Closeup Stitch Example

[Chris Strobel]

Well with all the fuss about stitching, I thought I'd give er a try.I've seen lots of landscape examples, but not really any closeups like botaniclesSo here is my example shot with Canon 20D, Canon 100mm macro, natural backlight and one 60w incandecent bulb.A total of 12 frames shot in Raw, stiched in CS2.The end file was HUGE, so I down sized it to 16x20 at 360ppi, the biggest my 4800 will go.The file is now a little over 300mb.So far I'm encouraged at the possibilities, however it took me about 4 times the amount of time in CS2 compared to when I do a 4x5 or 8x10, and I'm still not done with the image

[Doug Dolde]

This is really a gorgeous image. And I have to say leaves nothing to desire a large format film image over it.

But I'm sure some of the old flatulent film guys will disagree if for nothing else to disagree.

[Jack Flesher]

Excellent image Chris! Might be of interest to see a small portion of that image at actual pixel resolution -- maybe along a stitch seam?

Thanks for sharing!

[rob]

It would be easier to do this by mounting the dslr on the rear frame of a view camera (like the horseman LD), and moving the dslr up-down left-right to get the pieces, and using an LF macro lens.

[Gordon Moat]

60mm by 67.5mm or 45mm by 90mm, based on 15mm by 22.5mm sensor size in the 20D. Of course orientation of each stitch frame, and the overlaps, would mean slightly smaller. I wonder what the actual stitched frame capture area was in this?

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Ken Lee]

I'm impressed, and I'm still slumming around with film. In fact, I just got a monorail to facilitate making more botanical images.

[Struan Gray]

One interesting consequence of stitching is that the plane of best focus becomes a sphere of best focus. This is not the same as field curvature on a sheet film camera because repositioning the sensor makes the combined detection surface also curved (you can imagine a 'film plane' made up of overlapping sensor positions for each individual image of the stitch).

Practically, this means that when the depth of field is low - more common in closeups than infinity landscapes - the in focus parts of the individual frames will only match along a line, no matter how much overlap you allow. Most people will see this as a problem.

Conceptually though, you can imagine manipulating the focus to produce an explicitly non-planar surface over which the sharpness is maximised. Such a surface need not even be continuous. With a bit of image stacking the depth of field limits either side of it can also vary in ways that are disallowed by conventional optics.

No doubt those that do this will be told they are not taking photographs.

[Chris Strobel]

60mm by 67.5mm or 45mm by 90mm, based on 15mm by 22.5mm sensor size in the 20D. Of course orientation of each stitch frame, and the overlaps, would mean slightly smaller. I wonder what the actual stitched frame capture area was in this?

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

Huh?I'm not sure what you mean.I do know that I probably overlapped more than I needed.I didn't do this very scientifically, I just popped the camera on my Bogen 3047 head, started with the lens pointed straight at the center of the plant, then snapped 3 across x 4 down just moving the head around. I was about 2 feet from the plant{most of the bottom three snaps are cropped out here}One thing that happened was when stitching not everything lined up perfectly, and lots of micro cutting and pasting were needed.The master files canvas size is 20x30 inchs and chokes my computer (Athlon 4800+/2gb), is way bigger than I would ever care to print, took A LOT of time, and I missed my ground glass.So I'm gong to keep working with my 4x5 and 8x10.Here is the left tip snap rotated vertical,

[Ed Richards]

You really should try PTGui for this. It will save a lot of time and pain, and not use up all your computer resources.

[Marko]

This would actually be a perfect application for that Camera Fusion DSLR-to-LF stitching adapter/back announced here some time ago. Now, if only it were in the same price league as the Shen, that'd make a really great combo with that Nikon macro that's been all the rage lately.