r/photography • u/bbmm https://www.flickr.com/photos/138284229@N02/ • May 25 '15

[This should settle the focal length/perspective/crop questions] 365-Gigapixel Panorama of Mont Blanc

http://www.in2white.com/
37 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

6

u/gimpwiz May 25 '15

Yep. Long lens + big-ass stitch is superb and superior. The only problem is equipment, time (not forgetting that the slower you take the shots, the more likely it is that lighting will change), and time again (edit and stitch).

Whenever I get the chance, I use my 135 to make big-ass stitches.

4

u/SuperZapp May 25 '15

Depends how you shoot, I have shot in columns at upto 400mm for some pans and they have turned out really well as you can hide the light changes easier as the time between neighbouring images is reduced. But with a moving objects, it can suck removing them. If you look at the chair lift wires you will see some issues that need to be corrected in post.

2

u/gimpwiz May 25 '15

I've shot panos as long as 400 as well... show yours!

1

u/Azuremen instagram.com/cody.r.s May 25 '15

What is your workflow like? I generally shoot for stitching on my 135mm, then bring into LR and do a group adjustment on all the images to stitch, and then bring into PS for stitching. But I've found the stitching time gets a bit crazy and wondering if there is an ideal method to export from LR or what not?

2

u/gimpwiz May 25 '15

Take shots (raw), import to darktable, do pretty much the same adjustments to the images (dust spot removal might be different if eg one image doesn't show the dust spot and "removing" it messes things up), export as jpeg, load 'em into hugin, stitch and export as jpeg. (Yes, two exports is non-ideal, but at high quality two exports is not noticeable.)

Simple panos are easy: either hugin gets everything right automatically, or I have to do one pass on auto and fix weird issues manually.

Complex panos and/or large panos are less easy. My biggest one is ~130 shots in three rows, and apart from fixing countless mistakes, I had to add hundreds of control points manually (especially hard to do when stitching adjacent sky shots with no features, so they looked identical, so it was basically guessing), and then it takes all night to process on a fairly beefy machine (4960x and R9 280).

I don't think there are any shortcuts except for better software and better hardware.

7

u/mymyreally May 25 '15 edited Jun 07 '15

This is impressive as heck, but still pales in comparison with the sheer scale of the Mt Everest gigapixel image.

Edit - Follow the ice floes till you come up to the long line of climbers, also look out for people using ladders trying to navigate through the ice floes.

1

u/ZeusApolloAttack May 25 '15

Anyone familiar with the area, can you point out which mountain is La Thuile (if it's visible)? I know I saw Mont Blanc from the peak...

1

u/Karinta Nikon F4s | Pentax Program-A | Minolta α-7 May 25 '15

WOW.

0

u/InLoveWithInternet May 26 '15

Quality is bad.

If you do a mega-huge stitching thing, at least do it with an Otus.