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Shooting arround a column

Michael Fontana

pro member
I' m not sure if this is the right board, so it might be moved to a other one.

But here's my question:

I need to shoot "arround" two columns (Säule), to get a entire view of the art-work (9 meters. in red), meanwhile avoiding a wideangle-look.


Stitch.jpg



Different options:

- making 3 °paralell° shots and stitching them together with Hugin, as indicated in the drawing.

- doing a conventional stitch, by placing the cam at the center of the room, a bit nearer to the art work, than the 3 cams on the plan. This is done with a panohead, off course, a 35 mm distagon on FF as a 3-rowstich, with 5 images each.

Anyone having experience with that shooting style ;-)
There is some mixedlight day/Fl as well....
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Michael,

How long is the art work. If you have your lens in the plane of the columns, what angel would be subtended to include the length of the art.

This can be drawn to scale and then simple measured from your diagram. You may only need one shift lens and 3 pictures: left shift , center and right shift. However, the lens must be still and the camera must shift. Do this by using a Zork Pano attachment with a tripod mount or else a LD camera.

THe other simple way is to use a shift lens (with no tripod mount) and shoft the lens but then, as Jack Flesher has championed, counter shift the camera body in the other direction.

In any case, you are thus just using one image circle so there is no distortion or junction just portions of one thing.

One thing I'd be concerned with is the resolution needed. That might call for many frames anyway or LF.

Asher
 

Will Thompson

Well-known member
Hi Michael, what lens focal length are you going to use? You stated the subject is 9 meters wide, what is the distance from the subject to the columns?

A TSE lens might do the trick.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
More specific

thanks for your replies.

- the distance colum - art is 3.6 m, the plan shows actually the real place, at scale 1/100.

- if I would do a conventional stitch, (the 2nd option, look at the bottom of that post) it would have a angle about 110 degr, including a bit of the sidewalls: therefore it's at the limit for a rectilinear or planar stitch. For the height of the room, this would require a 2- or even 3-row stitch, with the CZ-distagon-35 mm, getting about 80 degr.
BTW: the 35 is a great lens for stitching; the distagon 28 wouldn't have enough vFOV anyway, so I like the 35 better.

- Asher and Will: I was doing this flatstich-stuff - with displaced cam and the PC-28 staying a the same place, too; but image quality is week at the border, still the lens distortions might be corrected.
Real stitching, aka accumulating image data with a good lens is clearly a benefit!

- 4/5' is no option; even a 45 mm lens has a hFOV of 106 deg, only.

Therefore, I think having these two options only, adding the map with the one-stich-solution: 3 rows with 5 images each


onestitch_crop.jpg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
So, Michael, for the 3 rows with 5 images each, whixh lens and where is the camera?

BTW, what is the architecture software used? I really like it.

Asher
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
"For the height of the room, this would require a 2- or even 3-row stitch, with the CZ-distagon-35 mm, getting about 80 degr."

I don't know about the architecture software, as I received the plan, most of ' em use archicad on macs.
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
I need to shoot "arround" two columns (Säule), to get a entire view of the art-work (9 meters. in red), meanwhile avoiding a wideangle-look.

Different options:

- making 3 °paralell° shots and stitching them together with Hugin, as indicated in the drawing.

- doing a conventional stitch, by placing the cam at the center of the room, a bit nearer to the art work, than the 3 cams on the plan. This is done with a panohead, off course, a 35 mm distagon on FF as a 3-rowstich, with 5 images each.

Anyone having experience with that shooting style ;-)
There is some mixedlight day/Fl as well....

Bonjour Michael

A great post and interesting problem to solve… some otions to choose or try both and see which one is the best…

Unfortunately I can't be of any help but I'm avid to see the answers, the result and of course the how!

When will you do that shoot?
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Michael,

Why not make more // shots, but just inside the pillar distance? It may need a bit more setting up (masking tape/chalk marks on the floor), but at least there will be no image distortion/correction required, and hugin will stitch them fine. You could use a standard 50mm lens. You can now buy low cost laser level devices (for the building trade), with a tripod and a carry case for about £20.00, that will help you line things up. I'm assuming you will have free access, no public present, etc.

Best wishes,

Ray
 
- making 3 °paralell° shots and stitching them together with Hugin, as indicated in the drawing.

To me this looks like the best solution if you only need to capture the artwork. In that case there is no depth induced parallax to consider, and you get the same resolution from edge to edge. Depending on the circumstances, because your drawing shows no issue with getting rid of the columns in the overlap zones, if you do need to get around the columns just shoot double the number of shots in the horizontal direction with appropriate horizontal camera displacement to have each joining pair to reveal the area behind the column. Also remember that the further your distance from the columns, the smaller the angle of non-coverage is. So maybe use a longer focal length to match the vertical coverage in one or more rows. It will also reduce small magnification differences between tile centers and overlap zones.

- doing a conventional stitch, by placing the cam at the center of the room, a bit nearer to the art work, than the 3 cams on the plan. This is done with a panohead, off course, a 35 mm distagon on FF as a 3-rowstich, with 5 images each.

In this case, especially if the room needs to be part of the scene you'll have to do it this way anyway, you may want to use a longer focal length for the outer L/R edges than for the center, and you may need to shoot the L/R edges with an additional row, to compensate for resolution loss.

Anyone having experience with that shooting style ;-)
There is some mixedlight day/Fl as well....

I haven't shot such large flat surfaces, just 3D subjects, but it all depends on the minimum resolution needed in the final corners. You can down sample the center without quality loss, but you can't enlarge the corners without it.

Mixed light will always be an issue. The best you can do without control over the lights, is to shoot Raw and make two renderings of each Raw, one White-balanced for the one type of lighting, and another for the other type, and blend to some sort of an average, depending on the distribution of the lighting.

Alternatively you can shoot in the opposite directing, with your back close to the artwork sections in the direction of your camera tile positions and use either a grossly overpriced Expodisc, or a cheap piece of opaline glass, in front of the lens. Thus you can estimate the color temperature (from the Raws) of the ambient/directional light falling on the artwork at the relevant tile positions, or use a composite to build an inverted color filter layer for the final panorama.

It's hard to give better advice without knowing all restraints (output resolution requirements, people moving in the room, being able to switch the artificial lighting on/off, shooting at night, can you include white-balance targets in each tile, stuff like that). It does sound like careful planning is required.

Bart
 
BTW, what is the architecture software used? I really like it.

If you need to carefully plan a complicated setup, and won't have unrestricted access or limited time or it's too remote to check out on the spot, it might be useful to do some planning with a free tool called Google SketchUp. It allows to build a 3D (or 2D) model of the space (e.g. based on some measurements or a floorplan) and change the eye/camera viewpoint+angle.

The tutorials will get you started and it's intuitive enough to learn to use, but like all dedicated software, there is a learning/experience curve if you want to get fast and efficient. It'll even simulate shadows/light through windows when used in 3D mode.

Bart
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Thanks a lot, mates!

At the moment, I'm just figuring out, how to do it, prior to give the client a response.
It has to be shot before end of september, and for sure, I won't do it with public, as to disturbing.

Talking about light: best would be a complet daylight and Fl-version, and mixing them after the stitch. I'm used to this. As for output; a a good A-3/300, dpi should be fine.

When testing a Hugin parallelstich; it didn't went fine somehow; just a black preview; I'm not knowing it very well, though; it's on OS-X. With PTGuiI it came pretty good, even this function is not documentated.

Ray: a 50 mm will not have enough HFOV(for the height); even with the 35 mm, it needs a stitching.

This leads to another idea, just a moment....
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
3rd option

ok, so this is vers 3; I'm opting for that one, having enough experience with "normal stitches", plus realising the art work within one single stich; thus avoiding to fuss within the artwork.

- 3 normal stitches, (with panohead) but from a distance, that allows to have the entire required VFOV with the 35 mm, including the art work and the floor/ceiling.

- Center pict, 90 degr: 5-vert-image stitch covering the entire art-work; the 90 degr.-crop is out of the 120 degr.-stitch --> good image quality for the artwork

- 2 side-picts, same distance, for the walls; --->good image quality for wall & windows.

- Mounting the stitches in Photoshop.


3-stiches_5.5m.jpg



I think this versions is reducing best the complexity of several stitching methods, by still having about 100 MP of image data.

How that this sounds to you?
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Michael,

Ray: a 50 mm will not have enough HFOV(for the height); even with the 35 mm, it needs a stitching.
Well, do it in three rows or whatever, the rows will probably be angled, (perspective adjustment required), unless you have a tall tripod, or a table to stand it on, or use a t&s lens. That was why I mentioned the care in lining up the // method. A 50mm or thereabouts lens is the 'sweetspot' for manufacturers, and hopefully will be relatively distortion free. It may work easier in portrait mode - maybe two rows, lower height for top row.

If you need the background wall, then you could take a single wide angle of the room, then paste your high res stitched image on top of that, ps out the top and bottom of the pillars if they are in the remainder of the room view. What you have just shown will work, but If the woa is a painting (i.e. flat) then I think I would prefer a // stitch for accuracy. However, it all depends on the final destination of your product, its intended use.

I guess you could do a 'trial run' wrt camera positions, somewhere else, using a brick wall of a building outside, or whatever.

Best wishes,

Ray
 
Last edited:

Michael Fontana

pro member
Bart

yes, the artwork is important, but I want to show its context, the room as well.
I like thinks to be related - contextualised - in my archi photography, too.

Ray

Have a look at the distagon's mtfs:

MTF_dist_28_35.jpg


The 35 is very good, in the distortion (lower graph) as well. When stitching, only the sweet spot, from 0 to 15 mm is used.

Today's stitcher handle that amount of distortion pretty well; the final reason for the 35 mm is that I prefer to stitch - for that occasion - as single row, sensor in portrait orientation, thus avoiding all the potential little problems, that some multirows might have when mounting them in PS, later. And basically, I like the idea of shooting the art work as a entire pict, and the rooms as a other one. This will allow to work on them indepedently, forcing each to the optimum:

Out of my experience, the walls with the window will have a completly diffrerent contrast, etc than the art-work itself; so separating them in two (3) shots will warranty a genuine capture and RAWconversion.

Talking about your "single wide angle"-shot: This will be realised with the center stitch; no problem to add another image at the right and left; this will help to paste and paint the sideshots into it, by avoiding
- 1) the wideangle-look, and
- 2) quality problems; the extreme pixel degredations, Bart mentioned in his postiing Nr. 9.

I already have been testing option 2 in a "trial run" in my studio, with the 35 mm lens and noticed - on a 130deg-stitch a extreme pixel degredation after about 100 deg in a rectilinear stitch, which is required:

rectilinear.jpg


I know, this example is not corresponding 100% to the real situation...

BTW: APP & PTGui do stitch linear stitches automatically & very well; the lens focale settings have only to be at 1000 mm...
no need to learn Hugin
 
Bart

yes, the artwork is important, but I want to show its context, the room as well.
I like thinks to be related - contextualised - in my archi photography, too.

Okay, but then you'll run into parallax issues with the floor/ceiling structure in front of the artwork, that is if you use parallel flat stitching. You could try to mount (in postprocessing) the flat stitched artwork in a rectilinear mosaic of the room, but that creates additional work.

Bart
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Merci bien, Nicolas

I'll probably need a bit of luck.

as for the tecnique, its vers 3, with the 3 "normal"stitches. I won't see the place befor shooting; so I don't want to start experimenting, 2 hrs away from home.

As it's a rather old building, with uneven walls, floors etc, a laser-level, from a do-it-store, will be used for positioning the cam in the height and paralell to the artwork.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
okay, I gave the linear-stitch methode a quick try:

3_shots_linear.jpg


It works fine, with APP and/or PTGui, but as someone mentioned, for one "surface" only,
the red bricks:


Linear_stitch.jpg



The problem with the linear stitch - for the final shots - will be the floor of the room.
Therefore, the 3rd option is still better.
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
okay, a short report from the shooting, showing some tests I did with the smalljpgs straight out of the cam; it's the first time I shot RAW+jpg, but for quick and dirt tests, it's fine; the final quality - the stitching too - will be way better, but I wanted to proof it first with small data. For test purpose, I mixed daylight and FL too.

It was damn good to have a laser-level, as nothing in that space was in level. The laser was used to set at a line parallell to the artwort, in a defined height. This helped a lot to get the correct height; the laser pointed to a pin of the flashshoe, of the cam. The measurement's precision was within 1 centimeter....

Here's a stitch fom the room:

testpanoroom_107_deg_small.jpg




in the last minutes, I decided to change my setup, to version 4:

behind%20column.jpg
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
So had 3 stitches; a center one, and two taken straight behind the two columns. Once again, this is more a proof of concept, than showing perfect images.



3stitches.jpg



As a nex step, I overlayered the right and left stitch, and blended them together; it was rather easy, as it fit pretty good. Now, by adding the center stitch, I was amazed how well it worked together; you can see the center stitch beeing the smaller image, darker on the left:

precision.jpg
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
As a test, I copied the right corner into the left one, very fine without furter edits. Basically this is the proof, that it works; off course the nodalpoint-adapter had to be adjusted very precise; the stitcher showed superb control-points, whithout manual editing:

precision_corner.jpg


Finally, the testresult, the only downside is the center of the lights; as I had mixed daylight and FL-stitches, it doesn't fits together. For the real picture, the stitched RAWs I'll use one light source only; I had shot every stitch in both light sources.


testresult.jpg
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Impressive!
glad to see it works, but glad also to see the proof that a well prepared shot helps a lot, though you change some settings at the last moment… Strong commitment with technic but not a rigid spirit… ;-) bravo!
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Merci bien, Nicolas

yes, I' m glad, too, you bet!

>though you change some settings at the last moment…<

To be honest, it was more a feeling, than a rational decision, and untested ;-)
I liked more the columns to be as small as possible....

BTW: The measering of the room and set-up took about 2 1 /2 hours, the shots themself half an hour.
 
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