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| Prime time for Panoramas |
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It’s a little known fact the Carl Zeiss SLR lenses for F-mount cameras are an ideal choice for panoramic photography.
Panoramic images are ultra wide or ultra-tall images created by combining multiple exposures taken across a wide subject. This technique has recently become immensely popular. This is largely due to software advances that greatly simplify the process of stitching panoramic images together, such as the Photomerge tool within Photoshop CS3.
While the stitching process has largely been solved, there are a few vexing issues that remain when actually taking panoramic pictures. Among these are the lens-related issues of parallax, maximizing usable image, and setting the correct hyperfocal distance.
The problem with the parallax
Parallax is the apparent shifting of your subject as you move the camera. You can see this by extending your arm and sticking up your thumb. Look at your thumb first with one eye closed, and then switch eyes. You will see your thumb apparently move as you switch between your eyes. Eliminating parallax is particularly crucial in panoramas because:
1) you are moving the camera by rotating it through the panoramic subject which can create parallax, and
2) any resulting parallax creates issues when stitching and result in panoramas with poor quality and reduced sharpness.
Parallax can be removed by rotating your camera around the lens’ entrance pupil. Often this is incorrectly being referred to as the ‘nodal point’. Correctly setting your camera to rotate around the lens’ entrance pupil is critical and can be accomplished by using dedicated panoramic tripod heads and following tutorials on configuring your pano head such as the one found at http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/2114189. We also like the panoramic tripod heads from the company, Really Right Stuff, since they are shipped with a DVD tutorial on panoramic photography and finding the lens entrance pupil..
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| Ideal setup for panoramic images |
The advantages of the ZF lenses
In our opinion, the Carl Zeiss ZF lenses have emerged as one of the best lens choices for panoramic images when shooting with DSLRs. One of the primary benefits is that the entrance pupil on a prime lens does not move as it does with zoom lenses and can be precisely aligned each time you take panoramic images. This results in absolutely seamless panoramic pictures.
There are also other significant benefits that ZF lenses bring to panorama images:
- Prime lenses offer outstanding edge-to-edge sharpness at their designed focal length – not always true with zoom lenses
- The fixed focal length of prime lenses ensures the entrance pupil does not move and is always accurately aligned, minimizing parallax and mazimizing usable image area
- The Zeiss lens’ scale markings allow you to easily set the hyperfocal distance of the lens. These markings are typically missing or very hard to use on zoom lenses.
“The initial configuration and subsequent setup for panoramic image capture is so much easier with ZF lenses”, says photographer David Skernick. “Just dial in the setting and go. I get consistently great images every time.”
Hints for enthusiasts
From an upcoming article in Outdoor Photographer magazine, we offer the following additional tips for shooting great panoramas:
- Choose subjects where there is little to no motion, which makes stitching much more seamless and avoids “ghosting”
- Make sure the tripod is level using a bubble
- Use a dedicated panoramic tripod head: we use and recommend pano solutions from Really Right Stuff
- Use all manual camera settings, including white balance, shutter speed, and aperture
- Use a remote release and mirror up to minimize camera shake
- As you take images, overlap each image by 30-40% to improve stitching
- Use Carl Zeiss ZF lenses, of course!
About the Authors
Brian Valente is a semi-professional photographer based in Los Angeles and also partner of Redrock Micro, a company that provides products to attach 35mm lenses to video cameras for film-style shooting. Brian’s photography work including additional panoramas can be found at
http://bvalente.smugmug.com
David Skernick is a professional photographer and teacher based in Los Angeles and is host of the educational program Get Lost! His work along with others he represents can be seen at http://www.photo24.com
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September 2008 |
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