Building Panoramas, Or Why Your Smartphone Alone Isn't Enough

As readers of this blog may know, I try to get outside and enjoy the natural world with my camera. And as I get more and more interested in what's out there, I seem to keep upping the ante a bit! This latest adventure involved spending 8 days on the glaciated slopes of Mount Rainier. Initially, I planned to bring my D7100, complete with specialized DIY carrying case - but when my pack weighed in at 68 pounds before adding the 3lbs of DSLR goodness, I decided to limit myself to my Samsung Galaxy S5.

Now, I've used my Galaxy S5 before on this blog, and the results were more artistic than photo realistic. You can bet that as I left my D7100 behind, I was thinking about this a lot. But, as we settled in for the night at our first camp site, I realized that I shouldn't be worried. Why, you ask? Because of the great free photo stitching software, Hugin! Sure, I'd be limited in megapixels. But I was in the middle of glacier, outside, taking landscape style shots. I could turn 10 photos into one with this software, and you'd never know that they came from a smartphone!

Let me pause here. You may be confused by what I've just said, and the title of my post. You're using your phone, silly! Why isn't that enough? Well, one other climber, our guide, Devin, took panorama shots nearly the same as I did. But he did it all "in cameraphone."

Courtesy Devin, at twitter.com/denalidevo

The photos are amazing, as you can see in this one example. But one thing comes into play here - distortion. It's that subtle fishbowl effect that appears when taking panoramas. It's not easy to get rid of, but it is possible - with software. And that's where Hugin comes into play.

In order to build the panoramas below, I took upwards of 10 individual photos. I basically created a grid of the scene that I wanted to capture, ensuring that there was plenty of overlap between each shot. This ensured that the software had many examples of common points in each set of images to stitch them together - aka do computer magic.

I began with seven separate photos

Lots of control points make for more accurate stitching

Now, Hugin allows you a lot of control with photos. I should mention that I did all of my preliminary post-processing in Lightroom. White balance, exposure levels, minor edits - I performed this on one image in Lightroom, and then batched the settings to the other six images. This ensured that each piece of the larger puzzle looked the same - no odd underexposed sections here!

Once we have all seven images imported, and the software has identified the common control points, we get this output screen.  Here, I can select the type of projection that I want to base my image on. This is how we either eliminate (or increase) distortion, based on our artistic ideals for the image. Just check out my picture of the Emmons Glacier with Little Tahoma in the background - I went with some level of distortion to the picture, but that's just because I liked it that way.

Panini General Projection

Cylindrical Projection

Trans Mercator Projection

As is quite apparent, each projection created a very different image. The brighter areas are what Hugin would produce to create a "final" image. The cylindrical projection is what I made for my final image, so it is cropped properly, however the other two projections, while having the same dimensions, now include blank space within the final image. The Trans Mercator projection has also created that "fishbowl" effect that we saw in the smartphone image from Devin! But, our other choices eliminated that distortion. And this is precisely why you need a little bit more than just a smartphone to create a panorama - that is, if you want to avoid distortion!

Equipment Used

Samsung Galaxy S5
Hugin Version: 2012.0.0.a6e4184ad538


Images

Beginner Concert Photography and the Sony RX100M III

After realizing that even a cell phone can snag halfway decent concert pictures, I started thinking about getting a "real" camera into a concert venue to get some shots. All of my reading and experimenting with basic lighting had me seeing the real magic of concert images - where else can you get the entire rainbow of color, mixed with true passion, and have a picture look REAL?

So, I started reading about on the web, and finding a camera that met the following criteria:

• Would be allowed into the venue I had tickets for. 
• Some places will let you bring in a full DSLR, no questions asked. Most will not.
• Had a viewfinder. 
• I've grown resistant to shooting via LCD screen, and it's annoying for other folks at a show.
• Did good work in low light situations. 
• You need a fast enough shutter speed to freeze performers, but also a camera that will give you low noise pictures at higher ISOs.

As you can tell from the title, I settled on renting Sony's RX100M III - a nice point and shoot that easily fit into my pocket and met all of the above criteria.

Naturally, I played with settings for a full day before the show, and made sure that I was familiar with the camera. After all, there is nothing worse than fiddling with a camera in the dark while you're trying to enjoy some music!

How I made my shots

• Before the bands came out, I took a couple of test shots of the stage to dial in the right ISO setting. I started at ISO 2000, but brought it down to 1600 after the first few shots.
• Most of my shots were at 1/125. I dropped a few down to 1/100 and even 1/80, but I was happiest with my 1/125 shots.
• The RX100M III has a very nice Zeiss f/1.8-2.8 lens that shoots at 24-70mm. I spent a lot of time zoomed in, so I was at the slower end of things.
• At a general admission show, I tried to frame as best I could and get the performers in focus. But I did a decent amount of spraying and praying. I'll let you judge how that worked.

I've got the final versions of my shots below, and have the untouched originals after that. Lightroom is a pretty powerful tool, and I'm getting to enjoy it more and more.

Equipment Used

Sony RX100M III camera


Final Images

Original  Images

 

Cell Phone Photography - Low Light, Emotional Brightness

Smartphones are pretty incredible. I have all of human knowledge at my fingertips, on demand. I also happen to have a camera with me, even when I don't feel like carrying a DSLR camera and lens. Most of the time, I love it - I own a Galaxy S5, which has a 16 MP camera. It's not as customizable as I'd like (no manual mode or RAW shooting for me), but it's pretty darn good. For most people taking photos, camera phones are what they use. heck, even National Geographic has gotten into phone photography. Workshops or even full photo projects are out there from the masters of documentary photography.

This wouldn't be much of a photo blog if I didn't at least explore this type of shooting. So I did some shooting with my phone. At a local club. Yes, I was one of those people, taking crappy photos in a dark club of a brilliant musical artist - Big Data. But here's the thing - I came home from a great show having spent maybe a grand total of 5 minutes firing off photos while I enjoyed a couple hours of music - and the photos were crap. Don't believe me? Here are the best ones.

"Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships."

- Ansel Adams

But, here's where you have to see lemons and actually try to make lemonade as an artist. And photos of a high energy musical performance are the perfect way to do this - you're not looking for tack focus, perfect framing, or even perfect lighting. Rather, these photos can be made to convey a mood - the emotion of the show.

This was a great notion to explore - that photography isn't strictly reproduction of what you see. It's why Ansel Adams said "A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed." And that's when I got into Lightroom and had fun.

So I was proud of my experimentation - these shots felt like the show I attended. The music, the action, the emotion - these images, taken with a camera that was relatively overwhelmed with the task, captured something that I'm not sure my D7100 ever could have. As a bonus, one other person seemed to enjoy the shots, as well.

Puppy Portraiture - Speed Lighting with Speedlights

A couple of weeks ago, a good friend of mine sends me a message. "Can you take some photos of my dog? I want to put together a birthday gift for my Mom." Sure, that's easy enough! I've wanted a chance to play with multiple lights, I love dogs, and I like taking photos.

Now, before I continue, be aware that I very much like to get things right. Yes, I experiment with things - trial and error is something that I like. That said, I prefer my trials and, most certainly my errors, happen when I'm experimenting - not when I'm taking shots for someone else!

Seeing lighting has been getting more intuitive. Fill light on the dog, and then a subtle flash that I could use to bring out the background. Heck, I even made a nice DIY reflector from cardboard and aluminum foil to get a little bounce to fill in shadows! I knew what I wanted from this shoot - Eye level shots of a pooch that were well lit and had great color. Oh, and obviously, I wouldn't ever want to crop things!

Now, our pup of the day was Bianca - an adorably happy dog that, try as we might, did not enjoy sitting still. Which was an issue, when you'd find the perfect spot to shoot, get it lit, and then bring the dog over. Well, little Bianca would check out the spot - and then decide she wanted to run elsewhere. Bribe with treats, get 20 seconds of possibly good shots (but oh, don't forget to shift the camera position a little, because now poor little Bianca is showing off that nice cardboard reflector in the background! After 15 minutes or so of this rather silly endeavor, the dim bulb begins to illuminate, and I start finding other places that I can make super fast lighting arrangements. Ah, here's a nice section of carpet - Get those lights set!

Thoughtful Dog - Unsightly Reflector

That's how you end up with a couple hundred photographs, many of which are of a hyper little pup dodging the camera in the name of excitement! And that is also how you end up with one sad photographer, when he begins looking through his shots, and is struggling to find usable ones. But they come. Gradually, but they come. More and more usable shots - more than enough with which a friend can craft a gift.

Equipment Used

Nikon D7100 Camera
2 x SB-600 (used gear from solid resellers like B&H or Adorama, amongst others, is awesome)
3 x Cactus V5 Wireless Triggers
DIY Cardboard-foil reflector

Images

Rim Lighting with a Black Background - Help Needed

So this will be a very simple and short post!

I've been shooting some portraits with a black tablecloth background lately, and getting some really fun results with it. But, I'm running into one annoyance that I need to think through - my rim lighting from the rear of the subject is reflecting off of the subject and back onto my background, giving it too much variation in tone and color.

Here is what the set up looked like, with a little help from Lighting Diagram 

And here is the resulting image

How do I fix it, readers?

Making Your Own Light: Or How I Stopped Being Afraid of Flash

Like pretty much every aspiring photographer, I loved learning how to make better images the more I shot. Books, articles, videos - anything that explained the craft, I devoured. Until, that is, I began learning  about flash. Wasn't it enough that I had begun to master all of the functions of my camera? Why did some new device have to come into play?

But then, while reading Joe McNally's "The Moment it Clicks," everything (wait for the terrible pun)... clicked. Flash isn't something scary. It is light. Light is EVERYTHING. Light is what you're capturing. Sometimes it even looks pretty cool when you capture it! That understanding of what flash photography actually means, plus the incredible resource that is David Hobby's Strobist blog got me to experimenting.

Since I love being outside and doing things like hurtling down hills on thin sticks in the snow and ice, I thought that trying out these lighting ideas might work well in such a simple environment. One homemade jump into a gully of fresh powder at the base of a hilly driveway, and I had my chance. Before I get to the photos, let me just say that I learned some VERY important lessons here.

1) Plan what the heck is going to happen before you get out there. The guys doing the tricks had it all set, including the landing area. I got people next to the jump to get my focus preset. I did this ALL on manual focus. In the dark, there is no way you're going to get auto-focus tracking. Also, knowing where they will land is a good way to make sure you're not there.

2) Set your gear up BEFORE you're set to shoot. I played with my Cactus V5 triggers inside so that I wouldn't be fumbling about with gloves on in single digit temperatures. But this lesson is just as important even if environmental conditions were ugly - the more pre-planning, the more time you have to deal with what you want to shoot!

Note, when you want to fire multiple flashes with the Cactus V5's, the unit attached to your camera is the commander and must be on Channel 1. The other receiving units can then occupy any of the "blue" channels (1-5). Pretty awesome stuff when you consider that these all cost less than a single PocketWizard - and one PocketWizard won't do you much good.

Here is what we set up. The arrow is the direction the skiers and boarders came from. I was shooting from below the jump and just towards the main light side of things. One thing that you'll notice in a set up like this is that you get a narrow window of good lighting in the pitch black. When you miss that window? Well, cool things can still happen - like this.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt to get big fluffy flakes coming down when you shoot something like this. All of those flakes getting caught in the strobes are just tasty!

Equipment Used

Nikon D7100 Camera
2 x SB-600 (used gear from solid resellers like B&H or Adorama, amongst others, is awesome)
3 x Cactus V5 Wireless Triggers

Images