French Landscapes - Nature and landscape photography from France: digital

Friday, 20 April 2007

A few words about panoramic photography

I always loved panoramic landscapes, with digital photography, stitching images has become very popular and stitching softwares very powerful.
I own 2 QTVR panoramic heads, one pro and one cheap.
The cheap one presents for me 2 issues. First it's long to setup in the field and second it's not rigid enough to ensure a very good image sharpness with some lenses.
The pro one is better but i don't always have it in my bag ...
So most of time i just use my tripod with its standard rotule head and a bubble level.

After the shooting session, digital workflow is still the same :

The RAW files are converted in 48 bits TIF with SilkyPix.
The TIF files are stitched with PTGUI.
Final adjustments are done with PictureWindow Pro.

With the earliest versions of PTGui, we had to manually set up the control points. With the recent versions this time is gone and PTGui offers two different ways to automaticaly find these points. Its blending capabilities has also evoluated with the versions and you can now obtain rapidly some stuning results if you take a little care while shooting.

Monday, 16 April 2007

Shooting method and digital workflow

I always have in mind a few places to go.
Depending of weather and of my envy, when i think conditions are good i take my equipment and go.
I usually carry one DSLR with 3 or 4 lenses and one tripod.
Tripod is one of the most useful part of the landscape photographer equipement. Mines are always lights and small (when folded) so i can always have one with me.

When the light is the best its rarely strong, for landscapes i very often shot at f:14 or smaller aperture to ensure a great deep of field. The consequence is a low shutter speed and the tripod is sometime not enough and i don't hesitate to use a remote control or the camera self timer with mirror locking.

Back to the office, starts the post processing session.