RE: [Leica] Panoramics using Leica.

["Rodgers, David" <david.rodgers@xo.com>]

Jorg

Thanks much for the reply. It took me a couple of hours from beginning to
end. I was really tired toward the end, obvious from the poor job I did at
one stitch. I started late and I ran out of gas, or patience, or eyesight,
or all the above. Getting the contrasts right was more difficult than I'd
imagined it would be. Light really changes in a panorama. The negs looked
very similar, but they scanned differently. I may have scanned at an auto
setting. Probably should have scanned each at the same fixed setting.
Everything has to match up; the blacks, whites and middle tones or you'll
notice the seam.  

I didn't use the same camera exposure for every image, and I probably should
have. All shots did not meter the same. I adjusted to the meter reading. I
shot the sequence just after dawn, about 6:30 AM. Perhaps at a different
time the light would be more even. I had my camera on a tripod. Didn't use a
level but panned and made sure the horizon was level. That helped greatly
when matching up the images in Photoshop. I didn't have to crop much from
top to bottom across the sequence.  

This was actually my third attempt at stitching. The first two were
seascapes. Anything with waves, I learned, is impossible to stitch, at least
with my level of skill. I want to practice more with panoramas. I know there
are programs out there that make it easier. I'm just not sure what they are.
I already had Photoshop.  

The SL, with its full frame viewfinder, was really useful. I was able to
judge the borders very closely. Too much overlap makes it difficult to match
things up. Especially with wider lenses, which I used in my previous
attempts. Longer lenses, like the 90 I used, may be better. Certainly, the
less overlap, the better. It's not easy, but it's not difficult either. As
soon as I saw the major flaws I wanted to redo this one, but I saved a jpg
for web and I didn't save the tiff I'd worked on. Like I said, it was late
and I was pretty tired. 

Finally, I had lots of defects on the negs. I'm not sure what the problem
was. I must have done something in development. I could have cleaned them up
a little better. 

Dave  

Referencing the following image --
http://www.lightcurves.com/images/straights.jpg

- -----Original Message-----
From: Jorg Willems [mailto:jorg@mindspring.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 6:05 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Panoramics using Leica. 


That's pretty neat, David.  How long did it took you to copy and paste this
together?
Jorg