Pano Question for Jeff Kohn

[larrys]

Jeff I loved your shot of the Tetons in the POY contest. I am not sure if it is bad form to ask how you did the shot or not, but if it isn't... I want to try some pano shots this summer and wanted to know which lens you used and the settings. I will need to learn the how to's on Elements for combining the pictures, but for now just wondered about the actual field portion. Hope I am not out of line in asking.

Another question, how did you get to the Snake River to get that shot? Noticed that you are in Houston also, if you are a pro do you give classes?

[venchka]

Originally Posted by larrys

...Another question, how did you get to the Snake River to get that shot? Noticed that you are in Houston also, if you are a pro do you give classes?

Something I know a little about. One place where you can get right down to and IN the Snake River is a picnic area below the damn on Lake Jackson. I think it's called Cottonwood something. The float trip people come right by and add a nice bit of color, interest and scale to your photos of the Cathedral Group. Plus you can flyfish there too. Another way to get on the river would be to hire a flyfishing guide for a private float-photo trip down the river. Westbank Anglers is one place you can arrange half or whole day trips. Flyfishing and picture taking-doesn't get any better than that.

I'm not Jeff. I don't know how he does it either. But, I'd bet some of my frozen Kodachrome that Jeff isn't using Elements to assemble his photos. Just a guess.

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by larrys

Jeff I loved your shot of the Tetons in the POY contest. I am not sure if it is bad form to ask how you did the shot or not, but if it isn't... I want to try some pano shots this summer and wanted to know which lens you used and the settings. I will need to learn the how to's on Elements for combining the pictures, but for now just wondered about the actual field portion. Hope I am not out of line in asking.

Not all all Larry. I don't have any trade secrets or anything. Everything I know I learned from books or other photographers who were willing to share their knowledge. That's the great thing about forums such as this one.

As far as taking the shots in the field, I pretty much always use a tripod and shooting panos is no exception. I have some extra gear specifically for shooting panos that is pretty helpful. The idea is to get your camera level so that when you rotate it you don't end up with a crooked horizon. It's also good to rotate the camera over the lens' optical center (sometimes called the nodal point although that's not quite correct); this can help prevent parallax error, which is when the relationship between near and far items changes as you rotate the camera. But if everything in the scene is at roughly the same distance, you don't have to worry too much about parallax.

You don't necessarily need special pano gear to take panoramic shots, in fact I've seen some really great panos that were shot handheld. But the pano gear makes things a lot easier, and for some of those tricky scenes it can improve the quality of the results especially if you want to try shooting vertical or multi-row panos. You can read more about pano gear and the problems it addresses on the Really Right Stuff website.

I use manual exposure for panos (and most landscapes); usually I'll either use the matrix meter as a starting point or else spot meter something that I want to be a middle tone (early and late in the day, blue sky can make a good middle tone reading). Then I'll rotate the camera across the scene keeping an eye on the meter to see if I'm going to have a contrast problem. If the exposure is tricky I'll usually go ahead and bracket the shots. That way I have the option of layering exposures later to capture a greater dymaic range than the camera can capture in a single exposure.

I shoot horizontal panos with the camera oriented vertically, and vertical panos with the camera horizontal. This way it takes more shots to finish the sequence and the final image will have greater resolution. I also tend to frame the scene a bit loosely, so that after stitching I have some breathing room if I need to crop. One other little thing, at the beginnning and end of each pano sequence I stick my hand in front of the lens and fire off a shot. That way when I later go through all the images the beginning and end of each pano sequence is clearly marked, which is particularly helpful if you're shooting pano sequences one after another.

As for the actual stitching, the best advice I can offer if you really want to get into panos is to invest in one of the 3rd party stitchers because they are much better than what's included with Photoshop or Elements; you'll get better results with less work if you use something like PTGui or AutoPano Pro (which IMHO are the two best stitchers currently available). AutoPano Pro is probably a bit easier to pick up at first but both are very capable

Another question, how did you get to the Snake River to get that shot? Noticed that you are in Houston also, if you are a pro do you give classes?

That one's easy. Schwabacher Landing was actually a put-in for boats (and may still be at some times of the year for all I know, although I didn't see any while there). So there's an access road that goes down to the river and a parking area. My POY entry was shot probably a 100 yards or so from the dirt parking lot. If you want to shoot sunrise plan on getting there early, as lots of photographers show up and parking can be an issue.

Well that's all I can think of off the top of my head, if you have more questions let me know.

[larrys]

Wow, what a great response!!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. There is a lot there to soak in so it may be a while before I get back with more questions. Thanks again for your time and advice.

[Jay Henley]

Thanks for the info Jeff. this is helpful.

[lhdvies]

Originally Posted by larrys

Wow, what a great response!!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. There is a lot there to soak in so it may be a while before I get back with more questions. Thanks again for your time and advice.

Ditto that!
I'm glad I piggy- backed on this thread. Thks a lot! Leon
(this is about the 3rd time you are in my bookmarks, I may have to give you your very own folder-HeHe)

[jeffkohn]

No problem guys, always glad to help.

[venchka]

Or you could just create your panoramas with one exposure. Saves a lot of harware in the field and computer time. And you get a 6x17 transparency to keep as a souvenir.



Thanks for all the good information Jeff.

[jeffkohn]

Yeah I bet 6x17 MF is pretty nice. It would definitely make composing your shots much easier when you can actually see the composition in the viewfinder for sure. I'm a digital guy though, never have shot film.

There is a digital alternative, although I shudder to think how much it must cost:
http://www.photokina-show.com/0382/s...ras/seitz6x17/

[venchka]

No kidding? You're missing something. I mean that in the best way. Try it sometime. You might like it.

I've seen that beast. I could buy the film version above and pay Dwayne's to process Velvia forever for what that thing costs. You know, a person could get really silly and use the 6x17 to create panoramamas from multiple exposures. Say for a billboard project?

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

The pano cameras that did those huge panos in the past and there is still film for them are the old cirkut cameras. http://www.bigshotz.co.nz/cirkut.html http://www.panoramic.net/www/cirkut.htm

[venchka]

I don't know if it was a circuit camera or just a very wide banquet camera, but the last time I was in Yellowstone I saw a gentleman with what seemed like a 5x14 or 16 wide camera. I was tres envious.

[ivgonzalez]

Thanks for the reply Jeff, this is something I too have been wanting to pick your brains about.

I most likley will.

[jeffkohn]

Following up on some questions Larry posted in my pano thread....

I understand that you are shooting manual for your panos, but in looking at your site it looks like nearly all of your landscape shots are in the f8-f11 range. From what I am learning that is considered the sweet spot for many lenses. Are you shooting many of these in Aperture Priority or are you picking the aperture you want in manual then balancing out the light meter and that's what shutter speed you get? If you are picking the aperture how do you decide between f8 and f11 or even f13? I have erred in choosing f22 or just shoot in program.

I set the aperture to get sufficient depth of field, and then I use the camera's meter to determine what shutter speed I need to use to get the correct exposure. Generally speaking I favor f/8, but sometimes that won't give me enough depth of field so I have to stop down a bit further.

A question on where you are focusing. In the past I have just focused on the mountains in the distance but thru some classes I have learned to focus 1/3rd into the picture then everything is in focus.

Focusing 1/3 into the image can sometimes give you an approximation of the "hyperfocal" focus point. When using the hyperfocal distance everything from half that distance to infinity will appear to be in focus. I say "appear" because there's only one point that's perfectly in focus; but the other distances within the DOF range will close enough to appear in-focus (as long as you don't enlarge too much - a really large print will have less DOF than a smaller one)

The hyperfocal distance varies with aperture though, so you have to make sure you're stopped down enough to get the hyperfocal distance where you want it. I have a DOF calculator that I can use to plug in the focus distance and will tell me what the hyperfocal distance and DOF is for each aperture. This helps me decide if f/8 will be sufficient or I need to stop down more.

On some of your shots in the Tetons were you focusing on the trees and not the mountains?

Yes, if there were trees or a barn or something else in the foreground I probably focused on them, or maybe just past them.

Probably would help if I listed a picture: On your Pbase site on the Landscapes for Tetons - the 1st picture of the Mormon barn and the fifth one of Mt Moran and Oxbowl. Where was your focus point on each of these?

For the 1st shot I was focusing on the barn. For the second shot I was probably focused on the foliage at the edge of the water near the peak's reflection.

[engstrom]

One other thing that I found in my limited time doing panos - overlap more than you think. I found 25% - 33% overlap in images gives me enough overlap to blend together the images very well.