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The “Panorama Machine”
29th December 2010
Panoramas Made Easy
Last week Fedex dropped off a small package with another high tech gadget. The shiny box contained a panorama base – a device for easily capturing photographic panoramas.
Let’s back up to last October when I met Howard Chen at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York. An attractive photo in front of his booth caught my attention. He proceeded to show me how the e-Filming PS-30B Digital Drive Panorama Base automates the making of panorama photographs with popular DSLR cameras: mount the camera on the base, press a few buttons on the control panel and press the start button. A few seconds later and you’ve captured a set of high resolution images ready to be combined (stitched together).
I’m guessing that all of you have had the jaw-dropping experience of viewing various panorama photographs. For those of you who may not be familiar in how they are created, let me take a few minutes to explain the process.
When you shoot a still photo, the size of the view is pre-determined by the focal length of the camera’s lens*. For example, a 50mm lens has a 39-degree horizontal angle of view and 27-degree vertical angle of view.
To include more of a scene, you can use a wider angle lens. A 28mm lens has a wider 65-degree horizontal angle of view and a wider 46-degree vertical angle of view. If your pocketbook doesn’t allow you to buy a wider angle lens than this, then to include an even wider view, you can shoot two photographs. Between shots, you carefully move the camera sideways to include more of the scene. Afterwards, you assemble the two separate photographs side-by-side to provide a 130-degree angle of view. This is a simple two-frame panorama. * based on a standard 35mm film format. |
Most panoramas are assembled from more than two photographs. The challenge for the photographer is to carefully shoot the separate photographs so that they provide perfect horizontal alignment and sufficient image overlap.
The PS-30B panorama base automates these mechanical details. When mounted on the tripod, the motorized drive rotates the camera equipment an exacting number of degrees while maintaining the horizontal alignment.
For the following panorama, I am using a 35mm lens on an APS-C size camera and mounted vertically. From the table below, I determine the angle of view is 37° for full-frame camera. Divide by a factor of 1.5 for the APS-C size frame, gives us a 24° angle of view. To insure sufficient overlap we decrease the rotation by 25%, yielding an 18° rotation.
I press the remote start and the panorama base releases the shutter and then rotates 18-degrees, pauses and releases the shutter again. It repeats this seven additional times to capture the nine individual frames below: |
Using the included Cool Stitch software, I assemble this panorama from the nine separate images. The software is a cinch to use when the exposures are similar and the images overlap sufficiently. |
The size of the completed panorama 14148 by 3776 pixels with a huge 41MB size and has excellent sharpness. The original panorama is reduced in size here to fit in the article. For those of you who are curious to examine the quality and resolution of this panorama, click here to download the original.
Together, the camera, panorama base and bracket weigh about ten pounds. So to use the PS-30B, you’ll need a sturdy, heavy-duty tripod.
Over a week of use, the unit worked flawlessly, even in cold weather (20° F, -6° C). Since the first test above, I have assembled several more panoramas. Compared to the “old” way of shooting manually, I’ve found that the PS-30B helps me to produce excellent quality panoramas and with a lot less work and reshooting.
For more information about the PS-30B, please visit e-Filming. Because this is a specialty item, you may not find it at your local photography store. However it is available from the well-known photo supplier Adorama. The price is $599.
More technical details
The PS-30B control panel allows you to change several other parameters:
- time delay following rotation before the shutter is released
- time delay after the shutter is released before next rotation
- speed of rotation
- direction of rotation – clockwise or counterclockwise
Lenses and Angle of View
The table below shows the angle of view for some of the more common lens sizes. For example, when oriented horizontally, the angle of view for a 35mm lens is 54° and when oriented vertically, the angle of view is 37°. For APS-C size frame, simply divide the angle of view in the table by 1.5; horizontal is 36° and vertical is 24°. For a more comprehensive list, please see Wikipedia.
For the panorama above, I was using a 35mm lens mounted vertically. The table tells me that the angle of view is 37° on full frame or 24° on APS-C size frame camera. The test camera was an APS-C frame, so I chose 18° to provide a 25% overlap.
focal length using full frame sensor | 18mm | 28mm | 35mm | 55mm | 135mm |
vertical angle of view | 67° | 46° | 37° | 27° | 10° |
horizontal angle of view | 90° | 65° | 54° | 39° | 15° |
Disclosure: Stay Focused has no connection with e-Filming and received no compensation for this review.
Review by Arnie Lee