upward or downward tilt, ....

Yes, the camera was aimed at eye level which is somewhat easier in Florida because the whole state is pretty flat, maybe not as flat as Kansas but at least as flat as a Scotch pancake.

There are four modes of stitching - Spherical, Cylindrical, Perspective and Panini. All of them produced the same issue between the two left panes.

I had done what I could to keep the camera level but I had leveled a couple of the panes separately in C1. I thought that the leveling of the left pane that might have caused the problem because it got leveled (and cropped) a little more than the others. I tried reducing the leveling of the left pane to reduce the cropping. It didn't help.

Next I removed all of the leveling and let C1 align everything. That didn't remove the problem either but everything else stitched together properly.

So it looks like the solution might be to work with a tripod. On the other hand, there may be something peculiar about the content of the left pane where it overlaps with the next one that could be confusing C1.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

A few have posted that handheld panos are risky and suggested tripods are needed. I've had no trouble with handheld panos using Lightroom Classic. I carry a tripod, but rarely use it. This is someone else's topic, so I won't post examples.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

The only flaw I can see is along the top edge of the concrete wall. It only becomes noticeable if you zoom in on it, so maybe the zooming is making it look worse than it really is. I've seen pano stitchers do far worse. Everything else seems perfect.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

selmslie wrote:

There is a panorama section but this might be of m... (show quote)

I'm not sure I've ever seen it mentioned here, but my panorama technique is a bit different. Whenever I can, I just back as far away from the subject as I can to get the full width I want, and then just crop vertically to get the final panorama. That way, no patching/merging/blending involved. Of course, sometimes I can not get far enough back, or have a wide enough lens to accomplish this. Works fairly often, however.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

bsprague wrote:

A few have posted that handheld panos are risky and suggested tripods are needed. I've had no trouble with handheld panos using Lightroom Classic. I carry a tripod, but rarely use it. This is someone else's topic, so I won't post examples.

I normally don't have trouble either.

Here is another interior shot. This time it is four images in portrait mode at over 95MP, 13,283x7,381.

(Download)

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

R.G. wrote:

The only flaw I can see is along the top edge of the concrete wall. It only becomes noticeable if you zoom in on it, so maybe the zooming is making it look worse than it really is. I've seen pano stitchers do far worse. Everything else seems perfect.

Mystery solved!

There were five images combined to make the panorama. Numbering them from left to right - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - it turns out that there was too much overlap. Image 1 and 3 actually overlap so either 2 or 3 was unnecessary.

But there is a different side effect. The soldier carrying the kindling into the kitchen is in the doorway in image 2 but behind the cannon in image 3.

The solution is to overlap less than 50%.

Images 1, 3, 4, 5 - no defect
Images 1, 3, 4, 5 - no defect...

(Download)

Images 1, 2, 4, 5 - the defect returns

(Download)