People - actually all living beings - is a nuisance in panoramas! No doubt about it. They never stay where you want and you get all these ghosts to edit out. On a more serious note: I have been wondering if there is a way to do "action" photos - a faster way to get the shots. I am working with a Nikon D90 + Nikkor 10,5 mm., a total of 8 shots including zenith and nadir. So, I am almost garanteed a total time per panorama of 10 seconds. And I am nor talking of Jeffreys "photo helmet".
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Hi Leif, if it's very important to you to make panos with people moving in them, you'll unfortunately need a different body and lens. When I shoot people panos, I use a full frame body, Nikon D700, and a full circle fish eye like the Nikon or Sigma 8 mm. This allows three shots around. Be sure to tilt the camera upward a little so that you won't need to take a zenith shot. PTGUI will stitch and close the zenith hole when the camera is tilted upward slightly. Experiment with how much to tilt upward. The other trick to gain speed, is to shoot the left and right image first before moving yourself around and shooting the 3rd image. On my Agnos rotator, I start by shooting the 240-degree marking, then quickly swinging the camera right to shoot the 120-degree marking, before moving my body around and shooting the zero-degree marking. On a clock, the zero-degrees is at 6 o'clock, 120-degrees is at about 1:30 O'clock, and the 240-degrees is at about 10:30 O'clock. I also use a cable release in my left hand, and rotate the camera with my right hand. |
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sounds a lot like this thread http://panoverflow.com/questions/5/with-people-walking-how-did-you-avoid-getting-them-in-the-next-shot anyway, first thing I'd say, for action panos, get a sigma 8mm instead of your nikkor. 4 shots around instead of 8 - that means 3-5 seconds instead of 10 seconds. |
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Sometimes there are so many people or so much action, that the solutions of the above mentioned thread don't work. In these cases we have to change our vertical workflow to a horizontal and shoot a 2 row panorama. If the upper row just covers blue sky, stiching can become difficult and needs manual adjustments. You can also ignore the sky and shoot a second vertical panorama. Take care that both panoramas have the same output size in pixel. Now you need a program that can work with layers like photoshop. Add the horizontal pano as a seperate layer to the vertical one and use a mask to make the missing sky visible. |
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There is another approach to action panoramas, although it has its own limitations. You can try spinning the camera around very quickly and rely upon its burst mode to shoot enough shots (and not too many!) on the way around. Given the recent increases in ISO-equivalent sensor sensitivity and the high shutter speeds that they make possible in any decent kind of daylight, I would guess that you could soon find a speed of rotation that would (say) enable you to take the necessary four shots in less than a second. OF course you do need a reliably consistent way of rotating your camera. I have a rotary film camera system that I am thinking of converting for this. Its fastest rotation speed is 360 degrees in one second. This is about right for me, as the burst speed of my Nikon D300 is not all that fast (maxing out at 7fps). I am a bit short of time these days, so if you try this before I can get around to it (which will probably be over the Christmas and New Year holiday) do report back on the results. |
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I am even later, Roger :-) Didn't notice your reply until now. The technique of using burst mode is a lot better than expected. I find myself bringing only the camera with me on every occasion (still too heavy). It's better than using the normal technique of 6 + zenith + nadir. COP15 was not a success. I was still using the old hand held technique and it was H... to get something resembling a decent anorama. By the way, I am still considering Jeffreys advice of getting a Sigma. I am also looking into the multi-camera rig used by Ryan Jacksom in his Alberta Project (two keywords for your search). |
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There are also some "one-shot" lenses out there but the quality of the panos generated seems to be pretty low: |
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My approach is to shoot a few more pictures than the required 4 ( D300 Sigma8) I can then after stitching use the single layers to repair or remove people with damaged limbs or bodies |
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The 0-360 gadget seems pretty cool. If you can accept its limitation of shooting in a horizontal plane and the limited resolution (ie a single image) it seems like it would be ideal for action panorama photography. Has anyone seen examples not on the 0-360 website? -Steve |
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