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 Topic: Here's a photography basic's one |
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| CosmicRay |
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Standard Member
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United Kingdom
May-17-2008
28 Posts |
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While learning the craft with PW5 and TW3 I have gradually got myself into a consistent routine for taking the original photos. i am using a nikon D80 with manfrotto quick release, Sigma8mm fisheye, Mrotator TCP short all stuck on top of a dirty great Manfrotto tripod.
Generally, I shoot bracketed Fine jpegs in 4 quadrants. Unless there is significant ceiling or floor detail I do not use the zenith and nadir shots.
My workflow, if I can use such a grand term at present, is todownload to the pc
Load image sets into PW5 adjusting image enclosing manually for each set.
Set PW5 to produce cubic image at CD quality.
Do full stitch leaving everything to PW5 (have cup of tea!!).
Examine results.
Add manual stitching and and restitch if necessary. Sometimes I add up to 8 points per seam depending on a gut feeling about the results from the initial run.
Save the set of stitched images in their own folder.
Generate HDR image from combined panos and save.
Save HDR as a TIFF.
Generate LDR and save.
Use photoshop to clean up top and bottom faces of LDR cubic image using patching for most part.
Use Photoshop to adjust exposure colour etc.
Resave
Reopen PW5 and reload LDR JPEG.
Convert cubic to spherical and save with sph tacked on to filename.
Preview panoramic
Publish panorama
save
My issue is that doing a lot of outdoor trials I have been bushwhacked by passing clouds and changing lighting. This has given me results where there are huge colour cast differences between adjoining sectors of the view. Not a result potential customers would be willing to pay for. I have not tracked down a good sequence for reducing this effect in photoshop. I have usually to go and reshoot. Is there a tried and tested route through photoshop for masking out these differences. I have tried a number of methods but these are generally applicable to limited angle panoramas in landscape work. They don't really seem to give satisfaction with the full panoramas we are working on.
A second difficulty I have encountered is simply getting my head round processing raw files from the camera. I tend to use RAW when there are elements of the scene in motion eg traffic pedestrians wind shaken trees etc. My results so far have been poor to say the least. Any tips for this issue?
I seem to have the begging bowl out today and not much to offer in return. any help is appreciated.
Ray
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CosmicRay
The NorthernView
Want Atmospheric Headers for your web page the easy way?
http://www.cosmicrayimages.thenorthernview.biz
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| CosmicRay |
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Standard Member
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United Kingdom
May-17-2008
28 Posts |
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Hi jerry,
Thanks for getting back. In answer to your questions
1 Yes, I use manual always. generally I will set aperture to f16 to try and get max depth of field. Not entirely sure if that is appropriate for a fisheye lens. I then use the camera's metering to determine the normal exposure from an area of the scene that is in "mid" lighting if that makes sense, ie somewhere between the highlights and darkest areas of the view. At first I used auto focus, with reasonable results. then I went for manual focus, but I guess my eyes are past it so I've gone back to auto and I "think" it's ok.
2 Usually I set white balance to the lighting that is predominant, but some of my results have been awful. My next step is to get a neutral grey and see if I can get better white balance results with a direct measurement on the neutral grey surface. I have occasionally used outo white balance but I can't tell whether it's better or worse than using the presets. I have done a lot of shooting outside on windy days with rapidly changing cloud cover and associated lighting changes.
3 I have been using an infra red remote
4 The camera will shoot continuous but it is hard to get it to stop at the right time.
5 I have been shooting 1, -2 and +3
Do you know of a good idiots guide to shooting raw in and out of doors?
Thanks for taking the time to answer, jerry, you seem to invest an awful lot of time on these forums.
Cheers for now,
Ray
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CosmicRay
The NorthernView
Want Atmospheric Headers for your web page the easy way?
http://www.cosmicrayimages.thenorthernview.biz
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| mskp |
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Platinum Member
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September-14-2006
329 Posts |
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Hi, the D80 allows to shoot max a set of 3 images bracketed: unmodified, negative and postive, with a max difference of 2 fstops. That means -2, 0, +2. When set you can shoot continuos until it stops.
Ray, how do you get that setting of 1,-2 and +3 you mentioned in point 5 ??
Martin
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| pixelator |
Standard Member
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United States
April-21-2005
502 Posts |
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Hey Ray,
During shooting try going from f/16 to f/8 and set the focus to the infinity symbol. Set your white balance to day light or cloudy depending on the sky. Then when processing your RAW files you can use the slider to adjust the temperature across all the files. Settings and RAW process that I use can be found HERE
These settings will differ if using the newer Sigma 8mm.
Hope that helps,
pixel
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| realtor jerry |
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Platinum Member
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United States
April-22-2007
880 Posts |
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Sorry to take so long to get back Ray, been in the hospital for the last 2 days. Low blood pressure.
You need to set the camera to "auto bracket" at 0, -2 and +2 as Martin stated above and set to continuous. Then when you fire hold the button until it fires all three shots.
If you are stitching to cube just so you can clean up the T&B here is a free plug-in for Photoshop that I think works much better and saves a lot of time. You want have to go back to PW5. It's very simple to use (after you read the instructions).
You said you are shooting in Fine JPEG. When I screw-up a white balance I can normally make decent adjustments in Photomatix when I merge the stitched scenes. But that said you should never shoot in "auto" white balance. The reason is as the camera moves around the white balance will change as the scene changes. If you manually set it the balance should be the same in each shot.
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Nikon D300, D3s, Nikon 10.5 lens, RingT105N+Footplate+MrotatorTCPs, Giottos MT9261 Tripod, Manfrotto 410 Jr geared head.
If you know the "secret" then everyday is a good day!
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| chip |
Standard Member
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United Kingdom
August-09-2008
43 Posts |
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i had the problem with the camera not stopping after 3 shots, it may be the remote, i solved the problem by setting the camera to timer, then when you press the shutter it counted down and took the 3 shots,
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| CosmicRay |
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Standard Member
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United Kingdom
May-17-2008
28 Posts |
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Hi folks and wow thanks for all the advice. I think the values that Martin queried come up in the exif data as shown by PW5 itself. They looked a bit off key to me as well, but I assumed it was just one of PWs little quirks. I'm going to have another look at that. If there is something out of kilter there it might explain quite a lot.
On the continuous shooting I have just retested this and when bracketing is in operation, chip, there is a clear pause after the third shot which gives you the cue to remove your finger from the button. I experimented with the remote to see if it was possible to trigger a continuous set of 3, remotely, but it doesn't seem to be a possible. So simply set to remote and fire off the 3 one after the other. I tend to use remote so that I don't do the "clumsy thing".
Sorry to hear you were in the krankenhaus jerry!! You are obviously not drinking enough beer  that should pump you up again. In future I think I will be using a zenith shot as it just seems to be a simpler option in the end.
When you do these tours guys, do you use cubic or spherical projections as a rule. Tourweaver doesn't seem to play very nicely with cubic panoramas even though there is a menu item for importing them to the tours. What's your take on that; spherical or cubic rules?
On the aperture front, pixelator, I will try the f8 setting for my next set of dummy runs.
I'll sign off here and I'm off to have a look at the Photoshop plug in Jerry and the RAW process that pixelator suggests.
Thanks a bundle for all the tips chaps , it's much appreciated.
Ray
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CosmicRay
The NorthernView
Want Atmospheric Headers for your web page the easy way?
http://www.cosmicrayimages.thenorthernview.biz
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| realtor jerry |
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Platinum Member
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United States
April-22-2007
880 Posts |
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I always do my tours in spherical Ray. The only time I cube is to work on the top or bottom in Photoshop and then back to spherical.
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Nikon D300, D3s, Nikon 10.5 lens, RingT105N+Footplate+MrotatorTCPs, Giottos MT9261 Tripod, Manfrotto 410 Jr geared head.
If you know the "secret" then everyday is a good day!
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| CosmicRay |
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Standard Member
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United Kingdom
May-17-2008
28 Posts |
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That was the feeling I had. I was told to do them in cubic by the guy wgho got me into this and I had some real frustrations till I started using the spherical projections. Cheers again.
Ray
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CosmicRay
The NorthernView
Want Atmospheric Headers for your web page the easy way?
http://www.cosmicrayimages.thenorthernview.biz
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