Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Stitching close up images

Falicfer ask this is a very interesting question in the autostitch group on flicker

Has anyone ever made a successful panorama from macro shots?
Is there a way to achieve good results from it?


Its harder than you think. I figure it is mainly because of parrallax issues that shift the relative position of foreground and background objects making matching very difficult.

gwandanaland collage

1) So my first attempt to find a reasonable solution was to zoom in but take lots of images (and I mean lots) then assemble these.

saving gwondanaland

Even though this is not a true macro subject it is a confind space and I wanted to be able to show all of it at once. The large number of`images meant I did at least get a match across everything, however it is easy to see where some stright lines are jagged and some images still don't match fully. Yet I was happy that I did get a result.

2) When I realised it was mainly the background that was stopping the stitch process when I got close up. I figured I should use depth of field to throw the background out of focus. With a normal lens and close up the depth of field can do this but I decided to try out my telephoto zoom lens "super macro feature". It gives a tighter depth of depth and you get fantastic control over what is put out of focus. The only problem is you can't get closer than about a meter. (around 3 feet) not exactly macro close.

My DL super macro telephoto zoom lens
I have a 40cm tall wollemi pine and wanted to take its portrait, so this seem an perfect subject. I stepped back zoomed in and took 7 seperate "macro" photos.

collage of photos for my photomacro autostitch

Finally I used autostitch to assemble them and it worked wonderfully.

Wollemi Pine [Wollemia nobilius] as an example of a macro autostitch

Well I think it worked well

These images are for use in a new blog I have started called Saving Gwondanaland

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