Panoramic view question.


Wow talk about a dissection :)

I think the main culprit for having the distortion that gundamseed84 mentioned is using a wider focal length to take individual frames and stitch. Ur 2nd / 3rd / 4th panos also have the central curvature. Usually will be less pronounced if u have no defining lines for instance that runs across to make the curve visible, or like mentioned, sometimes the stitching software has various settings to correct it ( often with much crop )

I used 11mm-18mm for my pano shots so it can be done, but I understand what you mean, the wider focal length will exaggerate the curvature a lot more than with a 50mm which will only focus on the middle part of the pano.


I am half convinced regarding taking more pictures causing the curvature. But taking pictures with a more telephoto focal length makes the curvature much less obvious since each shot in itself has less distortions per se. but if u take a huge pano with telephoto lenses, the distortions will add up. ( if thats what u r referring to ) U dun need more than 2 shots to show the distortion in the stitch with wides.


Its just shooting from end to end that creates that curvature, my point was that because I shoot in portrait mode I had to shoot more to reach both ends but yeah you can still get the same results with just shooting in landscape mode but with less attempts. If I take 2 shots in portrait mode then it wouldn't be as distorted as if I took the same shots using landscape mode, would that be right?


As to semi circular panos, take a look at emlee's recent europe thread. he did a long stitch with good results. i suspect it is taken with telephoto frames ( else it is a wide with alot of cropping )

This is probably the longest i have done with an 85mm, 7 frames.
( I seldom do anything longer than 4 frames mainly because i find it too hard to compose a proper super long pic )

I can't remember emlee's pano but usually a bit of post processing correction would resolve a number of pano issues anyway which I think he's probably done. If you look at another pano attempt of bangkok by another guy you can see the curvature of the city buildings, which is unnatural but inevitable unless he really tries to PP as much as he could to straighten it all out.

If i am caught without a tripod or in a place where tripods are not allowed .. otherwise i really propose using tripod. helps to align horizons better without correcting for tilt ( long panoramas suffer huge crops from just a simple 1 degree tilt )

Yeah I used a tripod for a couple of of recent panos and they do appear a little more consistent across the plane. Just that on many occasions when I'm hiking or climbing I am not carrying a tripod so just had to make do with slow and steady hands.

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Telephoto lenses u can afford less overlap since each de-distortion process in stitching softwares is a minimal compared to wide lenses.
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That's true. My first picture here was done using a 50mm because I had the luxury of the distance between myself and the rocks, however with the second one I couldn't fit it all in so had to use the 11-16mm lenses.

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Most of my panos are done in landscape format but usually a matter of framing the entire pano and of necessity. I have done them in portraiture as well.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4038/4454101364_c5d7eef9f3_o.jpg
I am not sure how much impact there is on landscape or portrait frames, unless one of them exaggerated the distortion.

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I think I've played around with landscape pano shots before, just ended up shooting portrait mode for some reason.