Hello all,
I was curious if there were any tips for avoiding the use of a tilt-shift (without EXTENSIVE use of Photoshop).
I took this shot last May in Chicago - I love it overall, maybe a bit over-processed, but the perspective is low-key bothering me ever since I had a print made and I look at it every day.
I shot this on a Canon 77D, 10-22mm lens @10mm, f/7.1, 1/50s. The stages of the processing are in the images included - straight out of camera, clean-up in Photoshop, color processing, & 2 images on what it would take to correct the perspective on 16mm eqv. wide angle shot in Photoshop.
As you can see in the last image I ran out of pixels to fix the perspective (I may be able to salvage the image with some of the test shots, at the physical location there is a lot of trees in the image at that location where the corners fall so.... yeah, possible)
Now my question, How do I prevent this in the future? I see four ways to rectify this while on location:
1) Shoot a panorama with the wide angle lens to cover the corner pixels, stitch it together and hope for the best during the perspective corrections.
2) Use a wide angle tilt shift lens (Canon 17mm tilt shift)
3) Get a m4/3 body and a shifting (tilting) adapter (Canon EF-M4/3).
4) Ditch the wide angle from my bag all together, break out the extreme telephoto and shoot the location from the other side of Lake Michigan.
I am in favor of the panorama - it saves me money and weight in the camera bag at the cost of just needing to be careful when shooting the panorama on location.
Any thoughts, other possible solutions, or comments (especially on shooting wide angle panoramas) are appreciated.
-SL
This is mot my area of expertise Skye but as you would know you can avoid distortion with a wide angle lens by shooting from level with the midpoint of your subject. Authorities permitting a drone shot would work if hovering in the right position. I love the shot as it is. Amazing structure!
Geoff, thanks for your input :)
Yeah, that could be a quick fix, but I wanted to go low and keep the composition due to the wonderful reflections on the underside of "the bean".
In all honesty I am considering an EOS M5, Kipon shift adapter and medium format 24mm lens. It is the same sensor tech as in my 77D, so I would probably be comfortable with it. It does provide the advantage of having a ~24mm equiv shift lens, far better than the 28mm equiv if utilizing the 17mm canon Tilt/shift. But that solution would still cost several hundred dollars.
I am really curious about the panorama approach. Does anyone have experience with this?
Yes I agree the lower perspective gives you a great view. Someone els will have some ideas. Maybe you could take separate shots of the verticles on the side and clone them in to the picture.
Yeah, that was the idea with the panorama.
Hi Skye,
If you made a single row pano with about 5 horizontal shots you'd have enough pixels to straighten your image in post. And you'd be able to keep the native 3:2 ratio.
For a crop sensor lenses between 24-35mm seems to work best. All you need is a sturdy tripod, a nodal slide, a way to have a level top plate, easier with a leveling base and a top plate that you can rotate while keeping level.
Overlap your images 30 - 50% and voilà!
Marc
Moving forward you will need to stand back father if you're at 10mm and plan on correcting perspective later. I always leave extra room on the edges of the frame if I'm angling upward for this reason.
Yeah, I wasn't making this consideration when I was shooting. Since then I have come to that realization. Thus the panoramic idea.
I have a couple of thoughts. I like the idea of moving further back and shooting a pano with the longer lens. I have done this. I have also done it from a bit further back with a 24mm tilt shift canon and just shifted the pano sideways... Canon does have a lot of longer TS-E lenses... Or closer and shifting the lens UP to get rid of the distortion though sometimes the buildings still are distorted, just in another way. I have also, and want to do it more... shot stuff like this from my drone. I have an inspire 2. Shot something like this recently with the 50mm lens on the x5. This pano was about 40 exposures. Lightroom HDR Pano function worked well.
Moving back has its issues, primarly you would lose the drymatic perspective that is achived with a wide angle at close distances, additionally the space avaliable to take the shot and get a similar image at a longer focal length just isn't there.
I just started doing panos more seriously this fall and haven't had much time to devote to a variety of places to experiment, but I definitely would move farther back with a longer lens. I use a three-rail system so I can compensate for parallax a variety of distances from objects and take multiple-row arrays (which I learned from Hudson Henry of ON1, who has a really great course about panos). I have also learned to shoot way wider than I think I might need because of all the times I got stuck in the situation of the last two frames. I also tend to take the pano photos in portrait orientation.
A few other ideas: 1) Maybe keep the camera closer to level, which should reduce the lean in the buildings in the background, and just crop out the excess foreground you end up with. 2) Do a multi-row pano so that when the software stitches it together maybe it'll take a hint from the lower row to keep the upper vertical lines straighter. I just took photos of the inside of a local Catholic church, using a 7x3 array. The early attempts with the stitching are working pretty well for the very high sanctuary.