Stitching vertical images with an output that is a 3x2 landscape?

[Jon Warwick]

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I've tried doing a bit of stitching in the past, putting the camera into vertical and rotating the lens over the nodal point, but have restricted this to only 3 frames (1x centre, 1x rotated left, 1x rotated right). The end result unfortunately seems to be a square image most of the time, not a rectangle!  I'm certainly not wanting to achieve a wide panorama, just a mechanism to increase the file size with an output that has the same 3x2 landscape ratio as if I'd taken a single shot. Any tips on how many frames you shoot to reliably achieve this, and any probs with warping of the image if you broaden out the # of images further left and further right than what I'm currently doing?

Also any other pointers on technique for accurate stitching generally would be much appreciated ....for example, I currently use a simple set-up of a flat nodal plate with my camera attached vertically with an L bracket, but I'm curious what's the benefit of the "gimbal" heads (if any) over my set-up?  Many thanks for any advice.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Jon Warwick

[andybarton]

I regularly stitch vertical shots together, but I do it hand-held, not on a tripod or anything else. LR does a great job.

Three shots isn’t enough. I would usually do maybe 5 shots, starting at the left and rotating the camera round to the last shot on the right. If there is a subject that is really important in the shot, that gets one of the single shots all to itself. I overlap the shots by about 1/3 to allow for a good match.

Manual exposure, ISO and WB, obviously.

Then, I crop, if necessary, the final image.

 

Here’s one I made earlier

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[adan]

You don't mention the camera being used, but I will assume a 24x36 sensor (M, Q, or SL series). Or even an R, since film image scans can be stitched also . Minolta and Rollei (at least) made "stitching pan heads" far, far back into the film era.

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Basic math: an image shot 36mm tall (vertical camera orientation) will be 24mm wide. And a 3:2 horizontal stitched image will need to be 36mm (tall) x 54mm (wide) > 36mm x 1.5 = 54mm.

BUT - you need some overlap, for the stitching software to know how to reassemble the pictures so that all the details match up.

HOW MUCH YOU OVERLAP will determine how many images you need to take to get a final image 54mm wide. You, the photographer, need to figure out how much to overlap, and how much your nodal plate is designed to overlap the images.

Query - do you know how much your images overlap now? Is your pan head clickstopped to force a certain spacing? Does that have variable click-stops you can adjust?

If you are overlapping the images 50% (e.g. the central image has stitched/added to it 12mm (half of) the left image, and 12mm from the right image) you will get a picture 12+24+12mm wide = 48mm (4:3 ratio).

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It will be a bit wider than square, but not the full required 54mm. Adding a 4th image will get you to 60mm wide (12+24+12+12). Which can be cropped down to 54mm.

OTOH, a smaller overlap of 33% of each frame (8mm - as andybarton does) will add 16mm to each side of your central image with just three images (L/C/R) which produces 16mm + 24mm + 16mm = 56mm. Croppable to the required 54mm to get you a 3:2 final stitch with just 3 shots.

Personally, I shoot exactly like (the other) Andy - handheld and estimating overlap at around 1/3rd of each frame.

Occasionally I even do "side-step panos" to avoid the "fisheye" curved perspective of a single view-point.

This was shot with side-by-side vertical images (M9, 35mm Summicron), where I just moved sideways for 100m, taking a squared-up picture ever few meters. I took 15 shots for this, (used 13 of them) since I knew I might get "doubled up" light-posts and such in the foreground, and needed extra flexibility to control the overlapping by hand and remove those. (Click for larger view).

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Edited October 6, 2021 by adan

[frame-it]

On 7/8/2021 at 5:37 PM, Jon Warwick said:

I've tried doing a bit of stitching in the past, putting the camera into vertical and rotating the lens over the nodal point, but have restricted this to only 3 frames (1x centre, 1x rotated left, 1x rotated right). The end result unfortunately seems to be a square image most of the time, not a rectangle!  I'm certainly not wanting to achieve a wide panorama, just a mechanism to increase the file size with an output that has the same 3x2 landscape ratio as if I'd taken a single shot. Any tips on how many frames you shoot to reliably achieve this, and any probs with warping of the image if you broaden out the # of images further left and further right than what I'm currently doing?

 

i never take 3 shots, more like 10-15 shots, better to have loads of extra stuff on the top left and right just in case, i keep plenty of overlap, especially if the lens is under 50mm, and as mentioned above, occasionally move 3-10 meters left + right [depends on how far the target is], and take some more pics just to make sure the edges are good

landscapes are easier, but i seem to have a knack of finding gorgeous bikes only on the days when i go out with a 90/135/180mm !! in which case i usually take 30-40 shots at f2-f2.8 and then stitch in lightroom, instead of one boring wider shot from far away

oh and i hate carrying tripods and bags..so always handheld.

you could also try PTGui pro for stitching, i tried it once on a friends computer, takes a bit of time but gives great results, personally im fine with lightroom, it does a great job, though occasionally it will get confused, so i stitch one side, then another & then stitch those 2 results together, works very well

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by frame-it