30 Meg Image With A 10 Meg Camera

Agree... and here are 2 blog links to help you better understanding this technique

http://fineartamerica.com/blogs/photo-stitching-what-are-the-benefits-.html

http://fineartamerica.com/blogs/photo-stitching-quick-tutorial.html

Photo stitching usage is not only for very high res image... it is also a way to capture scenes you cannot capture in one shot

Here is an example

37 images for this one

Good input Patrick. Very nice example with that work. I should add here that there are a few things you have to consider in doing LARGE images sizes. For one thing. you need to have a PC with some serious MEMORY and processing POWER. You should also be proficient in using good (not necessarily expensive) software. Then there is the clone tool which is an absolute necessity in stitching.

stitching is limited though. if you want something that's moving- stitching isn't for you. when i need a wide shot i stitch it. but in order to do it, you need a pod, a space, the spacing between shots have to be right. the size of the image and the processing it takes to do it etc. it's not all that convenient. there are i think 10,000px images of the city where you can see every window and every person, it takes 100's of images. and well, i don't know why i would want too.

more times than not i have alignment issues. but i also shoot them as hdr.


i had one heck of a time aligning the top and bottom halves of this. but i really liked the ceiling in this, and wanted that really long look. it was shot top and bottoms. i think i tried some side to side but wasn't as impressed. because then you get distortion.


same with this, i wanted to fill the frame but keep the whole house wide. shot top to bottom. and still with alignment issues. done as a pano it's easy. done as an hdr pano and it's a nightmare.


---Mike Savad

going for HDR panos is adding complexity but when being rigorous with shooting parameters, it can work great.
probably more than 60% of my panos are also HDR

Mike, it's like you're saying alignment issue is coming from HDR, which cannot be true...

Let me know if I misunderstand the issue you have with hdr panos

That is where your graphics skills come in.

Yes when you shoot and just move your camera like 20 degree, your entire perspective changes, and then you need to do some serious stitching work....especially if you have a complex image. Like in this shot I took three vertical shots to make one horizontal image. Trees REALLY get distorted with just a minor angle change, so I had to reconstruct the two seams with a lot of work.

Distortion or deformation is coming from multiple factors :
- main error people do is handling a too small overlap between each shot : 20 to 30% is an average that you need to adjust depending on focal length. the wider you're shooting, the bigger this ratio should be...
- not rotating around NPP (no parallax point). this can be critical when there's a close foreground as software will still try to adjust, creating deformation or distortion

I never do any manual stitching... and that's why I was speaking about being rigorous with shooting parameters

i shoot everything by hand, so alignment usually does have issues. and if there is distortion in the lens, and the overlap happens near them the results wind up more wonky. i usually cut away any offending graphic that doesn't overlap right or have to do manual puppet warp. i often edit each section and stitch the final pieces.

for overlapping i have to make a mental note where the landmark is, such as a building of some kind, and i usually use a 25% overlap if i can and remember, it gets trickier if it's wide and there is little to line up with. i lined up with the windows on the prison shot, and had to rebuild as it was.

the hard part with hand held pano's is the nodel point, and tilt. you have a tendency to tilt as you shoot, but it's all because your on a hill or it's moving away so you compensate. and end up with a smiley face when it stitches. i don't work with pano's much though they take up too much memory.


i think i shot this with 6-7 raw images, vertical. i had to add more sky and water which it's why its larger than normal. the detail is more impressive in person (my side of it). but it took forever to stitch, it wasn't an hdr. problems i had was - the tower on the left, i snipped the top off and had to edit it back in there. i had a close up of that building and used that. and gutting and replacing the water on the lower right because it was the edge of a building there i couldn't avoid.

i only started making more panos because i because i sold one once and want more.


---Mike Savad

Yep.. that is how I created this image.. each image was taken with a very cheap low res camera... each one taken by twisting the camera a various angles, brought in to photoshop and combined with photomerge. I think each layer was set to 50% opacity.

Don't get me started on panos. I have many source images still waiting to be stitched but its a pain for me. Especially with water moving, what was i thinking? Unless you do a slow shutter to blur it out a bit you can manage, but i still struggle with horizons every time. All the cloning and free distortion in the world can't save my horizons sometimes



Very cool btw Bob.

You could also use software called Genuine Fractals, which will enable your image to be enlarged upto a 1000 times, without loss of detail, the makers claim

i think i've seen the claims made by that company. i think you might be able to double and image, but a 1000 times - no. there isnt' enough detail for that. silly putty can only be stretched so far before all detail is lost. now if you place it on a bill board, it doesn't matter how bad it looks up close, it's meant to be seen far.

---Mike Savad

You can only enlarge the existing pixels. I do that all the time with software that is 20 years old. I have made wall size prints doing that. However, if you want RESOLUTION, you have to count MEGS....right Mike?

I just changed my bike shot and tweeked it more. Now THAT would look cool wall size. Check out that wild road.

no you don't. i have a 22mp camera. the top of the line camera the best you can get in canon is 16mp. but it has large nodes in the cmos and it captures more light and more detail. so while it's smaller in size, it's actually a lot more clear. and phones that have 45mp or more now - up close the detail isn't all that great. because the sensor is really small. the larger the size MP is meaningless. its how good the cmos works.

foveon is another good example, i don't think sigma ever made the camera larger than 8mp, they call it 24mp, because each color platen captures all the colors, there is no interpolation. so while the image is smaller - it's much cleaner, sharper and free of almost any noise.

i want to tell you that the waviness - looks really ridiculous. its more like wonderland now.


---Mike Savad

Bill.. what shutter speed did you use in that capture? Had to be pretty high to freeze the tire treads like that at 70MPH.

i'll be honest, the first one was believable. the second one is a cartoon and just highlights composite shots.


---Mike Savad

Well, it's suppose to look like a dream state type work. Surreal. It's like the speed of the bike made the road behind into a waving ribbon.

I just got back from such a ride and I am hurting. Didn't crash, but the concentration that kind of riding demands and the edge of the seat control is a killer. I may be in for a hot bath here.

I agree that you need the sensor to go with the megs.

So you think I should switch back to the original?
Maybe I will put it to a vote.

I'm a bit confused here Milke, Canon's top of the range camera is about 22MP not 16MP (that was the old 1Ds from 10 years back), my 5D MkII was there, my 6D is 20 or 21 MP ----- I mean, frankly, who gives a monkey's whether it is 18 or 22? It's all the same and you can look it up if you like.

For stitching, I've found hand-held using a 100mm lens is great. You don't get the corner distortion that is so destructive when trying to stitch wide-angle shots.

This is an uncoventional stitched pano. I had the 70-200mm lens on the camera and the tree was just 10 feet away or so, on the other side of the lane. So I shot three layers of images, three or four layers deep, and combined them in Hugin.

I agree Bill.....that bike image would look fabulous as a wall mural.
As for the Genuine Fractals software here’s what Genuine Fractals software does:
After you have optimized your image file in Photoshop, establishing how the final image will appear, you save the image using the preferred Genuine Fractals file extension (FIF or STN). GF transforms the image into "resolution independent-assets" eliminating the relationship between pixels and resolution. The image becomes mathematically encoded as an algorithm and the pixels of the original raster image are replaced with a new file structure that stores the entire image and none of the pixels. When you open the image again, you can re-scale it to the desired size and the algorithm will generate new pixels while maintaining sharpness regardless of image size. It's all in the algorithms that Genuine Fractals use.

However, Russ, information that doesn't exist cannot be created.

That sounds pretty cool Russ. I'll get back guys...just got another idea for a shot while I have the light.

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/slr_cameras/eos_1d_x#Specifications

it's 18mp, i was close.

it does make a difference, it gathers more light, but sacrifices overall size it doubles the iso of my camera


---Mike Savad

It doesn't claim to create non existent information Paul. Not asking anyone to just take my word for it, the software is free to download as a free trial to....well trial it.

so - you get a 30 meg image and can only upload 23.8 (+FAA's 1.2 add on makes it 25) here on FAA.

Mike, the 5D MkIII is 23.2MP, for what it's worth. OK, it's not their 1-series. but the 1DsMkIII was 21MP - I don't know if they are still making that.

Russ, image enlargement technology is impressive, even the standard PS interpolation software is very good, but the best any of it can do is inventing pixels by averaging out stuff that was there before. Alamy takes PS enlargements from about 6MP right up to 17MP and it all looks pretty good - but it's really just inflating the file.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/fractals.shtml heres one review - he wasn't impressed
http://blog.kenkaminesky.com/onone-perfect-resize-software-review/ - he likes it. i would need to play with it. but my images are large enough.

---Mike Savad

i took it from the website. i can't afford top of the line anyway, it's also large. in any case they don't seem to be increasing the size, but more like how much light it can gather - if that rumor about the mk4 is accurate.

---Mike Savad

Roy, the point is that you can do max upload here with a 10 meg. camera if you are willing to shoot sections. I put this on because people always think you have the latest. The truth is that you don't.

Paul, like I said, it's a free download anyone can use to trial and see if it's right for them.

I saw a very interesting quote in a photography book I was reading the other day. It went something like " the goal of camera companies is not to make you a well equipped photographer, it is to make you an expensively equipped photographer." I'll have to figure out where I read it.

Just to clarify about Genuine Fractals...

Mike's link and review is of v2.0 which was somewhere around 2002-2004, so the review might be as old as 12 years.

Genuine Fractals is owned by OnOne software and is now named Perfect Resize which generally gets good reviews. See below.

Perfect Resize is in the OnOne Suite 8, but I think the version in the suite is v7.5

Here are some reviews of the current software:

https://www.google.com/#q=review+of+perfect+resize&tbas=0

to be fair i grabbed whatever i saw first.


---Mike Savad

That's fine, mike, but 12-year old reviews are antique and basically useless. The article was not dated as far as I could see, nonetheless, probably best to be more careful before posting links that evaluate software.

For anybody who is interested in the software, before I paid $50 for the app, I would consider the suite which is apparently on sale. If you don't mind switching apps and running a standalone version, I think you can get the entire standalone suite for $79. They sent me an email, unfortunately I could not find it.

Back to stitching, I do not stitch much - only for panos. The single frames are large enough for me. But I have not seen PtGui mentioned here, and am curious why. It works good for me. At least for panos it is basically seamless, requiring very little or no PP afterwards. It does also stitch verticals and grids, but I have never used it for that.