High resolution photos from a digital camera.

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:41:39 -0700, "Richard H." wrote:

Scott W wrote:
I have a tripod head that rotates the camera
around the nodal point of the lens, this avoids parallax.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=293646&is=REG

Talk about a pricey niche product - whew! You must really like doing
panoramic stitching. I get the gist of what it does, but I'll need to
find a better description of how it works. Do you know if anyone makes
a motor-controlled pan & tilt version? (I can imagine the price...)

I can adjust what part of the photo comes from
which of the 36 photos

I imagine that'd be an effective way to erase people from a busy scene,
too (as long as they're moving).

155 MP should be enough for a 3 x 4 foot print at 300 ppi, something
that I would kind of like to have.

As a point of interest, here's info on a company that does 300dpi wallpaper:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.p...cb98d8e5eefad0


So, how well does PTGui work on things like water - are the seams
noticable? I didn't notice any in the small version, but I'm not
curious enough to download the full-sized print to check. :-)

Cheers,
Richard

I notice that most panoramas or collages are distant subjects. Has
anyone tried a close-up multiple-shot image, by moving the camera on
an X-Y axis mechanism? With 1:1 lenses, something as small as 6" x 6"
would require a few images.
-Rich

Scott W wrote:

You could stitch 4 x 5 photos, but is this really needed. For 35mm
film you are talking about shooting a whole roll of film to get one
photo.

Some might find it useful to stitch 4x5. Bottom line being there is
nothing stopping them from doing so. As for 35mm, I don't get it.
With film I always must shoot a roll. That's the whole point of using
film. I just don't get this apparent reluctance in doing so? It's not

like the thing is terribly expensive either: I can shoot a LOT of film
for the price of digital gear...

Clearly it is much easier to do the stitching when using a
digital camera.

That might be debatable. It depends on what one set out to
do or where one is starting from.

But the point I was making was not that this was something you could do
with a digital camera and not a film camera but rather the limits of
print size from a digital camera is not determined by the size of one
frame.

100% agreed.

film, this is a way for me to get very high resolution photos. For
other dealing with a computer to do the stitching is not attractive and
so for them a LF camera would make more scene.

And for others yet, it is perfectly acceptable to use film as the base
for the base image taking and then post-process it with a good
scanner into whatever they might want?

The point, in part, is that if you are going to show how far you can go
with film by using a 4 x 5 camera why not show how far you can go by
stitching digital photos.

Once again, it is not a comparison of how far one media can go
versus the other. They BOTH can go as far as one might want
to take them.


take them. There are a lot of people who will not mess with a LF
camera to get high resolution photos but might be willing to stitch
photos to get there. I have been impressed with the improvements over
the years at the stitching software, I thought it would be useful to
show what can be done in this area.

Agreed. Personaly, I use 35 and 6x7 gear. Either can provide
amazing images with a reasonable quality scanner like a 4990
or 9950. I'm trying my hand at 4x5 end of this month to see if it is
worth going for - perspective control is the target. And I use
a P&S digital camera as well, it's a great tool. But locking myself
to one media alone? Nope, thanks.

I still have to find a quality digital slr that can take all my 35mm
lenses at a reasonable price point. The new D200 is getting there
but not quite. Once that happens, then I might consider digital only
for 35mm type shooting. Until then, film + scanning does the job
very cheaply and effectively.

As for 6x7 and larger formats: they produce stunning images with
little trouble or setup versus pan heads. And of course they can
still be used for other purposes with the gear I already have and know.
I don't think digital will be price competitive there any time soon.

As such, digital-only is of relatively little interest to me at this
stage.
In the future? Yes, for sure. But I don't know when that will
happen: don't have a crystal ball. Meanwhile, I've never enjoyed
photography more as I got it now. Film quality has never been as
good, same goes for scanning and image processing/printing.
Perfect world!

Noons wrote:

As for 6x7 and larger formats: they produce stunning images with
little trouble or setup versus pan heads. And of course they can
still be used for other purposes with the gear I already have and know.
I don't think digital will be price competitive there any time soon.

I would agree, there is no low cost easy digital replacement for MF. I
do believe that the
1Ds M2 is a good choice, if one has the money but that is a lot of
money.

At the rate things are going give it about 3-5 years and an affordable
digital will be out that can match a MF camera, this is my guess at
least.

Scott

Scott W wrote:

At the rate things are going give it about 3-5 years and an affordable
digital will be out that can match a MF camera, this is my guess at
least.


Hear hear!

Scott W wrote:
A while back someone referenced Ken Rockwell's article regarding the
quality of digital vs. film. Ken decided to compare what he was
shooting for digital, a Nikon D70, to a 4 x 5 camera. But a D70 and a
4 x 5 large format camera are not meant for the same uses, so this seem
like a bit of an odd comparison to make, at least to me.

A 4 x 5 camera is used for cases where one is taking the time to get a
high resolution photo, if this same time is used with a digital camera
you can also get a high resolution photos with it.

Yesterday I took a 95 MP photo using my digital camera, here is a link
to a overview photo along with a small 100% crop from the photo.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/51841148/original

The photos is 15730 by 6000 pixels, just short of a 100 MP photo, it is
a view of the small beach in front of the King Kamehameha hotel, taken
off the Kailua Pier in Kona Hawaii.

For those who have high speed internet and want to see the whole photo
here is a link to that, I compressed it fairly hard to fit it into a 10
MB file, at normal compression it takes about 27 MB.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/51841619/original

The photo is of course stitched, it is a way to get a lot of pixels
using a digital camera. This photos does not even come close to what
some others have done, I have seen a 2.5 GP photo. But the high
resolution stitched photos that I have seen to date have been of pretty
static scenes, I wanted something with a bit of a dynamic feel to it,
something where people are doing things in the photo.

I am not trying to tell people that this is a better way to take photos
then using a large format camera, all that I am trying to say is that
some of the limitations that many people believe digital cameras have
are not real limitations at all. The tools to do the stitching are
getting better all the time. I also use a special tripod head that is
designed to take these kind of photos, it cost a fair bit but less then
one good wide angle lens.

BTW the time to take the 36 photos used in the stitching was 1 minute
and 23 seconds.

There are many others that have done far more with stitching that I
have, I thought I would just share the kind of photo that I am takeing
using this method.

Scott

Ray Fischer wrote:
One can stitch together images from a 4x5 camera as well.

Well yes you could but a 4 x 5 camera has pretty great resolution with
just one photo. Kind of hard to imaging someone wanting to take a lot
of 4 x 5 photos just to stitch them together.

Scott


Kind of hard to imagine anyone spending a grand and a half for a dSLR only
to use it as a P&S. Oh, hang on .... g

--
Paul ============}
o o

// Live fast, die old //
PaulsPages are at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pcbradley/

Scott W wrote:

Noons wrote:

As for 6x7 and larger formats: they produce stunning images with
little trouble or setup versus pan heads. And of course they can
still be used for other purposes with the gear I already have and know.
I don't think digital will be price competitive there any time soon.


I would agree, there is no low cost easy digital replacement for MF. I
do believe that the
1Ds M2 is a good choice, if one has the money but that is a lot of
money.

At the rate things are going give it about 3-5 years and an affordable
digital will be out that can match a MF camera, this is my guess at
least.

Scott


There are digital MF backs available now.

The sticking point is "affordable". I'm not sure THAT day is going to
come in my lifetime.

Sinar currently makes 3 digital MF backs (24x36mm sensor, 48x36mm
sensor, and 49x36.7mm sensor) - $1500 gets an adapter for your current
MF body, $30K (or more) gets you the digital back itself.

Their newest "portable" back (i.e. not tied to the computer by cable all
the time) offers ISO 25 for whoever was looking for that in a digital.

"Scott W" wrote in message
ups.com...
Måns Rullgård wrote:
"Eatmorepies" writes:

If people are moving around too much they might end up in several
places in the picture.

A technique that produces interesting pictures. Stand on the beach
and take photos of a child running into the sea, pan the
camera. Stich them together and get the child in 4 or 5 different
places.

If that's the effect you want, then sure. If you don't want it,
better be careful. You could also use the technique to entirely
remove moving objects from a photo.
One of the things I want to try sometime it to take a lot of photos of
a very busy road
and by combining the right photos together remove all the cars but
leave the people on
the sidewalks, I think it might make for an interesting photo.

Scott



This is how one of the shots for the highway scene in Matrix Reloaded was
taken. They taped the highway and stitched parts together to make it look
vacant.

Scott W wrote:
Ray Fischer wrote:

One can stitch together images from a 4x5 camera as well.


Well yes you could but a 4 x 5 camera has pretty great resolution with
just one photo. Kind of hard to imaging someone wanting to take a lot
of 4 x 5 photos just to stitch them together.

Scott


They used to use large format cameras (5x7, 8x10, 11x14 or larger) to
make city-scapes and panoramas.

http://tinyurl.com/79qkb

http://tinyurl.com/7hcod

This page shows a large format "circuit camera" for taking panoramas.
The MPEG version is a little larger and easier to see.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collecti...o/pnshoot.html

Bruce Chang wrote:
"Scott W" wrote in message

One of the things I want to try sometime it to take a lot of photos of
a very busy road
and by combining the right photos together remove all the cars but
leave the people on
the sidewalks, I think it might make for an interesting photo.

This is how one of the shots for the highway scene in Matrix Reloaded was
taken. They taped the highway and stitched parts together to make it look
vacant.


I've seen this sort of thing done with a stack of neutral density
filters... SERIOUSLY long exposure. Corrected for reciprosity failure
by trying multiple exposures. Basically, nothing remained in the field
of view long enough to be exposed except "landmarks". It was a picture
of a California freeway. NO cars.