Monday, June 01, 2009

"A Very Wide View"

"A Very Wide View"
©David A. Ziser

I made this image at yesterday's wedding. I wanted to try something different - a panorama from the back of the ceremony. I had watched some panorama demos with CS4 and CS4 seemed to do the best in stitching panos - so why not give it a try. This image was made without a tripod. I simply rotated my handheld camera through a 180 degree view from the back of the temple. I did my best to keep it level and maintain the same horizon line throughout the arc of the shot. It turns out that it worked just fine. I, under close inspection, could find no stitching artifacts in the finished shot. This is definitely something I'm going to try again - lots of possibilities available. I'll post two more variations on this wide angle theme throughout the week, so stay tuned. Camera specs; Canon 5D Mark II fitted with 24-105mm IS lens at 24mm, F5.6 @ 1/160 second. ISO 6400. Enjoy! -David

7 comments:

  1. Hey David, I've been watching your wedding photography videos at kelbytraining.com and they're great!

    This photograph is truly impressive - the ISO 6400 in the 5D Mark II looks like the ISO 400 in my 400D hehe. There's a program that beats Photoshop when making panoramas, called PTGui Pro. It's got a lot of options and is way faster that PS CS4. You should give it a try.

    Best regards!

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  2. A great tip, David! I will certain give it try!

    Thanks
    Jack

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  3. I've too have found CS4 is amazing in its ability to assemble a panorama with no visible seams. I typically shoot panos with the camera held vertically using a full-frame 35mm to 50mm focal length. That seems to minimize barrel distortion. Of course, you need more frames. Also, once the pano is assembled, I flatten and rename the background layer so that I can free-transform the image in warp mode. Typically, I need tug the top corners up and the bottom corners down to fine-tune the perspective.

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  4. Very cool!

    However, there are some heads missing at the bottom right hand corner... 2nd aisle in and 3rd aisle in.

    JD

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  5. Hi Anonymous,
    I checked - your right. I suspect they were in the overlap area and turned heads during exposure leaving Photoshop guessing. Good eye. -David

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  6. Unfortunatley, one man has his head speared by a pew. The pano idea has a lot of potential but how you can do this including a congregation is problematic to say the least.

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  7. I guess I am confused. I always take a shot like this at weddings but I used a wide angle lens and get basically the same thing. Infact, I like to use it as a fulldouble page layout because it's really cool looking. Sorry.

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