What is Pano?

Apr 202013
 

I may have made a mistake in calling all these images that have been stitched together with Giga Pano software – panoramics or panos.  At least that is the idea that several people have written to me about.  It’s true that many of the images I’ve been doing are composed of from 6 to 60 separate shots – but they aren’t usually in the Panoramic Aspect which I suppose is about length 2 by height 1 or the other way around.

The early attempts were more or less class panoramics – long to short ratios with wide angle lenses (mostly) and maybe showing 180 or 360 degrees of a scene.  There’s no doubt those are recognized as panos.  But what happens when you take that pano that was originally composed of 60 images and you project it using the planar projection so that lines in the middle are rather straight – and you crop off the edges where the planar projection tends to get blurry.  Is it still a pano if it’s now in a 4 x 5 ratio.

It seems as if you could call it a montage – but that’s really film talk.  And a collage – it’s not that.  Anyway – calling them panos has confused a bunch of people who say, “Where’s the pano – I don’t see it.”

And then you have this shot which is on the line… 12 images with a 20mm lens… and not cropped.  It’s not the aspect ratio of a pano, but the effect of viewing 180 degrees without much distortion is a possibility with pano.  So just chime in if you have an idea.

Central Park South – Storm

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Grand Central Station 6am

Apr 162013
 

This is only three images.  It’s what I got before the police told me to get a pass to shoot in Grand Central, and before I found out that the man with authority to give out the pass wouldn’t be in ’til 9 a.m.  But the whole emptiness of the place, plus the night through the windows… click the image – it’s worth it.

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Columbus Circle in Rain

Apr 142013
 

A few nights ago, on an assignment I managed to get this panorama (16 shots) of Columbus Circle just as it was about to pour down.  That’s probably one of my favorite atmospherics – not the shot during the rain – but as the clouds are going gray and you feel the pressure dropping suddenly.

Shot with 20mm / 16 shots /  full size @ 300 dpi would be about 45 x 60 inches

I haven’t reached the point of putting any of the panos up for sale, but I imagine they’ll have their own gallery, and there will be an entirely different choice of sizes.  A shot like this, for example, you should be able to purchase from 16 x 20 to something giga like 45 x 60 or greater.  These are non-interpolated sizes – and with just a 2x interpolation you are in the 10 foot long arena.

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Columbus Circle (pano)

Apr 102013
 

I was out on an assignment tonight on the west side – not to shoot Columbus Circle but to try and get something decent from the Central Park South area at night, and after I had shot two panos for the client, it began to rain.  I quickly turned and setup the camera for this Columbus Circle shot – which I think was 16 images with the 20mm.  As you can see, in a way I’m returning to the format (4×5) and the idea of using the Kolor Auto Pan Giga software to help out with architectural defeat of converging lines and stuff like that.

I can shoot fast enough now, so that I can fire off about 16 shots in less than a minute using the 2-second timer (to prevent camera shake).

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at what I was sent out to try and capture.  That was a bit more vague and I’m not sure if I got it or not – but I’ll often take these assignments if they’re in a part of town where I haven’t done much shooting.

columbus circle new york

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View from Transverse – Central Park

Apr 072013
 

And this is a typical look with the 20mm.  Closer you are to an object, the greater the curvature.  And as you may remember, I upgraded the RAM in the MacPro from 6 GB to 28 GB and voila – makes a huge difference in processing time.  So all in all – to make the move cost me a 3 TB internal drive ($200), the Ninja Nodal Mechanism ($600), Kolor Auto Pano Giga software for stitching ($285) – all of these numbers – more or less.  But basically about $1000.  And a month of learning my way around.  Now to compare it to buying say a medium format camera with a digital back – there are many pros and cons.

I’ll list some of the pros first.  With the stitching mechanism, there really are no boundries as far as size goes.  You can quickly find yourself writing TB sized files.  Another difference is that you aren’t tied to any particular camera.  When I get to it, I expect to use my Infrared Converted DSLR (as an example).  I believe you can achieve many of the same effects as with a view camera – i.e. shifts and tilts – with the software.  I also think that you have more control over the depth of field with longer lenses.

And of course – money-wise – there’s no comparison.

With digital backs, not only are the prices high, but you are buying a piece of digital equipment which means that it won’t be long before the better model comes out.  The same is true with the camera you are using with the Ninja Nodal mechanism – but if anything the prices are coming down for full-frame cameras.

I’ll let you write the pros of the digital back since I have no experience with them other than reading about them.

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