Category Archives: Tips

Exposure Fusion Example + Files

Bishop Forbes Memorial, St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, Dundee 9th April 2022

Panorama at 360Cities.net

I recently was able to take a panorama of St Paul’s Cathedral, Dundee. I am releasing an example Hugin PTO file as well as JPG image files to stitch. This example demonstrates a few techniques that may be of benefit to other panographers.

The example files are made available under the Creative Commons licence without guarantee. They are not full size, and the final version on 360Cities has had some post-processing applied so will be slightly different to the version as produced by the example files.

Example files St Paul’s Cathedral, Dundee (ZIP archive)
Creative Commons Licence
St Pauls Cathedral, Dundee by Daniel K. L. Oi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Some familiarity with the Hugin program is recommended. The Hugin manual and tutorials can be found at Sourceforge. The examples files included in the ZIP archive include the PTO project files and JPG source images (for reasons of file size) that can be stitched to obtain an exposure fused example panorama.

Shoot Details

The shot patten with a Samyang 12mm/2.8 fisheye lens on the Sony A7m3 is 4 shots taken at 90 deg horizontally, zenith, and nadir. The azimuthal shots were angled slightly down (~10 deg) so to reduce the size of the nadir patch. The tripod legs were also brought in to narrow the stance to help reduce the obstructed area. A nadir adapter on the Nodal Ninja 3 Mk III was used to allow the camera to be positioned directly over the shooting position without the tripod in the way for the nadir shot. An additional shot was also taken from a slightly different position in order to cover the shadow of the tripod and camera.

Note: Usually when taking panoramas, the lens should be rotated around the no-parallax point (NPP) that is located at the lens entrance pupil (EP). The NPP is often erroneously referred to as the “nodal point”. The nodal points of a lens are different to the NPP (see Wikipedia article “Panoramic photographers often incorrectly refer to the entrance pupil as a nodal point, which is a different concept”).

Exposure Bracketing

 

The camera was set to ISO100, image stabilisation off, and a remote shutter release used.  Due to the bright stained glass windows, I bracketed exposure -2,0,+2EV. However, I did not need the +2EV shots so only imported the -2EV and 0EV shots. I have placed the shots into stacks.  The last 2 shots are the ones to patch the camera and tripod shadow.

Autoexposure and raw processing

Capture One 22 Express (For Sony)

Received wisdom is that panoramas have to be taken using fixed manual exposure settings, else the panorama won’t blend properly. This may have been the case 10 years ago but modern software can easily cope with photometric optimisation and compensation of varying exposures throughout a panorama. Exposing each segment of the panosphere optimally will give better image quality overall, in fact. It can save time and effort using autoexposure in cases where the intra-scene contrast is smaller than the inter-scene contrast (in different directions/shots). This can be combined with bracketing if single-shot contrast is excessive.

When processing the raw files, it is recommended that the same white balance be applied to all shots, though there are some circumstances and specialised techniques where different white balances can be used. But normally, the same white balance for all shots will usually result in better blended output.

Shooting raw also has the benefit of extracting the most exposure latitude from each shot. For these shots, I have used the maximum amount of highlight recovery and this has allowed the detail in the windows to be retained in the -2EV shots. Correction of chromatic aberration, purple fringing, and lens fall-off has also been applied at the raw development stage.

Control Point Placement

The placement of control points is at the seams between overlapping images. There is no need to have control points outside of these, the blending process just needs that the features match along the seam lines.

Nadir Shot

Taking a separate nadir shot to add to the panorama takes only a few extra moments, but can lead to more professional looking and immersive results. A nadir adapter simplifies matters but even without, it is straightforward to cant the camera directly over the spot where the tripod was located for the other shots and take an image of the ground. It is best to try to match the height of the camera to the other shots but in many cases, slight differences in height won’t be a problem for flat ground. If there is the possibility of parallax, then it is crucial to try to maintain entrance pupil position.

The nadir is connected to the azimuthal shots by 2 control points each. Using a narrowed tripod leg spread, the area of the nadir that needs to be patched can be minimised.

The nadir shot is masked out to eliminate the legs and define a small region to be inserted into the rest of the pano. Here, tripod leg shadows had to be excluded. Due to the position of the spot lights, it was difficult to place the tripod in a way that avoided them entirely.

In Hugin, the nadir shot is given its own lens so that the geometry can be optimised separately.  , hence reducing the amount of geometric distortion that may be induced in the nadir shot to match the placement of the rest of the panorama.

Tripod Shadow Patch Shot

There was a particularly strong shadow  of the tripod and camera that would need to be edited out in post-processing. Masks were used to exclude the shadows from the panorama.

 

 

A separate shot was taken with the camera and tripod moved about half a metre so that a clear shot of the ground without shadow could be taken. This shot is inserted to cover the shadowed area. Only a small section of the image is required, hence can be mapped quite effectively despite the large displacement of the entrance pupil. For longer shadows, a patching image may need to be imported multiple times and parts of it mapped into the panorama separately.

Final Output

Hugin can produce an exposure fused panorama which combined highlight and shadow detail in a natural looking way. The nadir and shadow patches will reduce the amount of postprocessing required. There are a few residual faint shadows due to other lights in the scene but these are very easily dealt with in Photoshop or other image processing programmes.

There are alternate methods of handling high contrast scenes, such as High Dynamic Range imaging and Tone-Mapping. Exposure fusion (e.g. using enfuse) is often simpler. Here, the inbuilt exposure fusion method was used, but more control over the final result can be achieved by exporting each exposure plane separately and using the command line options in enfuse.

Simple Hugin Example with “Wrong Technique”

Sunset over St Andrews Harbour, Scotland. Equirectangular projection 360 deg x 180 deg. Sony A7m3 + Samyang 12mm/2.8 Fisheye, Nodal Ninja 3 Mk III, Capture One, Hugin, and Picture Windows Pro. This is the final stitch without adjustments. Further post-processing steps may include exposures curves, sharpening, saturation adjustment, and eliminating dust spots in the sky.

Source Images & Hugin project file (17MB zip)

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Here is an example of a simple 360 deg panorama in Hugin that shows that good results can be obtained using “wrong” techniques. Specifically, you can use autoexposure, even for highly contrasty scenes that normally would required bracketed exposures and HDR+Tonemapping.

For post-processing, you can crank up the highlight and shadow recovery and individually tweak each frame for exposure. It is not necessary to shoot with manual exposure with each frame with the same exposure settings, nor process them identically.

Additionally, you do not need very much overlap between frames in many cases, only a few control points can do, and they only need to be placed along the seam lines.  A few manually well placed control points can quickly give a good stitch.

This example also shows some other things that you may need to watch out for. You should clean your lens and sensor. I’ve not been able to do much photography lately so my equipment has not been maintained as well as they should have been. My lens also needs to be adjusted as the plane of focus is slightly skewed and it does not reach infinity focus. This is slightly masked by the depth of field at f/8 but can still be detected in the full sized source imagery.

I have provided downsized source images and a Hugin project file if you want to have a look at how it was assembled. I only spent a few minutes putting it together so I’m sure it could be further optimised. The final full sized and processed panorama can be seen at 360Cities. I adjusted the exposure curve, sharpened the image, tweaked saturation, and repaired the dust spots in the sky.

First Shot. I set up my tripod with a Nodal Ninja 3 Mk III. The rotation axes of the panohead is aligned with the no-parallax-point of the lens (it’s not called the “Nodal Point”!). I tilt down to minimise the Nadir hole, bringing in the tripod legs slightly also helps reduce the size of the Nadir patch. I oriented the first shot to capture some bystanders, making sure that they were towards the centre of the frame (don’t want to have anyone cut in half). I also made sure to centre the brightest spot in the sky as I will be patching it with a lower exposure shot. The camera was set to its lowest native sensitivity (ISO100 in this case) and I used autoexposure. The lens is manual focus and manual aperture so the camera controls the shutter speed automatically. I set the lens to be at f/8 and the focus was placed at an approximate “hyperfocal” distance. I used a remote shutter release to minimise vibration. I recorded full uncompressed raw files for later processing.
Second Shot. I rotates the camera by 90 deg using the click-stop rotator on the panohead. For simple scenes, where there are no moving objects, the amount of overlap between frames can be minimal. Here, there is only 10 to 15 deg overlap between the horizontally rotated shots. In more complex scenes, where the could be moving people, cars etc., it may be necessary to take shots in many more different directions in order to produce a stitch with not objects cut in half.
Third Shot. I had also set up the shot so that the main object in the scene (this rowboat) was captured in one frame. This minimises the possibility of any stitching errors occurring on this object. Though the panohead has been aligned to the no-parallax-point, slight shifts due to uneven ground, movement of the tripod as it is rotated, etc., could introduce parallax errors especially with close-up objects. Centering such potential problem areas reduces the possibility of parallax errors happening.
Fourth Shot. We see a small amount of overexposured sky on the right. Hopefully this area will be covered by the extra shot that is exposed for the sky highlights. A belt-and-braces approach would be to take extra shots on either side of the brightest sky areas. This was done but I have omitted this from the example as it is not strictly necessary to illustrate the points.
Extra Shot. This shot was taken by pointing the camera directly at the brightest part of the sky and allowing the autoexposure to control the shutter speed and capture the highlights. Alternatively, the other shots could have been bracketed, e.g. +/-3EV and a conventional HDR+Tonemapping process applied. Here, we show that a much faster and simpler process can produce acceptable results without the extra shots and processing. The wide latitude of modern cameras reduces the need for bracketing and raw processors are very good at extracting highlight and shadow detail.
Zenith Shot. This is taken pointed straight up. In order to position it in the final panorama, I have included a few features in the corners than can be used to locate it via control points. As there are no important features in the sky, it is not important to precisely align it with the other images, hence it could be manually positioned in a pinch.
Nadir Shot. I have a Nadir Adapter on the Nodal Ninja 3 Mk III panohead that allows the taking of the straight down shot very easily. It also provides extra vertical rail height to allow the A7m3+12mm/2.8 combo to rotate to Zenith easily.
Masking Source Images. The tripod and corners are masked off first. The corners often suffer darkening due to vignetting, masking them off can improve photometric optimisation and matching. The overexposed sunset sky is also masked off and will be replaced by a separate shot that is exposed for the sky. This was taken by just pointing the camera straight at the brightest point in the scene and allowing the autoexposure to set the shutter speed to capture the highlights. The Zenith and Nadir images are also given a circular crop.
Adding Control Points. Only a few control points (CPs) are required to get a good stitch if the rotation axis is well aligned with the entrance pupil aka no-parallax-point (NPP). Some of the images pairs have 4 CPs, some only 2, and a few have more. It is only necessary to place the CPs long the likely seam lines of the final stitch. Placing CPs away from the seams means that alignment is compromised in the regions where alignment errors are actually visible. A few well chosen CPs will give better results than heaps of widely spread CPs that may have mismatched features. NB: The NPP is often erroneously called the “Nodal Point” but the entrance pupil does not in fact correspond to any of the (several) nodal points of a lens (look them up on Wikipedia). It’s like calling the steering wheel a “tyre”, they are both round and are parts of a car, but they are not the same thing.
Preview Window. This is how the aligned images are placed, green crosses show the location of the control points. The small exposure differences will be eliminated during the stitching and blending process. The panorama is exported at a reduced exposure so that the highlights are not blown out. Exposure range compression can be used to bring back shadow detail. Curves adjustment in post-processing can then equalise the exposure to obtain a pleasing image.

London Calling

I had the opportunity to visit London and managed to find some time to shoot some panoramas. The weather wasn’t ideal with scattered showers and cloudy skies but the rain managed to hold off for the time I had available. In the lead up to Christmas, festivities were in full swing so Christmas lights, trees, and markets would provide colourful subjects.

Piccadilly Circus

Piccadilly Circus at Dusk. This is a popular area for panoramas. The residual wet sheen gives some interesting reflections. It was very busy so I had to take many shots to try to get frames that would stitch together without too many mismatched seams. The high contrast in the scene means that bracketing is required to capture the highlights.

Irving Street

Irving St, off Leicester Square, Luckily the foot traffic wasn’t too heavy so I could set up my tripod without being in the way. The dynamic range of the A7m3 is sufficient to be able to cope with the contrast in this scene without bracketing.

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square. It was a challenge to find a spot where there were no strong shadows to complicate the stitch. I chose a spot directly under one of the lamps. Some bracketing could have been useful to deal with the extreme contrast between the lit stalls and the rest of the night scene. Focus bracketing could also have been used to make the lamp post sharper.
Centre of Trafalgar Square. I’ve tried to balance the Christmas tree and Nelson’s Column. Luckily the plaque in the centre was at just the right position.

London Eye

London Eye. This is a retaken pano of a previous one taken many years ago. This was a straightforward shoot, 4+1+1 and no bracketing. The latitude of the A7m3 was impressive.

Waterloo Place

Waterloo Place off Pall Mall. Another straightforward pano shoot. Main issue was shadows cast by spotlights on the corner buildings. These were removed in Photoshop.

Covent Garden

St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. St Paul’s is also known as the “Actor’s Church”. Some flare spots due to the bright lights were removed in Photoshop prior to stitching.

Shooting Details

I use a Sony A7m3 “fullframe mirrorless” camera. Previously I used a Sony A5100 with an APS-C sized sensor. They both have 24 megapixels but the A7m3 has considerably better dynamic range and high ISO performance.

I use the Samyang 12mm/2.8 Fisheye lens. This is a “fullframe fisheye” lens, “fullframe” refers to the fact that the image circles covers the entire sensor. Previously I used the Samyang 8mm/2.8 Fisheye lens that is a “fullframe fisheye” on the A5100 APS-C camera. The 12mm/2.8 has better flare resistance that is noticeable on night scenes.

I use the Nodal Ninja 3 Mk III panohead with Rotator Mini and Nadir Adapter. I upgraded from the Nodal Ninja 3 Mk I/II hybrid that had served me well shooting the Konica-Minolta 7D, Sony A700, A580, A77, NEX-7, and A5100 with a Peleng 8mm, Sigma 10mm, Samyang 8mm/3.5, and Samyang 8mm/2.8 over the years. The new panohead fits my upgraded rig a bit better and the Nadir Adapter is a time saver. I use a Benro C-169M8 Travel Tripod with a Manfrotto 496 ballhead.

Processing Details

The raw files were imported in Capture One 20 Express (for Sony). I selected the frames that would be assembled. There were many spare frames since I would shoot extra shots to capture moving objects (people, cars etc,), high contrast scenes (usually base exposure and -2EV), and to fill in shadows.

Capture One 20 Express for Sony

The selected frames were then adjusted in a batch. First thing is to apply the same white balance setting. Shots taken at night under a variety of mixed lighting can be challenging to get the white balance “right”. Usually, I try to balance the colour temperatures throughout the scene, taking care with the green-magenta shifts that can occur with fluorescent and LED lights. Other common settings include chromatic aberration correction, black level point, sharpness fall-off, and clarity.

Each frame is then adjusted for exposure, It is critical to preserve the highlights, this is done by a combination of highlight recovery and overall exposure. Some shadow recovery can be used to prevent the darker areas being crushed to black but there is no need to fully recover shadows at this stage.

I usually leave the saturation and contrast untouched. These can be adjusted after stitching. Occasionally, I may need to reduce the contrast of the nadir shot so that it blends in with the edges of the other shots.

The adjusted raw files are now exported as 16-bit TIFFs in Adobe RGB colour profile. These are then imported into Hugin for assembly and stitching. There are other good programs for creating panoramas including PTGUI but Hugin has the advantage of being free. Hugin is also quite powerful, allowing detailed control of the alignment and exposure optimisation process. For a more automated solution, PTGUI is probably a better choice.

Masking the source images to remove the tripod and panohead as well as deal with moving objects in the frame.

After the images have been imported into Hugin, the first step is to mask the images to remove the panoramic head and tripod that may intrude into the edges of the frame. The Zenith and Nadir are also cropped to circular regions. It is useful to define the focal length and projection type of the lens, 13.1mm and full-frame fisheye are used for the Samyang 12mm/2.8 Fisheye. I assign the same lens to the horizontal frames and separates ones to each of the Zenith and Nadir. The Nadir in particular will need to be optimised differently to the other frames in order to compensate for the likely shift in position.

Adding control points (CPs) between pairs of overlapping images. It is only necessary to place CPS along the middle of the region of overlap.

Next step is to add control points (CPs) between overlapping frames. There are automatic methods but I prefer to manually add points. I find that I spend more time fixing automatically generated CPs than if I had added them manually. I start off by connecting the horizontal frames. To get a good stitch, all that is needed is that the frames match along a seam line, generally placed along the middle of the overlap region. Hence, I only add CPs along a line that stretches from the top to the bottom of the overlap. For the Nadir, I add 2 to 3 CPs per overlap with the horizontal frames. Extreme distortion parameters will usually need to be used to get it to match up with the rest of the pano.

After the CPs have been added, then the position optimisation process than begin. I start with optimising just the position. Next I optimise position, angle of view, and barrel. Finally, I optimise all parameters except translation. Throughout, I check for any CPs that have large errors as this might indicate that they may be incorrectly placed. I either correct the placement or delete them if there are sufficiently many other CPs.

Images are optimised for position and lens geometry. Brightness differences remain but will be dealt with in the next stage.

Hopefully, after several rounds of optimisation and tweaking of the CPs, the errors will be small (maximum of a few pixels in a 14Kx7K pano) and visually the pano looks aligned with no obvious errors in the preview window. Additional masks may be added to remove moving objects or else control what elements from each frame end contribute to the final pano.

Brightness across frames has been optimised to reduce differences. The zenith does not quite match the other frames since the sky had become much darker over the course of shooting. It still blends in quite well.

The next stage is photometric optimisation. For many years now, panoramic software have been able to cope with source photos shot at difference exposure values and stitch them together in a seamless manner. This allows a more flexible and arguably optimum manner to capture the initial source photos [1]. I will use autoexposure to create a base layer together with bracketing of selected frames to capture blown highlights. In the exposure optimisation stage, Hugin can exposure match all the frames in a near seamless way. I can then export the full pano at various brightnesses which have shadow, mid, and highlight detail separately. These are then combined using Enfuse to produce a single pano that incorporates the detail in both shadows and highlights in a process called exposure fusion.

(Top-Bottom) Over, mid, under-exposed panorama, final exposure fused image.

The exported pano (exposure fused if necessary) from Hugin in equirectangular formal is then post-processed. I use Picture Windows Pro 7 as my main image editor [2], with Photoshop 6 for cases where I need to do spot removal or extensive cloning. First step is to adjust the contrast using curves. I’ll first bring up the shadows as these will be a bit dark as I try to protect the highlights in the previous steps. Then I’ll apply an S-curve to boost mid-range contrast and compress the highlights. The preserved highlights can look unnaturally dark so I’ll bring them up near the top of the histogram without blowing them out.

Curves Adjustment

Sharpening of the image is very important. I’ll perform a large radius unsharp mask, coarse sharpen, and a fine sharpen. The sharpening process utilises pixels in a region hence problems can occur at the +/-180 degree boundary of the equirectangular image. To avoid a visible seam arising from such non-global adjustments, I’ll create a pano 720 degrees (or 1080 degrees) wide before apply the filters. Then I’ll crop out a central 360 degree section to get back to a regular equirectangular projection.

Duplicating the image across the +/-180 degree boundary prevents any seams from being visible due to adjustments such as large radius sharpening (local contrast enhancement).

Final colour adjustment is applied, both selective and global saturation. Any touch up (spots, shadows, or minor stitching errors) are then performed in Photoshop. I produce both a final TIFF and a JPG that is in sRGB for export to the web.

Final image cropped back to 360×180 equirectangular. This is a different version from the panorama at the beginning of the post, I have brightened this one more.

Footnotes

[1] Instead of using the same exposure value for all source frames, you can expose each shot optimally. For example, a scene may have 20 stops of contrast between one direction and the opposite, e.g. sun and shadow. The traditional method would be to use manual exposure and bracket, e.g. -6, -3, 0, +3, +6EV and use the camera DR to capture the ends of the contrast range. The +6EV shot would cover the shadow and the +6EV shot would cover the highlight. But this method is wasteful since usually the contrast in a single shot is less than the full bracket range. Often only a single shot in that direction is required, or else a second bracketed shot will cover the remaining fraction of high contrast cases. Instead of 30 shots (4+1+1 shoot pattern times 5 bracketed shots), it is usually possible to only use 7 or 8 shots in total. The final result is as good as the fully bracketed version but with a considerable reduction in shooting time, this can be significant in low light conditions but can also be a major factor in situations where there are moving objects and/or changing lighting conditions.

[2] Picture Windows Pro 7 is now free. A newer version has been developed by version 7 is still a very useful image editing program. The paradigm is different to that of Photoshop so at first glance it may look to be fairly crude. But it is small, quick, and easy to use for many routine image adjustment tasks.

[3] I have no commercial relationship with any companies or their products mentioned in this post, other than being a satisfied customer of some of them.

The importance of exposure and colour balance

The recent viral photo of a dress of controversial colour demonstrates that the perception of colour is a complex psychovisual phenomenon that involves not just the physical electrical impulses produced by the light receptors in the retina but also interpretation by the brain based on context and expectation. It also underscores the importance of getting your exposure and whitebalance correct.

Philosophers have used colour in debates about the notion of “qualia“, or the “the ways things seem to us“. From a photographic perspective, we can understand how a dress which under normal lighting looks to be royal blue with black lace can look in the photo to many people as being white with gold lace. There are two issues with the disputed photo that contribute to the confusion, it is badly exposed and the auto white balance is extreme.

I assume that the photo was taken by a phone and that the autoexposure was fooled by the darkness of the dress. The photo was consequently overexposed leading the royal blue parts of the dress being rendered a much lighter shade of blue. The dark lace parts of the dress are also brightened and now longer looks black.

The second issue is that the camera then tries to colour correct the image by setting a white balance. It misinterprets the scene as being taken under high colour temperatures, e.g. at dusk with the illumination of a clear blue sky. To compensate, it changes the colours in the scene, effectively trying to make the blue dress look more white as it assumes that this is “actual” colour of the dress. To bring blue closer to white, the camera adds yellow to the scene (you can tell from the yellow colour cast to the background). The dark lace of the dress, already made a lighter shade by the overexposure, is now given this yellow colour cast which can be interpreted as being a golden colour, especially in the context of the rest of the dress which is rendered as palish blue.

These two effects combine with the way the brain tries to work out what the colour of objects are from visual stimuli. Since our vision has to operate under many different types of lighting, what we perceive as colour of an object is not actually the actual colour cone responses, but what our brain retrodicts based on our assumptions about the lighting. An apple under noon day lighting will look different compared with viewing at dusk, but we don’t usually say that the apple has changed colour because our brain will take the different lighting conditions into account and interpret that the apple is the same colour. The case of the dress is simply a case of the camera being fooled together with the way our vision system operates.

Tripod Technique

Previously, I discussed selecting a tripod and head. A tripod opens up a whole new vista of photographic possibilities but to make the most of the stability of a tripod, proper technique is needed.

Stability and Mounting

The first consideration is making sure you’re not overloading your tripod legs and head. The heavier your equipment and the narrower the angle of view (more zoom), the more sensitive will the final picture be to residual vibrations and external forces such as wind. I seldom shoot at focal lengths greater than 200mm so my tripod needs are comparatively simple. If you have 300mm or longer zooms, a large sturdy tripod with a gimbal mount is recommended.

If your tripod does not have a quick release, you’ll be screwing your camera directly onto the mounting plate of the tripod head. One thing to watch out for is that if you take a photo in portrait format, the camera can twist and unscrew itself. You may find this happening if you tilt the camera to the left (so that the handgrip is to the top). By rotating the camera so that the handgrip is to the bottom, then the torque of a heavy lens will tighten the mounting screw instead and preventing further rotation.

If you find yourself having to mount and dismount your camera from the tripod repeatedly, a quick release plate might be a good investment. It’s increasing rare to find tripod heads without them in any case. The de facto standard mounting solution is the Arca-Swiss plate which has a dovetail and a matching clamp. Do note that some variation exists between nominally compatible plates and mounts from different manufacturers. There are many other types of quick-release mechanisms to suit cameras of different sizes and applications.

You should avoid raising the centre column of the tripod if possible as this makes the whole system more flexible. For the same reasons, you should spread the tripod legs out to give a wide base.

 Shutter Release

The main priority of using a tripod is stability, whether for long exposures, or simply to get rid of hand shake. To reduce the possibility of introducing vibration when activating the camera, you can use a remote shutter release. The traditional mechanical remote release is a plunger attached to a sheath and cable screwed into the shutter. This was superseded by electronic wired remotes which allowed functions such as an intervalometer and times long exposures (minutes to hours). Wireless remotes (usually IR) are becoming popular nowadays. Any of these will prevent extraneous vibration due to touching the camera when starting the exposure.

If you find yourself without a remote release, your camera may have a shutter delay function, usually 2 or 10 seconds. The 10 second delay is to allow you to get into the shot, the 2 second delay is so that after pressing the shutter release, the camera and tripod has time to settle before the actual exposure. If you do not need to trigger the shutter at an exact time, then a 2 second delay can often work as well as a remote release.

Even if you use a remote release or camera timer, there are other sources of vibration that could impact upon sharpness. In an SLR, the mirror has to be raised out of the beam path before the shutter activates. This raising of the mirror can lead to vibrations. Some DLRs have a mirror-lockup function that allows the vibrations due to the mirror being raised to dampen. It is often combined with the 2s timer delay. “Mirror-slap” will usually have greatest effect at an low to intermediate shutter speed, a critical range of exposures where mirror-lockup gives greatest benefit.

Even on non-SLR cameras, the shutter actuation can cause vibration. The opening of the front-curtain can cause blur. Some cameras have “electronic first curtain” (EFC) where the physical first shutter curtain is replaced by an electronic means of starting the exposure. This eliminates any vibration at the start of the exposure.

Miscellaneous

Sometimes the ground itself can vibrate, e.g. bridges. In this situation, it will be difficult to achieve sharp results during long exposures. You may want to time your exposures in between passing cars or pedestrians. On some surfaces, the distortion caused by your own shifting weight can cause the tripod to move during long exposures.

One thing to watch out for is image stabilization, either lens or camera based. Some image stabilization systems do have modes specifically for tripod use but often you’ll get better results if stabilization is switched off when mounted on a tripod.

Getting it right in the head

DSC04946
Long exposure of Singapore skyline

In my last post, I spoke of the importance of getting a good tripod. Many people skimp  on their tripod and consequently do not get the best use out of them. Most importantly, a light and compact tripod will be more likely to be on hand when you need it. It’s a case of any tripod is better than none.

I mentioned another oft neglected item and that was the tripod head. It connects the camera to the legs and should be sufficiently adjustable yet still rigid. One thing to remember is that the load ratings of heads are to be taken with a very large grain of salt. There is no standardised way of specifying the acceptable load that a head can handle. It is actually the torque that a camera+lens exerts on a head that most needs to be resisted.

DSC00933
PHD-41Q pan and tilt head. The horizontal arm controls the roll, the other controls both pan and tilt. Built-in spirit levels keep everything straight. A large quick release plate completes the package.

There are two main types of head, pan and tilt heads (panheads) and ballheads. Panheads have two or three separate axes of adjustment, pan, tilt, and roll (video panheads will omit the last). There will usually be three different knobs or handles, one to control each movement. Sophisticated versions will have geared mechanisms allowing fine adjustment of each axis. In contrast, a ballhead will use a single locking mechanism to control the motion of a ball and socket joint allowing all three axes to be adjusted simultaneously. A separate pan  movement is also usually added to the base of the ballhead. The advantages of a ballhead is that it is often much quicker to adjust. They are often smaller than a comparably rated panhead.

DSC00927
Centre: Benro B-0 + QR plate and 1/4″-3/8″ screw adapter. Clockwise from top left: Novoflex Ball 30, Manfrotto 494, FLM CB-24, Gitzo G075.

For panoramic use, the footprint of the head becomes crucial. Looking down from the viewpoint of the camera rotating around the no-parallax-point, often you’ll have the baseplate and various knobs taking up valuable area in the nadir region. It can be tricky to find the right ballhead which minimizes the nadir hole. My current favourites are the Novoflex Ball 30, FLM CB-24, and Manfrotto 494 (with the friction knob removed). The 494 allows the locking knob to be adjusted so that it can point down in the locked position, useful for reducing the nadir footprint. The same can be achieved on the Ball 30 by unscrewing the knob and reattaching it in the right position.

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FLM CB38FT with Power Quick Release. This uses very small quick release plates on the camera

To reduce my equipment load, I have dispensed with quick release (QR) plates. These simply add bulk, especially if I need to attach the camera to both the panohead or the tripod ballhead so requiring extra plates and locking mechanisms. I find it takes little time to screw on the camera or panohead. Unfortunately, it is increasingly difficult to find higher end heads without a quick release system. It may be a fashion trend since having Arca-Swiss plates on everything looks “more professional”.

A good ballhead will be secure when locked down. It should be rigid so that vibration is minimised. For large and heavy lenses, these should be mounted to the head rather than the camera. For the extreme telephoto lenses, a gimbal mount may be warranted. These place the rotation point near the centre of gravity of the camera lens, reducing the torque and giving a more stable platform.

Note that there are two commonly used screw sizes used to attach tripods, heads, and cameras. These are 1/4″ and 3/8″ screw sizes. Most camera tripod sockets will be 1/4″, but tripod screws can be either. You can get adapters between the two screw sizes, it is usually not a problem to adapt a 1/4″ male screw to a 3/8″ female socket, but the reverse adapter is quite bulky.

In Praise of Tripods

A tripod is essential for photographs like these. RX100M2 and the crappiest tripod, as stable as a Jenga tower. But I was still able to get the shot with a bit of care.
A tripod is essential for photographs like these. Shot with a RX100M2 and the crappiest tripod, as stable as a Jenga tower. But with care I was still able to get the shot.

They are the most under-appreciated component of your kit. You may pay hundreds or thousands of pounds to get the latest high resolution camera or lens, but the simplest and most cost-effective way of obtaining the sharpest photos is to get a good tripod and use it.

First of all, bring a tripod with you if you can. Obviously, a tripod is useless for street photography but for many other activities, a tripod becomes practical. For some types of shot, such as night photography (left), it is essential.

Get the best you can afford. There is no perfect tripod, but there are plenty of terrible ones. A tripod needs to be sufficient for the equipment you are going to mount upon it. It also needs to be light and compact enough so that you will take it with you. Unfortunately, this usually means that the third variable, cost, is the one to suffer. But the old adage, “buy cheap, buy twice”, applies especially to tripods.

Depending on what you shoot, you may require several tripods. I have a large sturdy tripod which never leaves the building where my office is. I use it for product shots, groups, and self-portraits. For general travel, I have a Benro C-169M8 Travel Angel carbon fibre tripod similar to this. It is for me the right balance of compactness (39cm folded), lightness (1.3kg), and sturdiness (8kg max. load) for doing panoramas and long-exposure photography. If I need an even more compact tripod, I have a Sirui T-1205x tripod which shaves a few hundred grams and a few centimetres in length. I also bought a Benro Traveller Flat C1190T as I was intrigued by the way it folded flat. It occasionally gets used when I have to pack it in a tight space where a conventional tripod would be too thick.

Attack of the Tripods
L-R: Sirui T-1205X, Manfrotto 444, Gitzo G1028MkII

I still have and use a Gitzo G1028MkII Mountaineer tripod which I bought about a decade ago. Compared to more recent tripods, it’s still very light and packs down with the centre column reversed (without having to bend the legs 180 degrees). The rotating leg locks are a bit fiddly and it’s not quite as sturdy as the Benro and Sirui tripods but with care it can still provide sharp panos. If I had the budget, I’d look at getting a GK1580TQR5.

If carbon fibre is beyond your budget, another option for a compact but still acceptably sturdy tripod is Velbon. Their Ultra Luxi or Rexi range pack down quite nicely and have a quick leg un/locking mechanism. The Luxi comes in L and M sizes, I found the M to be reasonably high. The Ultra Maxi tripods unfortunately do not allow you to swap the head restricting you to the included panhead. The Rexi comes without a head, whilst the Luxi panhead can be replaced, something I advise if you want a more compact setup, the standard one is quite large and heavy.

My tripod selection is skewed towards wide angle and shot teleprime lens use. If you use longer, heavier lenses, then you may need to look at large and heavier tripods to get the required stability. One has to also remember an equally important part of your tripod and that is the head. I’ll address that in a later post. I shall also cover tripod technique.

So you’re shooting your first wedding…

If you’re serious about photography and your friends and family consider you handy with a camera, at some point you’ll be asked, “Can you shoot our wedding?” Here’s my point of view, having been in this situation as a relative/friend with a camera way too often.

First point of advice: Run away! You get the occasional cowboy but your working professional wedding photographer actually earns their keep and I have the utmost respect for what they do day-in, day-out. It’s not just about having expensive cameras, even more expensive lenses, or fancy software, what you should be getting when hiring a pro is years of experience handling a high pressure situation and getting the shots when it matters. You don’t get many second chances at weddings and considering how important the photos are to how it will be remembered, the couple should think carefully of not ascribing the appropriate budget to photography, especially considering the total cost of the wedding.

If possible, convince them to hire a professional photographer, one with experience and with a good track record, especially in being able to produce photos in the style preferred by the bride and groom. Just as a marriage requires matching the right people, it is important to get a photographer who will be appropriate for the occasion. The primary photographer should be responsible for the “money shots”, the ones which are the bread and butter of any photo album. Have the couple draw up a list of shots which they would like, especially the group photos which can be endless in their permutational possibilities. Having a trusted friend of the couple (usually the Best Man) handle the logistics of the group shots is one way of reducing your workload to simply taking care of the photos instead of herd management. The last thing you want to have to worry about is where is Aunt Murtle or nephew Johnny? It’s easier if there is someone familiar with friends and family who can go chasing up on errant guests.

Try to enjoy yourself and let the primary shooter get the primary shots, you do what you can to fill in the gaps. If I can get out of being the primary photog for friends, I usually end up doing street photo/candid shots to give a more informal behind the scenes sort of document to the day. When you don’t have the pressure of being first shooter, you can try for the more artistic or risky shots, most of them will fail but you could end up capturing their favourite shot of the day. This may require getting in close to the other guests, or hang back and observing. It depends on the situation and you have to be adaptable. I find that a wide angle lens and being in the thick of the action is a good way of getting fun and intimate shots.

Even as second shooter, I usually have two bodies to reduce lens swapping. One with a 70-200mm telephoto zoom, the other with a 16-50mm standard zoom. I’ll also have a 35mm/1.8 and 50mm/1.4 large aperture primes for low light situations. It is important to anticipate what camera/lens is required at any given moment and to have it ready. For the official ceremony, you should have a good idea of the sequence of events and what shots are needed. Rehearse following the bride down the aisle and the route when leaving the ceremony. Scout the areas where you will do the formal portraits and groups shots. During the more relaxed and informal moments, you have to keep a good lookout for photo opportunities. Kids are invariably cute, especially all dressed up for the occasion.

Preparation will make things run a lot smoother. Planning the day, where you have to be and when, what equipment is needed for which shots, and even the little things like where to park and how to get all your stuff safely to where it needs to be. A checklist can help prevent you forgetting vital tasks.

It is tempting to use your camera as a machine gun, shooting anything that moves. Afterwards you’ll regret having to go through thousands of images. Certainly take those extra safety shots for the ones which matter (groups shots, formals, portraits), but you should try to be selective about the other shots, making sure that each frame counts. It’ll reduce the amount of backing up, editing, and processing you’ll need to do. There’s no harm in keeping shots varied, just don’t get too focussed on repeated shots of the same subject.

Post wedding, you will need to sort, edit and produce a contact sheet for the couple to have a look at. Even at this stage, you should be ruthless in pruning extraneous shots. Couples always have a tendency of wanting even more shots, magnifying your workload. Particularly if you are doing a wedding as a favour or for reduced rates, you want to restrict the amount of unnecessary effort you have to expend. You need to be strict in the number of agreed final photos to deliver. The final output will determine the degree of post-processing required. A set of 6″x4″ prints to put into an album will require only cursory white-balance, levels and curves. Large portrait prints may require a visit to Photoshop to get rid of blemishes, sweat stains (not a task I relish, especially having to manually touch up a hundred or so photos), to smooth skin,  and generally make each shot look its best.

Samyang 8mm/2.8 on the NEX-7

CornerFix requires a reference shot in order to calculate a lens profile. This should be an shot of an evenly lit neutral surface. For a fisheye lens, this proves problematic as you cannot simply point it at a neutral grey card or white wall. I set up two flashes either side of the camera. I held up a white diffusion sheet so that it wrapped around the lens and gave full coverage over the angle of view (180 degrees diagonal). I then took several shots making sure that the image was not overexposed (no clipping).

Magenta lens cast in the corners due to oblique rays causing non-uniform response

CornerFix is able to compensate for the non-uniform response and reduce the colour casts

I just received my copy of the Samyang 8mm/2.8 fisheye in native NEX mount. I’ve tried it on the NEX-7 and have some very preliminary remarks. First the good news, it’s sharp, light, compact, pretty well made, and matches the form factor of the NEX-7 quite well. The only downside so far is the interaction of the lens with the sensor leading to magenta corners.

This lens colour cast is due to the way that off axis light rays interact with the filter stack on top of the sensor and the pixels themselves. The different coloured sites in the Bayer array are affected differently leading to colour casts. This can be a problem with certain lens designs where the exit pupil is situated close to the sensor (non-telecentricity).

To fix this, you can use CornerFix, a program which takes DNG files and applies a rescaling to the data to compensate for the lens colour cast. One has to first create a reference file from which the compensation can be calculated, not exactly straight forward for a 180 degree diagonal fisheye. I have made such a correction profile and people can download the file (you may need to right mouse click and choose “save link as”, or similar). The lens was set at f/5.6 but the profile should work more or less at other apertures. The correction isn’t perfect, but for most photographic scenery it corrects the majority of the colour cast, as well as the vignetting (which can be adjusted).