{"id":375,"date":"2011-12-27T10:22:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T15:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hillelsteinberg.com\/?p=375"},"modified":"2016-02-19T20:22:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T01:22:42","slug":"the-longest-panorama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/?p=375","title":{"rendered":"The Longest Panorama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elat's<\/a>
\nIn July of this year (2011), my family took a comprehensive trip to Israel for the grand tour.\u00a0 We hit all the major highlights, and everyone had a blast.\u00a0 I shlepped my Nikon D700 on the trip, and several lenses to cover possibilities.\u00a0 By the flight home, I had taken over 20,000 photos from the southern resort of Eilat, to the Golan Heights in the north.<\/p>\n

Many of the photos were actually series.\u00a0 Some series were collected to make sure a particular event was not missed.\u00a0 Some series were performed as bracketed shots which could be later combined to synthesize HDR composites.\u00a0 Other series were bracketed simply to provide a palette of exposure options to choose from later – and thus insurance when capturing a photo opportunity.\u00a0 Still other series were collected for the ultimate purpose of generating stitched panoramas.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The decision to take a photo series for these purposes goes something like this.\u00a0 At some point, a photo opportunity arises.\u00a0 One of the following criterion is identified:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The timing of the event is tricky – I may miss the perfect moment.<\/li>\n
  2. The scene is static, with too many severe shadows & bright highlights.<\/li>\n
  3. The scene is moving but the optimal exposure for the shot us unclear.<\/li>\n
  4. The widest lens will not capture the static scene with desired detail.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In Israel, when the first situation was detected, I would take a non-bracketed shot with the continuous mode set to high.\u00a0 Many photographers would also choose the camera’s speed-priority mode for the event.\u00a0 I usually didn’t.\u00a0 The thinking goes something like this.\u00a0 If I only fix the speed, the camera can adjust both the aperture and the ISO sensitivity.\u00a0 It will probably open the aperture wide to compensate for a fast shutter.\u00a0 A wide open aperture means a small depth-of-field.\u00a0 Even with continuous-focus on, the photo will appear soft in all but the parts of the scene which lay precisely in the focal plane.\u00a0 The better option is to go manual with both the speed and aperture set.\u00a0 This forces the camera to only play with the ISO sensitivity, and the depth-of-field is now guaranteed.\u00a0 The trick here is to make sure the camera knows which are reasonable values for ISO.\u00a0 I usually set the D700’s sensitivity to play in the 200 – 1600 range where I’m fairly certain noise is limited.<\/p>\n

    When the second situation was detected, I would take a two, three, five, or seven bracketed shot at separations of 1EV.\u00a0 The thinking is as follows.\u00a0 I have tried bracketed shots at .7EV and .3EV but the exposures aren’t varied enough to make bracketing worth it.\u00a0 If I though that the shot would come out fine, but it might be a tad over exposed, I would shoot a two-bracketed shot with one as-metered (MTR) and one under exposed.\u00a0 If I though the shot was going to be near the optimal exposure, I might do a triple-bracketed shot with one under and one over.\u00a0 For severe situations, say a sunset, I might use a five or seven-bracket shot to form a perfectly exposed HDR photo later providing details for both the highlights and shadows.\u00a0 In some ways, today’s best cameras are still like two-octave pianos – never enough to express the entire piece.\u00a0 You need to improvise.<\/p>\n

    In the third case, if the exposure is tricky and the scene is changing considerably, an HDR may not be practical.\u00a0 Still, a bracketed three-shot capture may save the day if you think the exposure could be off from the metered one.\u00a0 This works with a moving scene if you set the capture to high-speed continuous mode.\u00a0 On the D700, with the EN-4 batteries you can shoot 8 frames-per-second.\u00a0 If you shoot only three bracketed frames, that’s 3\/8th of a second, or less than half of a second for the entire series.\u00a0 This is usually short enough to capture the moment, and still offer several exposures to choose from.\u00a0 For this type of bracketed shot, I select the bracketing order carefully as MTR, UNDER, OVER.\u00a0 The metered shot will have the best chance at matching the optimal exposure, and should be taken first.\u00a0 For under exposed shots I find that I loose color definition, but I still have luminance information for exposure bounded parts of the scene.\u00a0 For over exposed areas, I find that I loose luminance information, but I still have a bit of color information to work with.\u00a0 For skies, where most of the blow-outs occur, I would rather an under-exposed shot because the cloud luminance is key, and I can provide any missing coloring detail for it in Photoshop later.<\/p>\n

    Finally, if the scene is expansive, I may not be able to capture it in a single shot.\u00a0 I need to capture a panorama.\u00a0 In this case I don’t have to bracket the shot, and I don’t want to be in a high-speed continuous shooting mode.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, I set the shooting mode to single, turn off the bracketing, and fix the aperture at a high value.\u00a0 Fixing the aperture at a high value is important for two reasons.\u00a0 It has to be fixed so that the depth-of-field between overlapping pictures is identical.\u00a0 And, a high aperture value (small opening) is desirable because you want as much of the panorama to be in focus as is possible.\u00a0 Parts of the scene which are not in focus cannot be stitched automatically.<\/p>\n

    But, there is a fifth case.\u00a0 On the final day of the grand Israel trip, our family took a one hour boat ride from the ancient port in Jaffa to waters off the Tel-Aviv coast in the Mediterranean Sea.\u00a0 For the first half hour we journeyed northwest towards a beautiful sunset.\u00a0 I took many bracketed shots to make sure these moments were captured, but the scene wasn’t static as the boat rose and dipped over waves.\u00a0 Because the sun dominated the shots, I didn’t worry that the speed for these shots was set high.\u00a0 After a bit we turned around and headed back towards Jaffa.\u00a0 The coastline up ahead was clearly lit by the sun low on the horizon.\u00a0 I noticed that I could see the entire Tel-Aviv and Jaffa coastline from this fortuitous vantage point.\u00a0 No single picture could capture this moment, except for maybe a fisheye shot – but the detail in these exotic photos are often lacking.\u00a0 Instead I though about taking a panorama.<\/p>\n

    Normally I shorten the focal length all the way, and try to stitch a panorama in as few shots as possible, overlapping about 20-40% as I travel from left to right in the camera’s portrait orientation.\u00a0 Here, if I zoomed out with the 28 – 300mm lens I was using, I could probably capture this panorama in about five pictures.\u00a0 What I would capture if I did this would be mostly the sea, with a tiny coastline in the distance.\u00a0 But the only thing interesting in the scene was really the coastline itself.\u00a0 The sky and sea were fairly plain since it was clear, and we were headed away from the sun.\u00a0 Also, the surf in front of the boat would never stitch properly between even nearly successive shots.\u00a0 But I had some questions.\u00a0 Even with the camera lens vibration reduction on, could the coastline be captured without blur?\u00a0 How many pictures would it take for the whole coastline panorama?\u00a0 Could I consistently frame each shot while bobbing on the boat?\u00a0 How easily would the results stitch later?<\/p>\n

    I set the D700 to manual, and moved the aperture to 8.0.\u00a0 This narrow aperture would make sure the coastline would be in focus.\u00a0 I moved the focal length all the way to 300mm and verified that this was the right length to capture the beach and buildings along the shore.\u00a0 The shooting mode was set to single so each shutter press would not start a burst.\u00a0 I then fixed the speed at 1\/350th of a second.\u00a0 I wanted to go higher, but I was afraid the light would not be sufficient to capture the shadows if I went higher. I figured with the VR, the coastline structures would be sharp enough to stitch later.\u00a0 I kept the white balance setting fixed at “cloudy”.\u00a0 Though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, this setting works well across nearly all outdoor occasions with Nikon cameras.\u00a0 Furthermore, the white balance needs to be fixed between shots so coloring is consistent between neighboring frames.\u00a0 To begin the panorama, I started from the left (northern Tel-Aviv) in the portrait position.\u00a0 I first pressed the shutter halfway down to focus on the distant shoreline.\u00a0 Given that nearly everything but the ISO was fixed at this point, I was fairly certain that stitching would be possible later.\u00a0 I took the entire panorama quickly, and never fully released the shutter to maintain consistent focus and lighting across the panorama.<\/p>\n

    After taking the panorama, I promptly forgot about it.\u00a0 The trip’s end was near, and there were many logistical things to consider the next day.\u00a0 Several months later, I began to work chronologically through the 20,o00+ pictures looking for a variety of photos to submit to my website as well as Google Earth.\u00a0 Weeks later, I started through the last few series of pictures which included the long coastline panorama.\u00a0 When I came to the coastline series (40 images), I simply ignored it and continued on, thinking it would not be worth my time.\u00a0 But, this was the last batch of photos, and I came back to the series soon after.\u00a0 The photos looked a lot clearer than I thought they would be.\u00a0 I decided to stitch them and see how it went.\u00a0 The software I was using did a good job, and only got confused in one section of the coast where part of the scene looked similar to another frame in a completely different coastal section.\u00a0 I fixed this and rendered the results.<\/p>\n

    I loaded the stitched product into Photoshop and examined it.\u00a0 There were only a few issues left to deal with, but none of these were related to the stitching.\u00a0 I had darker areas at the edges of the picture which needed to be lightened.\u00a0 I also needed to remove a few circles in the plain sky which were caused by small particles of dust on the D700’s full-frame sensor.\u00a0 For good measure, I added my copyright line in the bottom left.<\/p>\n

    Google currently has limitations on photos you submit to them.\u00a0 The total size cannot be more than 25mb, and the total number of pixels cannot exceed 50mp.\u00a0 Normally, these constraints are very reasonable.\u00a0 But, in the case of a monster panorama, these restrictions must be confronted.\u00a0 After I saved the high-resolution product, I first shrunk the image till the 50mp constraint was met.\u00a0 Then I saved the image as a JPEG as quality 12, the highest setting allowed.\u00a0 The results were too large as expected.\u00a0 I lowered the quality setting one value at a time till the 25mb constraint was met.\u00a0 I uploaded the results to Google, mapped the location, and tagged the panorama with the relevant keywords.\u00a0 The submission was accepted to Google Earth 24 hours later.<\/p>\n

    The results are not perfect, but the panorama is truly a one-of-a-kind.\u00a0 Because of the aspect ratio, the Google thumbnail looks strange – a single horizontal strip so thin you cannot discern its contents until you see more detail.\u00a0 The easiest way to actually view the image is to download the high-resolution version first and preview it locally on your computer.\u00a0 The entire panorama cannot really be viewed usefully on a single monitor.\u00a0 Instead you can pan left and right along the vertically-fit coastline and get a sense of the panorama as a whole.\u00a0 It’s remarkably long.\u00a0 Just when you think it will end, it does not.\u00a0 All key parts of the Tel-Aviv and Jaffa coastline are present.<\/p>\n

    If I had to do it again, It is likely I would change little.\u00a0 Furthermore, I might try this technique in other similar situations.\u00a0 This fifth scenario is thus identified as follows:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. You observe a long stretch of interesting horizontal scenery.<\/li>\n
    2. The scene is static but you don’t have to be.<\/li>\n
    3. The lighting is similar across the panorama.<\/li>\n
    4. Very little outside the horizontal scenery is interesting enough to be part of the final product.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The last criterion is key.\u00a0 If it weren’t for #4, the panorama could be stitched in fewer shots, and with a wider aperture.\u00a0 Below is a thumbnail which shows the final product.\u00a0 If you click on the thumbnail, it will take you to Google’s Panoramio, where you can inspect the panorama in higher detail.\u00a0 On Panoramio, you can see that this particular image has already been selected for Google Earth.\u00a0 Feel free to try this approach for yourself.\u00a0 If you do, send me an email so I can be sure to check it out!<\/p>\n

      \"The<\/a>
      \n[whohit]-LONGESTPANORAMA-[\/whohit]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      In July of this year (2011), my family took a comprehensive trip to Israel for the grand tour.\u00a0 We hit all the major highlights, and everyone had a blast.\u00a0 I shlepped my Nikon D700 on the trip, and several lenses to cover possibilities.\u00a0 By the flight home, I had taken over 20,000 photos from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,71,58,1],"tags":[98,96,91,99,132,94,90,63,47,97,92,89,93,37,95],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-panorama-2","category-photography-passion","category-photography-workflow","category-uncategorized","tag-boat","tag-city","tag-coastline","tag-d700","tag-israel","tag-jaffa","tag-long","tag-nikon","tag-panorama","tag-port","tag-shore","tag-stitch","tag-tel-aviv","tag-trip","tag-yaffo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}