Panorama question

[ajo43]

Whenever I try to stitch a couple of shots together on Photoshop I always find that either the Cylindrical Mapping won't work or my shots are so bent out of shape that I don't have much of a panorama after all.

Is this because I'm not taking enough shots in my panorama and I don't have enough overlap.

Or is this becuase I have the focal length wrong 18mm.

I know there is lots of $$$ I can spend to get this perfect by buying software and special tripod fixture but I just want to keep it simple and do the odd panorama handheld with my kit kens.

Cheers

[brembo]

Get a program called autostich, it's free (albeit time limited) and works wonders. All you do is select the images you want stitched together, and let it do the rest.

I said it was time limited, but you can just download it again after it expires.

EDIT: Link >>> http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

[leek]

I use autostitch too... It does the job with the minimum of supervision.

Some of my best panoramas have been hand-held... See here for examples.

Basic rules:
- 30-40% overlap between pictures - use the gridlines as a reference
- Take you pics in portrait orientation (as this gives your pano more height)
- keep the horizon level and at the same point in each photo - use the gridlines as a reference
- I don't think it matters too much what focal length you use, but you may get more distortion at the low end - just don't change the focal length between shots

[boxerboy]

I do lots of panoramas and use Panorama Factory, which I find great. Some handheld and some on a monopod and all come out OK - I don't think you need to get too fancy if you take some care.

There is a school of thought that the photo's to be stitched should be taken in portrait, but I've takne plenty in landscape and they work just fine. I've found overlaps of 40-50% work well and the gridlines of the D70 help here.

cheers
Peter

[ajo43]

thanks guys

[AlistairF]

Most importantly you'll have to rotate your camera around the "nodal point" of the lens and not the thread mount of the D70. This is very important when using the wider-end range of lenses. Panoramas with telephoto lenses stich up more easily becuase there's less distortion and objects are further away. There's plenty of information on Google, but check out http://www.duckware.com/nikond70/index.html

Another point to consider is to use the same manual focus setting for all the images used in the pano. If you use Autofocus, each image will be in a different focal plane and the distortion will be different for each image making the images not line up in your stiching software.

[boxerboy]

Most importantly you'll have to rotate your camera around the "nodal point" of the lens and not the thread mount of the D70. This is very important when using the wider-end range of lenses. Panoramas with telephoto lenses stich up more easily becuase there's less distortion and objects are further away. There's plenty of information on Google, but check out http://www.duckware.com/nikond70/index.html

Wow, that's a very interesting article (I've just glanced over it, but will read it in depth later). Must say I've never been that scientific, but I've had pretty good results. Will definitely try some of things outlined for my next pano. Thanks for that, Alistair.

Another point to consider is to use the same manual focus setting for all the images used in the pano. If you use Autofocus, each image will be in a different focal plane and the distortion will be different for each image making the images not line up in your stiching software.

Same is true for all camera settings. Only shoot in manual so exposure, DOF, etc is exactly same for each part of the pano.

Cheers
Peter