Please help. I have a Gigapan Epic Pro. I am using a Canon 5D Mark ll with a 14mm. prime lens. I set up the Nodal point and centered the camera in the unit. Initially because of the huge field of view of the ultra wide angle lens I was shooting at 76.4mm FOV range, but none of the photos would stitch correctly. I tried multiple different overlap options, but nothing helped. I then tried to minimize the FOV and set it at a shallow 20.1mm FOV. Nothing seems to work. When I stitch the photos in the Gigapan software they look awful. The photos end up being all over the place with either too much insane overlap or non at all. What am I doing wrong? I’ve used the Epic Pro for a year now, and never had any problems, but now with this new lens I can’t get anything to work for me. Does anyone have any thoughts? Thanks.

James, I would imagine that there would be some distortion at the edges of the photo due to the focal lenght, i think this is causing you problem. If you could post a picture taken with this lens somewhere it would help

The main intent of the GigaPan system is that it be used with lenses other than wide angle. You can get the best results with the longest telephoto you own. This will have the flattest field, with your only remaining problems being vignetting or depth of field. If your subject is close, then the normal lens zoomed out all the way will give great results. If you use your 14mm lens, then you don’t need the GigaPan unit, just a tripod, panning it manually to give 25 to 30% overlap, then use Photoshop or one of the other pan programs to merge. (I use the focus dots in the viewfinder to set the overlap.) Those programs may provide the significant de-warping needed to correct for the lens. Also, with a telephoto, the nodal point issue is minimized and you can setup for best balance on the longest lenses.

Hi -

James, what David said is absolutely correct: switch to using a long telephoto lens and let the system work as it was designed to. The 14mm prime on the 5d simply has way too much distortion at the edges of the photos, which is where the stitcher needs to find continuity between images in order to do its magic.

I use Olympus gear, but with a Leica 180mm f3.4 APO Telyt-R, a Leica 400 f6.3 or a Tamron 600 f8; I’ve also used the 70-300 lens to good effect at 300mm. You need to set the FOV for the lenses, of course, but it really does work fantastically well and generates what you are looking for…

JohnF

I did a panorama using Panorama Factory on the weekend with a new Nikon 14-24mm F2.8 ED lens. I also found it gave distortions and was not well suited.

I thought about it later and wondered if I first processed the images in Photoshop or DXO to repair the distortions for that lens (Ken Rockwell publishes the lens distortions settings for Photoshop to correct for various lenses) that it may then work.

I haven’t done that but I think it would be a vital first step.

Greg

Don’t use wide angle lenses! The system is designed to use telephoto lenses: it is the only way to avoid distortions. Using wide angle lenses is to be avoided!

James,
I think it depends on the distortion of the thens in the edges.
The softwares that are used to stitch the photos together are orienting on the fine details of the photos you use.
The more distortion in the edges of your photo, the less the quality of your end result will be.
Generally the GigaPan is constructed to assist you with huge panos made of lots of photos with telephoto lenses.

And it’s true, for a pano made with a wide angle lens you don’t really need GigaPan.

But, GigaPan can help you even with panos made with wide angle lenses.
I think your problem is the sofware you used. I found the GigaPan stitcher not very helpful with wide angle panos.

With my Canon 5D MK II / TS-E 17 Combination I’ve made some good panos using the Panorama Studio Pro 2 software.
I was using an overlap of 30% with RAW format at full 5D resolution and it worked fine. No autofocus. “Av” mode. Correct nodal point for Camera/Lens Combination set.
You should take care of some good and sharp details especially in the overlap sections of each photo, because all softwares need them for stitching.

I for my part would say, GigaPan is great for wide angle lenses, maybe GigaPan stitcher is not.