ProTools #2: Photography workshop: Panorama
PETER RENN WORKSHOP
PANORAMIC IMAGES
Not a normal way of framing the world with a lens. It captures a horizontally elongated view of the world. It can be roughly x3 the width then the length, but can also differ in ratio.
DIFFERENT WAYS OF ACHIEVING PANORAMIC IMAGES:
- Multiple panels
- wide-frame cameras
- moving-lens cameras
- rotating cameras
- omni-directional cameras
- stitching software
- Smartphone apps
The piece above was created through the use of a series of panels (each A2 size) which join up as we can see through the visible lines between each panel. The images were taken with a normal camera but depict an extreme amount of detail within this piece despite it being taken from such distant and height.
- He also explored how motion worked, particularly looking at taking images that are 25 fps resulting in the infamous horse racing images and many more. This is embedded greatly within film and moving images history.
Panoramic Images can also be shot with specialist wide angle cameras like the Fuji GX617 which takes 6x17cm negatives. But working with this equiptment means that lots of things need to be correct such as making sure the camera is level.
Wide Lux: film specialist camera. These cameras have enormous depths of fields. the images it captures almost mimics human experience. The Wide Lux is famously used by Jeff Bridges on and off sets of movies capturing what happens on screen and off screen with Directors and camera crew:
Kodak Cirkut Camera: Had a clock work moving camera; instead of the lens moving around on a tripod, the entire camera would rotate. As it revolved, the film would move in the opposite direction acting like a scanner. The camera was often used for commercial purposes and it was very specialist and the more people in the image, the more potential sales you could make to them in selling a copy.
A modern version of panoramic equiptment we now have is the panoramic feature on smart phones. The software advises you to keep your phone level as you move it or to slow down if you are moving too fast. This process is prone to more glitching if the subjects are moving during the capture time. However, the glitches are often more interesting than the classical panorama and you can mess around more with the perception.
Normally when taking a panorama I am standing upright and am rotating somewhere in the realms of 180º. However, I realised I had never taken one laying down and essentially rolling whilst I captured an image. So I decided to give this a go using Vicky as my subject who stood over me whilst I rolled from left to right holding my phone:
I really liked the outcome as it bent the room creating an Alice in Wonderland or fisheye type distortion with its size and the proportions of the room and Vicky's body. However, I felt like because I aimed at getting her somewhat centred in my image, it created a human perception of how she would be seen standing over me, kind of towering.
I also really liked how the walls either side of us became almost horizontal in the ends of the images. Finally because i was rolling in such a weird way I was unable to have complete control of how level the camera was therefor in the top 1/3 of the first image, we can see a slight glitch where it didn't pick up any of the image and is black due to this.
PETER'S RULES FOR PANORAMA:
1) Level the camera in both planes to avoid distortion
2) Shoot a wider area than you think you need
3) Don't use a wide angle lens
4) Shoot composites in portrait format
5) Lock exposure, focus and focal length
6) Overlap frames by about 30%
7) Beware of moving objects
8) Think about the final file size.
Though these are rules for taking a classical non-glitched image, the idea of breaking some of these rules intrigued me. As shown in my previous blog, I explored panoramas with a moving subject and by changing the lighting. However, what I never thought about until reading Peter's list was doing a panorama and adjusting to the focal length. I was really intrigued by this idea and thought it would be interesting doing a panorama of a series of faces changing the focal length as it moved around. However, on an iPhone, once you start capturing there is not option to adjust this.
STEREO IMAGES: Because humans amongst many other species have evolved to have two (or more) eyes to give us depth perception. This is because each eye sees the same subject but from ever so slightly different points; the left seeing things from the left and the same for the right. Our brain instead of getting confused at both separate images, combines the two to form one with a better depth perception.
MERGING IMAGES:
There are a number of ways to turn two images in to one:
1) Free-viewing: some people have the ability of looking at two separate images and combining them both instead of not focus on one or the other. Sometime it can even appear 3D.
2) Lens-based viewers: a piece of equiptment which allows you to slot two cards in which have different images. It allows you to look at them together side by side making your left eye see the left image and the right eye see the right.
3) Anaglyphs: Coloured glasses, usually one with a blue tint in one eye and the other eye with a red tint. blocking certain light colours from one eye and the same for the other.
4) Polarised systems: requires more equiptment: similar to anaglyphs.
5) Lenticular prints: Prints with a textured plastic surface on that looks as if they move or revealing different images depending on what angle you are looking at the image from.
EXPERIMENTS:
This experimented created a fish eye type of image. Using around 10 images taken on my iPhone, I transferred them on to Photoshop to create a seamless merging of the images.
File> Automate> Photomerge
Blend images - This allows the computer to
I really liked the outcome as I have always been inspired by David Hockney's 'Joiner's', particularly the use of multiple images recording a moment. Although the outcome displayed above is less of a photomontage but a merging. The shape of it is super interesting and I much prefer it to a long straight edged, classical panoramic image because it feels more like I am in the space.
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