Large Scale Panoramics

Thanks matt, but what do you do underwater?

Thanks matt, but what do you do underwater?

I have only shot a 2 frame pano underwater (I put it in last weeks POTW {rainbows}[lost out to a wonderfully creative pic, and others]) to date. The problem of course is even lighting across the pano. I have purchased a $40 aluminum tripod and if I can get some extra slave strobes, might try a sweep pano. Also, I would like to try shooting down a straight line ( a soft coral encrusted bomie or something else fairly static), using the viewfinders horizon line as the level. The D3 has a nifty side to side level built into the camera so I can use that feature as well. If only I had two assistants to hold a level line I'd be set.

Those are the only two options I can think of without borrowing Doubilet's HMI setup for even lighting. God, must be nice to be a king! Lastly of course is available light using the good Doctors' filter. In the end, that may be the best option for even lighting and some color saturation.

I made these from about 4-5 shots taken with 10.5mm (assembled with Double Take).

Those are great. Can you explain your underwater technique?

1) make sure I'm in manual mode to get consistent exposure.

2) take photo of my hand to make sure i can easily spot the sequence of shots on my computer (individual frames do not have good compositions so I might delete them if I forget they were intended for pano)

3) I try to stay still and I take 10-15 vertical shots from left to right making sure they overlap

4) I then pick 4-5 shots that fit best together

I've seen one shooter do large scale pano's and he simply had it hand held and then spent a lot of time bringing the images in with PS. He's apparently been doing these for years this way!

I really don't know why more shooters don't try this!

Andrzej - I'd love to see what you could do on a colourful reef! As Matthew has stated the lighting is the big issue!

Thanks for the tips. Im planning on doing alot of panoramics on the colorado river next week, then hope to practice in my pool and try uw in my oct trip to raja ampat.

Are there any special techniques to control lighting on a large scene when its very deep? I was a diving recently with a TV crew (History Channel from the US) and had a chance to take some photos to work out some panorama exercises which seems to have led me to more questions. The ship in question is about 140 deep and the light is very dim with a fairly strong current and silt flow moving across it. Yesterday when I took these 3 photos to make this panorama it was also overcast with lightning splitting the sky and rain. I intend to be much closer to the ship when I actually begin the panorama/mapping project but for these shots I was avoiding the film crew and had to stay high. The 3 divers in the photo were being filmed from slightly behind and overhead for the TV show.

1) Any light suggestions?

2) Any perspective suggestions?

3) Any particular lens suggestions? (these were taken with an 18mm at 115 feet or so)

4) Anything else I forgot to ask about?

I made these from about 4-5 shots taken with 10.5mm (assembled with Double Take).

 

 

Do I understand that these were photographed with a fisheye lens and then assembled? How did you deal with the distortion if so?

Do I understand that these were photographed with a fisheye lens and then assembled? How did you deal with the distortion if so?

Took the Tokina 10-17FE lens and shot 5 frames with minimal overlap and used PS Elements to stitch these together. I am not sure what the color differences are between some of the frames. Is there software to smooth out the color and or exposure differences?

Do I understand that these were photographed with a fisheye lens and then assembled? How did you deal with the distortion if so?

That is right, a fisheye. I used Double Take to stitch it together. It takes care of distortions and smooths transitions between frames semi-automatically.

It is really simple to use.

Took the Tokina 10-17FE lens and shot 5 frames with minimal overlap and used PS Elements to stitch these together. I am not sure what the color differences are between some of the frames. Is there software to smooth out the color and or exposure differences?

Were you shooting fully manual & lock in a white balance prior to shooting? Any control set to auto can cause these drastic differences from frame to frame. If you are shooting RAW, then WB isn't a big deal but if you are shooting jpegs then you have to set WB in camera.

You may be able to reduce the color differences in PS, but it will be a time consuming process.

Many of the programs correct for lens barrel distortion before trying to stitch the photos. I use Autopano pro which used the Panotools library and does a great job.

That's why when you stitch the photos each one looks rounded at the top and bottom...

Cheers

James

Anyone have any input on which application is best; Autopano Pro, Double Take, Panorama Factory or even just Photoshop CS3?

Anyone have any input on which application is best; Autopano Pro, Double Take, Panorama Factory or even just Photoshop CS3?

Been using Arcsoft Panorama Maker 4 for about 1 year. Simple interface, doesn't ask a lot of questions and seems to get the job done fairly well assuming you have shot the sequence correctly. I've done many successful hand-held panos with the program and it usually handles them well. It opens TIFF files which is important to me. I don't know what the others do but have run across programs that will only open Jpegs... then save to TIFF (?????)

I'm sure the other programs being mentioned are good. This program was recommended by a guy giving a talk at last years Photoshop World conference on making panoramas. That was recommendation enough for me.

Very interesting thread............ Since 1 month, I'm trying to make QTVR underwater: I really LOVE THEm!!!!

making underwater panorama isnt as hard as it seems. But there is a lot of editing work after the dive!!!! But making 360x180 panorama is a torture!!!

Here is some samples (Im working on the technique so I hope next panoramas would be better)

Inside the Wreck This one was really hard to make.....

3 m stop this one too was very difficult to stich: software cant find controls points to stiche because there is only blue.....

Mediterranean landscape Dont know why music loop is playing too fast on my browser

I tried hotspots too....... but need to work again on it......

0

Montremian landscape

I love this one..... really relaxing ambient and good memories

Montremian landscape cylindric

Hop you enjoyed them..... I cant stop myself playing with my QTVR....its so fun......

For those that have done large scale panoramics what lens did you use? I am thinking that the 12-24mm Nikon would be the best but I dont have one to practice with. Any help would be appreciated!

"Do underwater as you would do on the surface" - a nice biblical-sounding quote that works for panos...

As others have mentioned, with panos, especially hand-held, you may get better results with longer focal lengths ("normal"ish, even slight tele) and more shots with lots of overlap (i.e. 30-50%). There are lots of good online resources on top-side tips and techniques that will directly apply to uw as well, and so I'd start there... Having said that, lens choice also depends on subject, lighting, movement in frame and lots of other stuff. Choppy water being a good example, too many/detailed pics gets hard to merge nicely so there you might go with fewer but wider shots.

For processing, I'm using CS3 on Vista which is fine to a point, but I am having trouble with hard crashes on large 100Mb+ merges despite 1.5Gb RAM allocation and lots of scratch disk space etc. Any MS/CS3 config experts here that could advise via PM? I've tried everything from other online resources, and may even try adobe support when I feel the need for more computer-related mind-numbing

I look forward to reading/seeing a lot more on this thread!

Has anyone tried any underwater tripod, or other stabilizing device?

Has anyone tried any underwater tripod, or other stabilizing device?

Yes. My advice would be to go to your local camera store and buy the least expensive aluminum travel tripod you can find. (You could pay $300 for an underwater tripod, or $40 for a cheapie and throw them out when they fall apart). If your housing doesn't have a tripod mount, any machine shop can make an aluminum bracket which you can mount to the handle screws, or other attachment points on your housing.

Personally, I have found that using your viewfinder as a level works fairly well underwater instead of a tripod. Don't go too wide, shoot manual mode and after averaging your scene, don't touch the settings or focus between shots, shoot vertical and expect to crop a good deal from all sides, so overshoot the intended final scene by 20-30%.

Now, the real trick is even lighting...

Thanks, sounds like a major photoshop job, but thats ok. I may try it in the north channel islands next month, altho it will be tough in my drysuit.