topic Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto in General Discussion

Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Fri, 22 May 2020 09:06:04 GMT

Is it better to capture a wide angle shot, or create a panoramic shot using a telephoto lens?

Each approach has its' uses. But, when I want to draw the eye to specific details in the distance, then I almost want to go the panoramic shot using a telephoto lens.

The shot below captures how I remember the view of the new bridge under construction. No one new about the colored lights before this moment, the same day that one of the spans first opened for traffic.

The first shot is from a distance of at least two miles from the center span. I used a 100-400mm lens, instead of wide angle lens.

Notice the resolution of just the center portion of the pano shot.

The shot below is from a different vantage point that brings me to about one mile away from the center span. This vantage point is about a half mile away from the previous shots of the center span. I used a 35mm lens, and this is heavily cropped.

The shot below is of some islands that are about a mile away, captured at 16mm. Compare the size of the footings of the bridge pylons compared to the small island in the photo below. They are about the same size. Shot at 16mm.

My point is a pretty simple one. Using a wide angle lens is not an absolute MUST when it comes to landscape photography. The bridge photos give you a sense of scale. More times than not, a telephoto lens can tell the story of your landscape shot much better than a wide angle lens.

My final comment is that notice how the raw image stack for the pano shot seems to be stair stepped. This is a result of the camera not being perfectly level. I use the built-in camera level to double check how level the camera is.

The built-in level in the camera seems pretty good, in camera. This is true as long as I am shooting in landscape mode. I rolled the camera to portrait mode. I had to eyeball the level point on the tripod ring.

In portrait mode, the on-board compass is not very good in portrait mode. But, no thought seems to have been given to using the level in portrait mode.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Tronhard — Thu, 21 May 2020 07:00:26 GMT

Speaking for myself, I have done a fair bit of landscape photography and must say I have not seen a wide-angle lens as being mandatory. When I was shooting transparency it was pretty obviously easier to use a single wide-angle shot, but with digital, if the camera is put on a levelled tripod and rotated with some care and overlap, I think one gets far more detail from several longer focal length images stitched together. It would be useless to post some of the panoramic shots I have created because, by their nature, they have large file sizes!

I completely agree that there is no "one" answer to this issue. Really a lot depends on the content of the scene and what one wants to express or (dare I say) focus on in the scene.

One other thing I did, when trying to express what would be considered an obvious wide-angle shot, was to turn the camera to portrait and take a slice of the scene. In one case I shot huge sand dunes that rolled on for some distance along the coast. I shot conventially but actually preferred the portrait shot because it was taken with a moderate telephoto and really expressed the towering effect of the dunes - something I realized was their big impact on me.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Thu, 21 May 2020 07:41:10 GMT

Trevor,

If I shot the bridge with a wide angle lens, the bridge would look like one of those in-camera "toy mode" photos. The bridge would be a teeny-tiny thing somewhere in the center of the photo. The pano shots of the bridge with the telephoto lens most accurately reflect what the bridge looks like to the eye.

I can get great landscape shots with either a wide angle lens, or a telephto lens. The choice of focal length really depends upon where I want to draw the eye into the photo. Depending on the size of the subject, and my distance to it, I may use either type or lens, or any focal length.

Capturing what the eye sees, not what the camera sees, is what drives my choice of focal length.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Tronhard — Thu, 21 May 2020 08:53:58 GMT

Exactly! I completely agree.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

rs-eos — Thu, 21 May 2020 13:34:53 GMT

I have been wanting to play around with panoramos for a while; even for portraits. There are indeed some very interesting things you can do when using telephoto or even standard lenses to create "wide angle" results. To include getting some razor thin DOF.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

kvbarkley — Thu, 21 May 2020 13:50:34 GMT

It depends on movement too. In Wadizzles shot, if any of the boats had been moving, a panorama might require a lot of extra work.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Thu, 21 May 2020 15:26:28 GMT

@kvbarkley wrote:
It depends on movement too. In Wadizzles shot, if any of the boats had been moving, a panorama might require a lot of extra work.

Buoys, not boats.

The exposure says 15 seconds. I have had people cross in front of the camera during a long exposure like this, and they do not show up in the final image, at all.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Tronhard — Thu, 21 May 2020 17:53:28 GMT

@kvbarkley wrote:
It depends on movement too. In Wadizzles shot, if any of the boats had been moving, a panorama might require a lot of extra work.

I shot a panorama of Victoria Harbour, made of 5 shots with a Canon EOS60D and a EF-S 15-85mm lens at 35mm (to give me an equivalent FoV of a 50mm).

Now, accepting the fact that I just reduced this image from 48MB to about 4.9MB, it's not going to hold that much quality of detail but I am posting it to show that there is a moving yacht on the right-hand side of the image. I avoided getting an overlap on the boat by shooting it from the direction in which it was travelling, thus by the time I had moved my camera to the left the boat had moved further away, not into the image and causing ghosting.

By the way, the shape of the walkway on the left is accurate, it does go down, then horizontal and then down again.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

ebiggs1 — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:02:17 GMT

I have used panos for years. I use them for stuff that you may not think it would work. One thing I always tell folks that are new to panos is to turn the camera vertical.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

ebiggs1 — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:11:09 GMT

BTW, that shot is an HDR besides being a pano.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Fri, 22 May 2020 17:06:09 GMT

@ebiggs1 wrote:
I have used panos for years. I use them for stuff that you may not think it would work. One thing I always tell folks that are new to panos is to turn the camera vertical.

Nice work! Always overlaping the shots by 1/3 seems to work best. Give the software a nice big bite to chew on.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

RobertTheFat — Fri, 22 May 2020 20:41:39 GMT

@ebiggs1 wrote:
BTW, that shot is an HDR besides being a pano.

It's also out of proportion in several ways, illustrating the danger or playing with perspective. The tower on the left leans outward and is too big at the top. Why? Because your eye normally corrects for the fact that the top and left side of the tower are farther away and should therefore appear smaller, which they don't in the picture. And the roadway curves upwards on the left and right for similar reasons.

A two-dimensional picture of a three-dimensional scene is at best a compromise. Is Ernie's portrayal "wrong"? No, but it's only one possible representation of what your eye would actually see.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Tronhard — Fri, 22 May 2020 22:31:13 GMT

When I was first learning to do panoramas I read that I should never use a wide-angle lens, and have at least a normal FoV, preferably slightly telephoto make me go back to get a normal perspective and to reduce the distortion of the a wide-angle lens. In the case of the house image, my impression is that the building was quite close, which produces some complications.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

limvo05 — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 04:13:27 GMT

It would really depend on the scenery and the subject. If there are continuous movements such as cloud, water, etc., I normally go with a wide-angle lens. The other thing I try to avoid is having too many photos taken as part of a pano series. Maybe it's a limitation with Adobe Photoshop, I took a series of 15 photos of the Bryce canyon and it looks amazing, unfortunately, I was not able to save the merged photos as PS would complain that it's too large.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 09:05:35 GMT

Adobe Photoshop CS6, 16 Images

This panoramic image includes moving water, just like my original shots of the bridge. It even includes slowly moving clouds.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 09:22:05 GMT

When it comes to moving water, not only is the lake water rippling in the wind, there are fountains in the lakes.

Notice the asymmetrical shape of the fountain's water below. That is from the fairly steady wind that was blowing.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 09:21:05 GMT

@limvo05 wrote:
It would really depend on the scenery and the subject. If there are continuous movements such as cloud, water, etc., I normally go with a wide-angle lens. The other thing I try to avoid is having too many photos taken as part of a pano series. Maybe it's a limitation with Adobe Photoshop, I took a series of 15 photos of the Bryce canyon and it looks amazing, unfortunately, I was not able to save the merged photos as PS would complain that it's too large.

Maybe you have hardware issues.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

limvo05 — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 15:11:29 GMT

Nice looking photos. What did you shoot these with? I am using Canon 5Ds. I normally get the alert saying can't save .....exceeding 4GB file size or something along that line.

As for the wide angle lens question, in my opinion, it really depends on individual preference and taste. I normally like to take a slower shutter speed to create that moody feel with the cloud appears to be streaking above and moving toward/away. With water-related shots, crashing waves, freezing the water, or glassy looks, again it really depends on personal preference and the scenery. I don't think there is a correct or short answer to this question. And when it comes to landscape, less is more for me.

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

Waddizzle — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 16:03:13 GMT

The maximum file size of a FAT-32 files system is 4GB.

I used a 1D Mark IV with an EF 35mm f/2 IS USM lens, handheld. I do not recall the exposure settings. I made no special changes to capture the sequence other to use MF and Continuous Drive. [Oh yeah, the camera was in portrait mode.}

Re: Landscape Photography: Wide Angle Lens or Panoramic Using Telephoto

ebiggs1 — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:48:56 GMT

"I don't think there is a correct or short answer to this question."

That is true. You are learning, although some seem to think their way or no way.