This reprojection is based on a panoramic image of the Dippemess in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The projection is “stereographic down”
Author: PanoTwin Jürgen
Reprojection of JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge 2008 in Frankfurt am Main
This image is a stereographic reprojection of an old panorama from 2008. I shot the original panorama exactly 6 years ago. And today was this years race of the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge in Frankfurt am Main.
Comparing images from Opernplatz, Frankfurt am Main (2004 and 2014)
The upcoming World Wide Panorama (WWP) event is entitled ‘decade’.
In the time frame of a decade even a city can change it’s appearance. So I searched for panoramic images which I shot in 2004 and which were shot at a place which changed over the last ten years. The best example was a image of the Opernplatz, which I took back in 2004 as a cylindrical panorama. And the view of the Opernplatz (which translates to ‘the square of the opera’) indeed changed a lot in the last ten years.
So I went back and stood at the same spot where I stood a decade ago. First I took a spherical panorama with my double monopod construction. Afterwards I did a remake of the original cylindrical panorama. The following image shows the two cylindrical panoramas in a single composite.
The original panorama from 2004 is also available on the blog.
Skyline of Frankfurt am Main on a sunny day in March 2014
This panorama was stitched from six images in landscape orientation. The resulting panorama is 10800 x 5585 pixels. Despite the fact that it was taken through a tinted window, I’m quite pleased with the final result.
Skyline of Frankfurt am Main at dusk (2014)
This image shows a panorama which was stitched from eight images in portrait orientation. Due to the high dynamic range of the sensor I only used one exposure and brought back the shadows with Lightroom. The size of the resulting image is 19200 x 6000 pixel.
Comparing image crops of Sony LA-EA2 and Sony LA-EA4 on Sony ILCE-7 (with Sony SAL70200G @ 200mm)
Today I did some tests with the two lens adapters Sony LA-EA2 and Sony LA-EA4, which can be used to adapt a lens with a Sony A-mount to a camera with an Sony E-mount. In another article I already compared looks and weigth of the two adapters. In this article I focus on the different image crops when you use the two adapters on a full frame camera with E-mount. I used a Sony ILCE-7 for my tests. On a Sony ILCE-7r the crops are the same, but you get a higher pixel count.
I only tested the Sony 70-200/2.8 (SAL70200G) at 200mm. I used the lens collar of the lens to attach it to a tripod. The lens, the tripod and the subject were not moved after that.
The first image shows the result when using the LA-EA4. The resulting image is the full resolution of the sensor.
For the second image I only exchanged the LA-EA4 with the older LA-EA2. For this image I used the following configuration of the camera: Menu → Custom Settings (gear icon) → 5 → APS-C Size Capture → Off. You can clearly see the shading of the LA-EA2 on the sensor. The maximum manual crop is marked with the green rectangle.
For the next image I only changed one setting in the camera: Menu → Custom Settings (gear icon) → 5 → APS-C Size Capture → On. The resulting image showed an even larger crop than the second image but no shading of the adapter. In postprocessing I superpositioned the two images to be able to mark the camera crop in the second image. This is the result.
In the last image I used the first taken picture and marked the three different crops. The red marker is the LA-EA4, the green marker is the LA-EA2 with maximum manual crop and the blue marker is LA-EA2 with cropping enabled in camera.
The maximum manual crop (which is equivalent to the unshaded area of the sensor) will differ when you use a different lens. And it also differs with different focal lengths of a zoom lens. But this needs some more testing.
Images of shaved Samyang (Bower, Rokinon, Walimex) 8mm fisheye lens attached to Sony A7 (ILCE-7)
In the last article I showed the resulting images on the sensor at the different stages of shaving the Samyang (Bower, Rokinon, Walimex) 8mm/2.8 UMC fisheye lens.
The following picture shows one side of the box of the Walimex version of the lens. It also shows the lens hood in its original state.
The following images show the lens with already shaved lens hood.
The last image shows the lens attached to a Sony ILCE-7.
Shaving the lens hood of the Samyang (Bower, Rokinon, Walimex) 8mm fisheye lens for usage on the Sony E-mount with full-frame sensors
The Samyang 8mm/2.8 UMC II fisheye lens is available for several camera mounts (Canon M, Fujifilm X, Samsung NX and Sony E). It is designed as a full frame fisheye which covers 180° from corner to corner on these aforementioned mounts with their respective sensor sizes. But since the introduction of the Sony cameras with E-mount and full frame sensor there is an interesting new option for panoramic photographers.
In all the featured examples of this post I just took a picture of a white piece of paper bended around the lens which I converted to a black and white image afterwards.
If you mount the lens in its original state on a Sony ILCE-7 (or ILCE-7r) then you get an image which looks something like this.
You can clearly see, that the lens hood shades a good part of the image. Which is of course a bad thing if we want to shoot a spherical with this lens.
In the next example I therefore used a side cutter to remove the plastic lens hood on the longer side of the sensor.
And in the final example I removed as much of the lens hood as I could. This is the final resulting image.
In this state the lens covers approximately 190° on the long side of the sensor. With three or four images easily covering the full sphere the final equirectangular is 10000 pixels by 5000 pixels in size on a Sony ILCE-7.
You can already find a daylight, blue hour and indoor example from Markus which were all shot with a shaved version of the lens and a Sony ILCE-7.
Additional remark
The shown images were produced with an Samyang 8mm/2.8 UMC II fisheye lens on a SONY ILCE camera with a full frame sensor. You can gat a nearly identical result if you use the Samyang 7mm/3.5 UMC fisheye lens with a SONY ILCE camera with APS-C sized sensor and an micro 4/3 to E-mount adapter.
Happy new year 2014
This year we started with a photographic experiment. We recruited three assistants and used some sparklers to write 2014 in the air.
With this image we wish you happiness, luck and health for 2014. And of course a lot of new panoramic images 🙂
Good-bye 2013
This year ended with a photographic experiment. Each of us used two sparklers to write 2013 in the air.
See you next year on our blog…