David, Using the correct camera, I so agree. Couple of years ago we had to photograph 4500 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas for a large print hired by the Louisana National Guard.
My first thought was to use the RB67 as I was brought up on film. The tech guru at our lab thought the same thing. But we shot it with both a Kodak 14NX with a 14mm lens and the RB with a 37mm lens.
Millers made us a 40 wide center cut from both cameras and I could not believe how much clearer the digital is over the film version.
Additionally, another photographer shot the group with a 1DS Digital and the Kodak was clearer/Sharper than the Canon's file.
__________________ More camera equipment than anyone should have.
Member TPPA, NPS AUSA
Prospective member geriatrics center
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Oyvind, That is one amazing photograph. Congratulations.
I am a people photographer. How do you do this with people?
Easy - you don't... Can't imagine shooting people scenes this way, but it's doable. I'm using a 360Precision Adjuste head, with detents in both the vertical and horizontal axis. This way, at least it will be fairly quick to shoot people. With layers you should be able to mask out what's not needed/blurred - shooting large military formations would most likely be quite a bit easier than the 75th anniversary with grandkids and great-grandkids running around!
A better solution, at least for those with an appropriately sized wallet, would be to shoot with one of the 39Mpix backs currently available. Which kind of gets me thinking - how about stitching together something comparable shot with one of those backs...
Øyvind
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Last edited by Oyvind Nikolaisen; 05-16-2007 at 02:37 PM.
This thread has turned into a rather interesting discussion about panoramas and stitching photos.
But in my own defense, I wanted to return to my original idea. I never intended to return to the old "is film better than digital" argument. I am a total digital convert, and I almost never shoot film any more. But when confronted with a project where I knew the final image was going to be huge, (and not having the stitching knowlege a lot of you seem to have!) I wanted to use the best possible capture platform. I could not find any information making any kind of a pixel vs grain comparison of sharpness that would give me any clue as to which is better. In other words, should I rent a 44mp Phase 1 back? Shoot 4x5 trans? 8x10 trans? As I mentioned I settled on the 8x10 trans, but it was more of a gut feeling than precise science.
So later I did some research and came up with the 2500px = 1" of film hypothesis. I found it useful and thought perhaps other people might as well. I'm just trying to find the best tool for the job.
David: I do have a Phase 1 H25 back for my Hassie -- and yes, you're right -- it does produce amazing images! Moire is a problem with fabrics, though.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
A better solution, at least for those with an appropriately sized wallet, would be to shoot with one of the 39Mpix backs currently available. Which kind of gets me thinking - how about stitching together something comparable shot with one of those backs...
Heh, we'll need Photoshop to go to a 64 bit implementation in a hurry when daytime photographers start stitching and processing images that large. I regularly work with astroimages well in excess of 100 megapixels and at that size Photoshop just swaps and swaps, so doing anything becomes rather tedious.
The zoomify software used for the web display is pretty cool also. From looking at the full city skyline, you can zoom in far enough to see individual people.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
But when confronted with a project where I knew the final image was going to be huge, (and not having the stitching knowlege a lot of you seem to have!) I wanted to use the best possible capture platform.
I do not think this is stitching knowledge so much as stitching awareness. For example, I am aware of the Autopano software and of Photomerge in Photoshop CS3, though I have not used them myself. But, the knowledge that these things exist and can be relatively easy to use (possibly?) leads me to think I do not need to resort to 8x10 film, but can use my D200 to build extremely large images if I so desire.
The difficulty I see with the process of creating extremely large images digitally is maintaining the row/column alignment while shooting all of the individual images and ensuring there are no gaps within the final image area. The greater the needed detail is, the more rows/columns that need to be shot. For example, the Sydney skyline image I linked to took 52 minutes to shoot 169 images. While doing this is certainly possible, there is a tedium involved and the risk of things in the image changing before all of the shots are completed. Perhaps some enterprising developer can create a panorama tripod head with stepper motors and a shutter release cable that will allow specifying the arcs and step distances to make creation of these images an easier process. In the meantime, it remains an awareness of a technique that I keep in my bag of tricks.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
David: I do have a Phase 1 H25 back for my Hassie -- and yes, you're right -- it does produce amazing images! Moire is a problem with fabrics, though.
Tom, and I am sure you know this, you are getting the moire as you're imaging capturing system is so sharp. Quite often, when I would expose using the 14MP capability of my Kodak 14N I would get quite a lot of moire on fabrics. However, you can brush over his quite easllly with Photoshop to remove the moire.
__________________ More camera equipment than anyone should have.
Member TPPA, NPS AUSA
Prospective member geriatrics center
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Can't imagine shooting people scenes this way, but it's doable. I'm using a 360Precision Adjuste head, with detents in both the vertical and horizontal axis. This way, at least it will be fairly quick to shoot people. With layers you should be able to mask out what's not needed/blurred - shooting large military formations would most likely be quite a bit easier than the 75th anniversary with grandkids and great-grandkids running around!
Linear Mode
