Panorama shooting workshop

[birddog114]

My RRS panorama gears will be delivered on Monday from the US, and I perhaps will have few spares kits laying around.

I thought we may organize a workshop of pano shooting day or night whatever the group demanded.

We're going to learn and sharing techniques among our friends as nodal point, how to and what is?etc.....

We have few inhouse pano gurus as: killakoala, sheepie, glamy.

Maximum 10 members.

Requirements:
- Canon or Nikon or any brand of Dslr
- Tripod & head
- L bracket if you want to use the RRS pano system (equipment).
- Kit lens 18-70 is fine or any lens with minimum focal lenght of 20mm.

Pls. register your interests by replying to this thread.

[Glen]

I am inteterested but will be away for the next five days

[birddog114]

I am inteterested but will be away for the next five days

No, not yet Glen, perhaps somewhere late November or December!
You have plenty time to enjoy at your choice of destination! No rush!

[sheepie]

I'd be there, but late November is out - and hopefully I'll be taking plenty of nice Pano's in NZ in December anyway

You're all of course welcome to join me for a meet in NZ!

[birddog114]

I'd be there, but late November is out - and hopefully I'll be taking plenty of nice Pano's in NZ in December anyway

You're all of course welcome to join me for a meet in NZ!

I knew you're going back to sheepie's land that why I posted for late Dec. or when we have enough interests of participating of the workshop from members or there're still other gurus as Killakoala and glamy and .......
Can join us the shooting.

You're all of course welcome to join me for a meet in NZ!

Do you still have any big empty luggage which I can stay in for the trip accross the Tasman?

[sheepie]

...We have few inhouse pano gurus as: killakoala, sheepie, glamy.

Don't know if I'd call myself a guru Birddog Heck - I don't even use one of those expensive Pano heads!

[radar]

I'm interested, but will have to wait till after christmas to see what Santa brings me, hope he's able to get a tripod down the chimney

I would also be happy to demonstrate Linux tools to put the pano together.

Cheers,

Radar

[birddog114]

...We have few inhouse pano gurus as: killakoala, sheepie, glamy.

Don't know if I'd call myself a guru Birddog Heck - I don't even use one of those expensive Pano heads!

But at least you can pass on your experiences & techniques of shooting pano which you achieved in the pass, not so many members have this play as yet, and you don't need those gears to make a famous pano.

Every member, who had an opportunity to see you pano printing, which you gave us, they all say: Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and visitors fron Nikon, Canon, HKG, who came to visit Poon's office, saw your pano they're all impressed with your skills and the D70.

What can I say?

[birddog114]

I'm interested, but will have to wait till after christmas to see what Santa brings me, hope he's able to get a tripod down the chimney

I would also be happy to demonstrate Linux tools to put the pano together.

Cheers,

Radar

Radar,
It's not a long way, apart from the legs, you'll need more stuff.

But I thought Santa is already brought you an early Xmas present as a trip to SA to see the cats.

[moggy]

Hi Birddog, please put me down for the pano w/shop. The only time I will be unavailable is 7th-17th Dec. (I will be on Norfolk Island).


Bob.

[Killakoala]

Awesome, Norfolk island is bueatiful. I hope you've got a 12-24mm

I will happily contribute to the pano shoot, work permitting of course.

[wendellt]

I am in.

hopefully my RSS pano rail and BH55 will be in my posession soon

[birddog114]

I am in.

hopefully my RSS pano rail and BH55 will be in my posession soon

Believe me, that MPR CLII won't work on its own, the BH55 is not designed for using to shoot pano, if you trust and put those gear in high value, then you'll be off rail..

The C227 is taller with its column, the BH55 is quite bulky, then on top of it the MPR-CL II + L bracket + the D2x in portrait mode, I'm sure you'll hit some troubles there when you use pano stiching software.

[Geoff]

I too would love to come along for the pano shoot however as yet I don't have a tripod OR the necessary bits to work for panos...I will watch this thread and come along anyway hopefully simply to watch and learn.

[christiand]

Now that is an interesting workshop !

I'd like to tentetatively put my hand up for attendance.
I don't have some of the gear required; however I might
get an extreme lust if I see the gear in action.
(this is not the right choice of words )
Please be so kind and keep me informed.
I'll then have to see if can manage to be there.

Regards,
Christian

[MHD]

I'm interested, but will have to wait till after christmas to see what Santa brings me, hope he's able to get a tripod down the chimney

I would also be happy to demonstrate Linux tools to put the pano together.

Cheers,

Radar

Now that I AM interested in!!!

What do you use???

[sheepie]

...I don't have some of the gear required...

OK everyone - time for me to put some of my 'guru-ness' out there. Do not believe some of the hype about that says you have to have you-beaut expensive pano gear to get a good pano. Believe me!

Yeah, sure, that gear will certainly assist - and make some of the stitching issues less of a problem. But the good news is you don't HAVE to have it So PLEASE - don't be put off this workshop just because you don't have the gear!

A good tripod (by that I mean sturdy - again, doesn't have to be top of the line) will definately be a help, but even that is not compulsory! I have had several good results without a tripod even!

The biggest things I have learnt are:
1. Sort out your exposure, and then set it to manual.
2. Focus, and set that to manual.
3. Take your shots around a circle - trying to make each shot about 1/3rd overlapping the last one.

You then allow your stitching program to do it's work. I totally recommend Panorama Factory from Smokey City Design. It's a good buy (and an earlier version is available free of charge). Let it do it's work on default settings and then tweak. You'll be surprised

And for those that aren't sure about what can be achieved and haven't seen it already, here is the Sydney Harbour pano that keeps getting mentioned...

http://sheepie.smugmug.com/gallery/269110/1/22772511/Large

This was taken with 5 individual frames, using the 50mm 1.8. Yes, I did use a tripod (each frame was obviously a lot longer than I could hand-hold), but there were no other fancy bits of gear involved.

So - get out there - experiment - enjoy!

[Geoff]

Sheepie - this shot continues to mesmorize me! Have you been paid for it anywhere yet? I LOVE this shot!

[kipper]

Sheepie nice night pano. From what I can see of the thumbnail the horizon isn't straight

[kipper]

MHD:

Landscape photography essentials imho are this (mainly in this order):

1. Good Tripod
2. Good Ballhead with pano base + index
3. Good wideangle lens 12-24MM + something around the 18-50/70MM mark
4. Cokin Filter System
5. ND Grad Filter not colored (not sure what strength)
6. ND Filter not colored (not sure what strength, a variety I guess)
7. Warming Filter
8. Blue'N'Gold Filter
9. Sliding Rail (eg. RRS MPR-CL)
10. Good telephoto prime lens 300MM plus for the odd shot of layered mountains. Yes I never thought a telephoto prime would be good for landscapes until I saw a few shots of layered mountains with mist.
11. PCL-1 and use your ballhead as a levelling base
12. PCL-DVTL

[birddog114]

Echo from sheepie and kipper,

Yes, you don't need to spend such of monies for those expensive tools to do pano, but the basic requirement, you should have a sturdy tripod and a head for your camera. If you have some spare cash and want to play, then the pano head/ gear is recommended. i'll ask glamy can show us how to do 360 degree pano, with the gears he has and I'm going to get.

If you want to try or use on my RRS gears then you need to have the L bracket with AS type, I can loan you my RRS pano gears to play at the shoot but I don't have spare L bracket to loan. I only have the L bracket for the D2.

I recommend to shoot in portrait mode, tripod is a must coz we may do night shooting some where as sheepie did, even at daytime shooting, the tripod and ballhead with index scale at the base is helpful + expecting weather as windy as we got at Blue Points, and it's easy to help you to use with Panorama software later.

If people don't have the basic gears required, then just do other shooting instead of joining the pano shooting group.

[Greg S]

Stunning pano sheepie, first time this newbie has seen it.

[sheepie]

Sheepie nice night pano. From what I can see of the thumbnail the horizon isn't straight

Ahhh - but you're wrong The horizon is dead level - the problem you think you see is the water line of Circular Quay, and the fact that some parts are closer than others. I checked and rechecked this many times... Unless of course the buildings are tilted

Anyway, I'm not here to hijack the thread - just to emphasize the potential for pano's, even without the 'right' equipment
I really hope plenty of you take this opportunity to learn from some of these guys, and to try out (or at least see in action) some of the 'pro' gear If I can, I'll be there - just depends on when this all happens.

[Hlop]

I'm interested if there is some room left

[kipper]

Sheepie, like I said it was only first observation from thumbnail. I know it can be decieving at times

To be honest you don't need a fancy pano system like the PCL-1 but it does help for panos. I've done a few handhelds that come up nicely but that was in sufficient light.

I think to do decent landscapes a set of ND and ND Grad filters is a must have. Lighting at sunrise and sunset plays havok on exposures and while some say just use Nikon Capture to produce two exposures and merge. This method can introduce horrible noise. Also if the detail isn't there, it's just not there. Remember this is digital you're talking about and if an image is that dark that it gets clipped to a value of 0 it stays that way not matter how much you try and push/pull the exposure.

The only reason I'm swearing by these filters is not because I own a set, but mainly because of the outstanding work I've seen done with them.

[birddog114]

This workshop is aiming to members who's interesting in doing panorama photography, I don't have lot of experiences in playing with them in 360 degree which I'm very keen to learn.

Apart from learning, I'm lucky to have an opportunity to provide you some sample of the gears to try on yourself, + glamy has a difference set up of Manfrotto pano gears, which you can judge them yourself of which product is suitable for you in both $$$ and techniques. Provided you have to have the basic gears required + I'll invite few members who used to shoot and have experiences with panorama, who can or may help you the basics undestanding to develop your interests in this field of photography.

This workshop is free/ Non chargeable as other workshops which few members were enjoying to fork out few hundred dollars to attend and this will never happens on this forum, we just want to learn and share.


Other alternative ways to see, check, test, eval, then I welcome all of you to the mini meets, there're more gears and stuff which you'll never seen them displayed in any pro photographic shops accross Australia.

If this works out well, I also planning to have more outdoor workshops later which I'll invite few pro photographers whom I have known, to lead other workshops in this coming summer.

[huynhie]

I'd like to squeeze in aswell if possible (Vicky as well)

[radar]

I'm interested, but will have to wait till after christmas to see what Santa brings me, hope he's able to get a tripod down the chimney

I would also be happy to demonstrate Linux tools to put the pano together.

Cheers,

Radar

Now that I AM interested in!!!

What do you use???

A big chimney

Also use a pano gimp plug-in. There is also a command line tool to use that I'm about to try out. I'll post a new thread to let you know.

cheers,

Radar

[Wocka]

I'd be up for a workshop on panorama's.
Count me in.

[birddog114]

Please note:

People who wish to attend this workshop is required to have at least a tripod and head/ ballhead with the index scale.

If people wants to try or use the RRS pano gears, is also required to have the L bracket for the camera body.

[rog]

I don't think I can make the workshop, but thought I'd add a note to the Linux tools discussion. I recently installed Hugin and some other tools, and they are fantastic, and free (and they run on Windows too if you must).

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
http://rbpark.ath.cx/articles/compile-hugin-ubuntu

I stitched 8 x 8MP 16-bit TIFF files together, and now have a whopping big 250Mb file to print out, perfectly seamless.

Anyway, I just figured people might want to try this as an alternative toolset for the workshop.

- Rog

[Paul]

If there's room left on this workshop I'm interested in joining.
If not I'll go solo another day/night!

[rog]

If there's room left on this workshop I'm interested in joining.
If not I'll go solo another day/night!

There are a few Lane Cove dwellers here, maybe we can organise some photo missions.

- Rog