Faux "Wide Angle" Via Stitching?

[SA Bill]

My entry level Sony a100 DSLR has an 18-70mm "kit" lens which performs pretty well. Coming from a long background of film shooting, I find I miss the wider angle views that aren't available on the smaller-than-35mm-film imaging chip. Can't yet afford something like a 10-20mm zoom.

Soooo...can I use stitching software to make a "wide angle" picture from, say, 4 images?

  Shoot lower left. Shoot lower right. Shoot upper right. Shoot upper left. Combine later.

Like making a pano...just ending up with wider coverage of the view instead?

I hope I've described this well enough to give the photo experts out there an idea of what I'm after.
   Thanks for any input!
     Bill

[Casa Grande]

My entry level Sony a100 DSLR has an 18-70mm "kit" lens which performs pretty well. Coming from a long background of film shooting, I find I miss the wider angle views that aren't available on the smaller-than-35mm-film imaging chip. Can't yet afford something like a 10-20mm zoom.

Soooo...can I use stitching software to make a "wide angle" picture from, say, 4 images?

 Shoot lower left. Shoot lower right. Shoot upper right. Shoot upper left. Combine later.

Like making a pano...just ending up with wider coverage of the view instead?

I hope I've described this well enough to give the photo experts out there an idea of what I'm after.
Thanks for any input!
Bill

Stitching images together, using a good program, is an even better way to achieve what you want. Wide angle lenses distort, but most importantly, you'll be disappointed when you see the results as the mountains in the background will be much further away than you remembered.

Couple of pointers about stitching:

1. DO NOT USE THE AUTOMATIC SETTING!This will make each picture you shoot for the stitch have a slightly different exposure than the previous shot. No matter how good your stitching program is, you will very likely see lines in the stitch areas, in particular in the sky. Instead, use manual mode, find the appropriate exposure setting and leave it there for all the shots. This will render a seamless stitch. If your camera is equipped, you can also use the exposure lock setting.

2. Keep a good 50% of the previous shot in the next frame. This will give the stitching program more "meat" to work with. The more it has to work with, the better the stitch results will be.

3. Keep your body stiff as you pan or tilt across the scene. Lock your arms, head and body in place and pivot on your feet in one spot as you pan. This will help keep the scene straight and avoid stitching errors.

4. Use a good stitching program. One of the best also happens to be free, Autostitch. You can download it here. It is very easy to use and yields some fantastic results. Make sure you adjust your option settings before you begin the stitch each time you open the program as it doesn't save your previous settings.

Good luck and hope this helps!

[tjavery]

Good points, CG.

If you have Photoshop CS3, the Photomerge feature works pretty good. It's much better than in previous versions of Photoshop.

One thing that helps is to correct each individual image for lens distortions (i.e. pin-cushion or barrel) and vignetting (light fall-off in the corners) before you run Photomerge.

[Sotol Vista]

panoramafactory is a good program to use, it use to be free, but I see they are charging for it now
http://www.panoramafactory.com/

and also PTGui is another good one
http://www.ptgui.com/

[Casa Grande]

panoramafactory is a good program to use, it use to be free, but I see they are charging for it now
http://www.panoramafactory.com/

and also PTGui is another good one
http://www.ptgui.com/

PTGUI is the best, but the learning curve is astronomical....keep it simple, stick with autostitch

[SA Bill]

Thanks all!!
I knew I'd get some good info from you all.

CG: I had wondered if using manual exposure would be best. Thanks for confirming. Also, I never would have thought to allow that much overlap. I'll try Autostitch on some faux wide angle pics from the S Rim in about 9 days!

tj: Good point about correcting before stitching. I'll give that a try.

james: Thanks for the links! I'll do some looking around to see what's what.
  Thanks!
    Bill

[JeffB]

I'm with you Bill.  That's a big drawback of digital, wide angle photography.  An old 67 format film camera still does a better job.  Large format is even better.  An old 1930 Rolleiflex with a 50mm lens is STILL a better tool for wide angle landscape and widefield astrophotography.  Even the larger (35mm size) digital sensors can't do it as well.