Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/05/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Alastair, I personally would use a prime lens of at least 50mm.=20 Definately not a zoom. Dennis Painter mentioned 2nd nodal point for the swing axis but I cannot elaborate. All I know is that the film must swing to simulate the geometry of the curved film plane of the super expensive Linhof panarama cameres. A few years ago I accepted a commission to take a photograph of a house in its natural settings. It was in the suburbs of Gothenburg. I climbed the nearby hill to look across at the house with the city skyline behind it and thought what a good panoramic scene it would make. What a mistake that was. I had never done one before and it took me two weeks to get an acceptable picture because I was learning fast that a panoramic series uses every ounce of photographic knowledge available. I kid you not. I had a two week crash course in lens optics, exposure control, perspective, edge distortion etc. Then came matching and pasting the seperate images together. I tried colour at first but that was a total failure, as the blue sky changed hue too suddenly in the commercial prints I had made. These first prints also contained all the other errors like a stone in the foreground could not be matched at the same time as the skyline. I switched to BW and the FUN really started. And I mean FUN. I really started to enjoy matching up the seperate images in my then temporary darkroom and discovering massive holes in my knowledge of photographic theory. =20 I advised 50% overlap because film is cheap, and I must have tramped up that hill a dozen times in those two weeks. The money I received for the final print put me in the minus but I really enjoyed doing it. For an absorbing project I can think of few things to match the quest for a perfect panorama print to hang on a wall. And have lots and lots of FUN. Alan Hull --------- > Fr=E5n: Alastair Firkin=20 =20 > Alan, >=20 > Thank you for the panorama tips. I have somewhere in my "cupboard" an old > Nikon thingamebob which has settings for different focal lenght lenes and > click stops in between. I don't think it overlapped by 50%, but it did have > the bubble level. I also have an old Rollei one, which is much smaller. > Which lens would you use for these scenic shots. If I use a longer lens, it > will be the 70-180 Zoom, and it has a tripod mount on the lens itself. This > may alter the dynamics of the swing. Any comments? > This should have gone a few days ago, but my server has clocked out for 3 > days ;-) > Cheers, >=20 > Alastair Firkin, >=20 > http://users.netconnect.com.au/~firkin/AGFhmpg.html >=20 >=20