Panoramic photography advice

Stitching digital files together will drive you crazy. It's no solution for somebody serious about panoramas.

Thanks, Aaron. That was kind of my take on it, but I wanted to hear it from someone else too!

K

http://truckgenerator.com/subdomain/sueandneal/panaramas.htm

I have an old Panon which was the progenitor of the Widelux. It is a swing lens 140 degree field of view.

Most of the pictures on my page were taken with it. You can minimize the "cigar" effect by only shooting at a 45 degree angle or less to your subject or you can shoot stright on and "go with it" as I have done in some of these shots.

If you define "panorama" as field of view instead of aspect ratio, you are stuck with the cameras that you mention. My Panon has a 50mm lens and paints a 140 degree field of view. It is also very wide vertically for 120 film.

However, I don't think you can get compulsive sharpness with a moving lens. Some vibration must be transmitted to the body. Also a 1/200 of a second exposure takes about 1 second to make and a 1/50 exposure takes about two or three seconds.

A friend of mine just got a Fuji 6x17 and I think with a blank sheet of paper doing what you are doing that is the way I would go.

I also make "panoramas" by using half slides on my 4x5 and 8x10.

In one case I put my 90mm Super Angulon (designed for 4x5) on my 8x10 and got a round picture with about a 100 degree field of view.

I had intended to crop it to 3x8 but decided that I liked it in the round better.

Before you give up on stitching have a look at this site which I think is too cool

http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp.html

You think you need to narrow it down to

1. landscape (still things) or people (doc / moving things)

2. swing or not

3. final print size ratio and output method (if you are not printing it yourself, lab fees will be the bulk of the cost for panos imo)

Hi Ken, are you aware of our camera.. the Fotoman 617? It uses many standard large format lenses from Schneider's 72XL to Fuji's T300. At $1600 for a complete camera less lens (Body, Cone, matching Helical Focus Mount and Finder) it is a more versatile and more competetive alternative to the high priced spread. CNC machined from a solid billet of T6000 series aluminum, we joke that it's the only camera you could use in a bar fight... and take pictures of the aftermath. Several Fuji and Linhof users have purchased one... most notably Ross Wordhouse, a dedicated professional pano shooter. Search the MF & LF forums for threads, and of course our website (www.fotomancamera.com). And a BIG YES to the creation of a Panoramic Forum. We get ton's of email's... there's a lot of interest.

I have considered the panorama idea and often try compositions that could work. My concern is that I see it often being used when it should not be. Personally I think you would be better off going for a flexible system that will allow you to create images in many different styles. You can get a 6x15 format on a sheet of 4x5 film or at 5x14 (same proportion as 6x17) you would have a little room for finely tuning the composition after the exposure. That way you can do panoramic images at many different focal lengths from extreme wideangle to telephoto. With respect to original image size you are not giving up much to the 6x17 format. You have the flexibility to work with different films very easily and you can work sheet by sheet rather than depending on roll by roll shooting and processing. Why limit yourself, when the alternatives don't seem to justify themselves.

Just a few of my thoughts. Make of them what you will.

To get an idea of the trade-offs, get the book "Stretch" published by Rotovision.

I have a G617 (the fixed-lens precursor to the GX617). It has an amazing lens, but it is really a camera meant for use on a tripod. If you want a more casual, hand-held style, a X-Pan would be more appropriate. Then again, you could just crop a 6x6 or 6x7 frame (e.g. Mamiya 7II with a 43mm Biogon) to get the same results.

Don't belittle stitching. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, visit the Vista Point Studio one of these days. Huge panoramic prints made by stitching in Photoshop (without any special software like Panorama Tools) frames taken using digital backs on a Hasselblad with the 100mm Planar.

If you are interested in a G617, contact me by email. I am thinking of selling mine as I don't get enough use out of it.

Of course the images from a rotating lens camera are qualitatively different from those produced by a fixed-lens panoramic camera or cropping. The moving lens yields a wider angle of view than the widest fixed lens, but does so by exposing each part of the film with the central image from a well-corrected normal lens. With a wide-angle lens, resolution decreases toward the extreme edges of the frame, but a rotating-lens negative does not have "edges" in an optical sense. And the simple normal lens on a rotating-lens camera is not pushing the limits of optical design like a seriously wide-angle lens must. Thus, the Noblex in particular has a reputation for images with remarkable sharpness across the entire frame. I beleive the lens does a "warm up run" to get up to constant speed before actually making the exposure, and this may help explain why the vibrations Neal posits are not a problem in practice.

I would expect to use a tripod almost always for serious panoramic photography because of the need to keep the camera precisely level when using wide-angle or moving lenses. Also, if you need to use a center filter to compensate for light fall-off when using a fixed wide-angle lens, that will lenghten your exposure times. The rotating-lens camera won't require a center filter.

I have no experience using any of the cameras you mention, but in your positon I would really consider something like a Noblex because it gives you images that can't be obtained any other way. However, it's obviously a special purpose camera that takes one type of picture. I imagine the learning curve for a Noblex is steeper and that minimizing the "cigar" effect may require care in subject selection.

Hi

I use a Hassleblad X-Pan1 camera which I love and it produces some brillant pictures. I always shoot slide film (I prefer it) and I scan my images. I use the 45mm and the 90mm lens (30mm is too expensive) and shoot generally with the the lens stopped down to F8. The big advantage for me is that you can flick between 35mm and panoramic depending on the picture you are taking. I f you are interested in the X-Pan then I would go for the newer Series II as it has some nice features on it which are missing from the first one (might have to trade mine)

The scanner I have will only do 35mm so I scan in two halfs then stich. Photoshop CS has a really great automaic stiching tool which works a treat. So long as you have set your workspace up then it really is not much of a problem.

HTH

Nick