Use of Panohead

[gleff]

I just received my Kingpano panohead and did some experimentation yesterday. I went out the front of my builidng and conducted an experiment.

Took a pano of 4 shots (in portrait mode) by just panning (no tripod). I could see the paralax error albeit minimally.

I then conducted the same test using the kingpano on the tripod using the correct nodal point, and incorrect nodal point (not much difference) as both seemed to remove the paralax error.

However, when I used The Panorama Factory to stitch all the sets together, there was absolutely no difference (at least that I can tell). It's as though, TPF compensated for the paralax error.

Something I noticed was because the camera was in portrait mode, you don't have a lot of FOV so the paralax error will always be minimal (at least that's what I noticed).

I'm just wondering if I got the Kingpano for nothing if TPF compensates for the paralax error, or am I just not using the right subject matter.

The photo's I experimented with were 1. Standing out the front of my building and taking a shot of the front entrance with the wording of the building name behind a concrete column, and 2. from within my unit looking out my balcany with the railing in front, and the various other building structures in the rear. Unfortunately, I've now deleted the images so I can't show you, but i'm just wondering in what circumstances I would use the panohead? Or is the use of TPF suddenly made my panohead obsolete?

[Killakoala]

You will notice parallax error (PE) mostly when you have objects near to you, such as fence posts in a landscape. For long distances you will have very little perceptable PE.

For Example.

In the first image there is a much greater risk of PE due to the boats and wharfs being so close to the camera position. I used pano gear to prevent it. Shots were at 24mm.


In the second image, even though i still used pano gear, it was more to keep the image level rather than for PE as it was shot at 50mm



If you can keep the camera level when taking shots, you will reduce the risk of extra cropping, particularly if the image is a bit tight and you want to compromise between severe distortion at wider angles and getting as much of your subject in frame as possible, especially in the vertical.

In summary, use the pano gear as you shots will turn out better, even using a great application like pano-factory.

[gleff]

But I couldn't tell the difference in the shots I took which were of a building real close to me.. eg. 20-30 feet with concrete columns about 7-8 feet in front of that. With the shots taken of the balcany, I was only about 5 feet away with background objects about 30-40 feet behind that.

Maybe I just need a bit more practice, but so far, I can't see any differnce to my shots whether I use the head or not.

[mudder]

G'day mate,
Just got my e-mail that a kingpano is on its way over Interesting to see your thoughts, I've been trying some pano's using the camera on a standard tripod head (not catering for the nodal points) and have noticed some blending issues on foreground objects during landscape pano's.

Used PF4 and had a few instances of slight ghosting or some artifacts where images were blended together and the details common to the adjoining images were distorted during the blending to make them match. I'm assuming this was due to the combination of too short a focal length and the standard tripod head. Although I'm starting to use PS for blending pano's more now...

I assume the kingpano head catering for nodal points will simply make the pano images blend more accurately and produce less blending issues that require PP, not sure about not seeing any differences

[gleff]

G'day mate,
Just got my e-mail that a kingpano is on its way over Interesting to see your thoughts, I've been trying some pano's using the camera on a standard tripod head (not catering for the nodal points) and have noticed some blending issues on foreground objects during landscape pano's.

Used PF4 and had a few instances of slight ghosting or some artifacts where images were blended together and the details common to the adjoining images were distorted during the blending to make them match. I'm assuming this was due to the combination of too short a focal length and the standard tripod head. Although I'm starting to use PS for blending pano's more now...

I assume the kingpano head catering for nodal points will simply make the pano images blend more accurately and produce less blending issues that require PP, not sure about not seeing any differences

It must be something about the subject that i'm trying to do because i've had no blending issues. If you are seeing blending issues, then I think the KingPano will work just great for you because I can see it working myself. My only problem is so far I've seen no difference after TPF has done it's thing.

You'll like the KingPano though.. he did a great job with mine.

[gleff]

Okay.. did some more tests just now, and NOW I can see the difference.. In fact, a difference between having a photo that works, and doesn't work.

Here are the two shots.. The first one, which doesn't work was done hand held with my computer desk about a foot from the lens (No panohead). The paralax error was enourmous as you can see by the cork board on the wall, so much so that TPF couldn't stitch the pano together.

The second shot was using the KingPano panohead. As you can see, it was able to stitch together. This was a test to demonstrate the panohead use, so ignore the fact the subject of the photo sucks and is not focused, exposed etc well.

Here are the shots.



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[mudder]

Ahhhh, can see the difference here... I assume it's more pronounced when there's a large % difference between your foreground and background subjects and details etc...

[gleff]

Ahhhh, can see the difference here... I assume it's more pronounced when there's a large % difference between your foreground and background subjects and details etc...

I found the big difference is where the foreground objects are.. Eg. when I did my tests the other day, the background and foreground were around 20-30 feet in front of the lens. In this test, the computer desk was only about 2 feet in front of the lens causing a huge paralax error between the desk and the background objects like the cork board.

[mudder]

Yeah, I think if your landscape pano's included both some foreground interest (like a flower or interesting plant or rocky outcrop) and some distant items (like mountains) then the difference would be more noticable due to the range of subject distances. If the subjects are all distant, like just mountain ranges etc then you'd get away without it...

Spose the closer the subject is, the more pronounced the parallax error's going to be...

Can't wait to play with it when it comes