Pano of Paris Left Bank

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 8, 2012

Here is a pano of Paris Left Bank (looking South). It is a double row pano,
made from 32 tiles taken in portrait stand, resulting in a stitch of (25,000x7,750 pixels).
I could print this (after upsizing 2x) around 5-6 meters wide.

Each tile is made up of 3 bracketed exposures and tone mapped in SNS-HDR.

The projection covers 180 degrees left-to-right. Hence the unnatural curving of the Seine River.
I have used the equirectangular projection method.

On the left, you can see the Nortre Dame. In front of it, Île de la Cité.
We then see, among others, Palais de la Monnaie, Tour Montparnasse,
Institut de France, Dôme des Invalides, Eiffel Tower and Musée d'Orsay‎.

Click on the image to see a larger version for the details:

______________

Asher Kelman · Jan 8, 2012

Cem_Usakligil said:
Here is a pano of Paris Left Bank (looking South). It is a double row pano,
made from 32 tiles taken in portrait stand, resulting in a stitch of (25,000x7,750 pixels).
I could print this (after upsizing 2x) around 5-6 meters wide.

Each tile is made up of 3 bracketed exposures and tone mapped in SNS-HDR.

The projection covers 180 degrees left-to-right. Hence the unnatural curving of the Seine River.
I have used the equirectangular projection method.

On the left, you can see the Nortre Dame. In front of it, Île de la Cité.
We then see, among others, Palais de la Monnaie, Tour Montparnasse,
Institut de France, Dôme des Invalides, Eiffel Tower and Musée d'Orsay‎.______________

Click on the image to see a larger version for the details:

Cem,

It was so generous and such a pleasure to have you and your dear wife drive all the way from Amsterdam to Paris and visit us at our rented apartment, overlooking the river. With the arrival of Nicolas and his wife from Bordeaux, this made a very special and meaningful reunion for us all. Thanks so much!

Your panorama of the Seine is one of the best ever and shows the clear advantage of using a formal setup of a panohead and taking care to focus correctly each frame. The distances to the detail rich buildings are different in each of the separate frames so your effort pays of in the precision with which the picture is drawn. Bracketing has given you an extra measure of control which you have leveraged very well in your work in SNS-HDR to get a magnificent result.

BTW, what aperture did you us and what was the focal length you settled for? One can go for 200mm but then there might be more shake from the height of the building.

Asher

fahim mohammed · Jan 8, 2012

Cem, there are times when I want to just enjoy. Just look. Not speak or type.

This is one such time.

Regards.

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 8, 2012

Hi Asher,

Asher Kelman said:
It was so generous and such a pleasure to have you and your dear wife drive all the way from Amsterdam to Paris and visit us at our rented apartment, overlooking the river. With the arrival of Nicolas and his wife from Bordeaux, this made a very special and meaningful reunion for us all. Thanks so much! ...

Thanks Asher, the feelings are mutual. It was fantastic to see you and Nicolas again.

Asher Kelman said:
...Your panorama of the Seine is one of the best ever and shows the clear advantage of using a formal setup of a panohead and taking care to focus correctly each frame. The distances to the detail rich buildings are different in each of the separate frames so your effort pays of in the precision with which the picture is drawn. Bracketing has given you an extra measure of control which you have leveraged very well in your work in SNS-HDR to get a magnificent result.

BTW, what aperture did you us and what was the focal length you settled for? One can go for 200mm but then there might be more shake from the height of the building.

Well, I have used a multi-row pano set-up of Really Right Stuff. The lens was panned/tilted around the non-parallax point. The pano gear was set on a click-stop rotation head which makes it extremely easy to stitch afterwards. It also prevents mistakes in the field. Set it once to the degree of rotation and one then has to only turn once after each tile; very easy.

The lens was the EF 50mm f1.4, set to f8. At ISO 100, capturing all the 3 brackets for each tile was taking a very long time. Since the light was changing quickly, I had no other choice than to bump up the ISO to 800. The brackets were -1,0+1 EV.

PS: can you see the zoomify version on my website? I heard from somebody that he could not see the content. I think that it might be flash related. Please let me know.

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 8, 2012

fahim mohammed said:
Cem, there are times when I want to just enjoy. Just look. Not speak or type.

This is one such time.

Regards.

Thanks my friend.

nicolas claris · Jan 8, 2012

Cem
This is superb!
As was this too short meeting with Asher, you and our wives!

PS the zoomify works very well on Mac, I doubt it work on iPad (coz Flash)

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 8, 2012

Nicolas Claris said:
Cem
This is superb!
As was this too short meeting with Asher, you and our wives!

PS the zoomify works very well on Mac, I doubt it work on iPad (coz Flash)

Thanks Nicolas, it was great meeting with all of you; including and especially thanks to the ladies of course. It was too short indeed, that was the only downside. We are looking forward to seeing you in Bordeaux next time.

The zoomify problem was not due to iPad, I know that iPad cannot run flash indeed. Nevermind.

Tracy Lebenzon · Jan 10, 2012

This is a delicious capture!

Shooting it as 2 rows makes for a very nice viewport. I love the under-stated colors. A tad rich without being too sweet.

I did notice that one of the gremlins that often haunt when I do hdr stitches is apparent in your capture as well.

I have a number of city-scapes but have not tried a multi row capture yet, due to a limitation of the tripod mount I use. Your work has served as a inspiration and a reminder to get another tripod and a more suitable head to go with…

Btw, I tried to access the larger image on your web site using 2 different computers and ie8 and ie9 and in both cases I was not able to see the larger image. Your site showed up okay but the image area was a whiteish area bordered by a thin line. On both computers flash is current.

Asher Kelman · Jan 10, 2012

Tracy Lebenzon said:
I did notice that one of the gremlins that often haunt when I do hdr stitches is apparent in your capture as well.

Tracy,

What "gremlins", or "grem-lans" if the hover over the Seine?

Tracy Lebenzon said:
Btw, I tried to access the larger image on your web site using 2 different computers and ie8 and ie9 and in both cases I was not able to see the larger image.

It works beautifully on the Mac in Safari. Maybe try Safari or Firefox?

Asher

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 10, 2012

Hi Tracy,

Tracy Lebenzon said:
This is a delicious capture!

Shooting it as 2 rows makes for a very nice viewport. I love the under-stated colors. A tad rich without being too sweet.

I did notice that one of the gremlins that often haunt when I do hdr stitches is apparent in your capture as well.

I have a number of city-scapes but have not tried a multi row capture yet, due to a limitation of the tripod mount I use. Your work has served as a inspiration and a reminder to get another tripod and a more suitable head to go with…

Btw, I tried to access the larger image on your web site using 2 different computers and ie8 and ie9 and in both cases I was not able to see the larger image. Your site showed up okay but the image area was a whiteish area bordered by a thin line. On both computers flash is current.

Thanks for the kind comments. I have very many gremlins in there but did not bother removing them in the post processing. I might do that if I ever get to the stage where I will be actually printing this.

I have discovered the issue with the IE, it was the coding of the parameters in the HTML which needed fixing. It should display correctly now. Can you please check and let me know? Thanks again.

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 10, 2012

Asher Kelman said:
Tracy,

What "gremlins", or "grem-lans" if the hover over the Seine?

It works beautifully on the Mac in Safari. Maybe try Safari or Firefox?

Asher

I suspect the Gremlins Tracy is referring to are the ghosts caused by the movement of things and longer exposure times.

PS: I have fixed the IE issue, it was due to erroneous html code.

Asher Kelman · Jan 10, 2012

Cem_Usakligil said:
I suspect the Gremlins Tracy is referring to are the ghosts caused by the movement of things and longer exposure times.

PS: I have fixed the IE issue, it was due to erroneous html code.

Cem,

Do you think that can be obviated by taking multiples of each shot? So that would be for lower ISO or for higher ISO. So what could be the best strategem? Maybe higher ISO and many copies? What do you think?

I really guess we need a far heavier tripod with no center stem.

This might mean I have to return to Paris sooner than planned, LOL! Anyway, I'll try tonight, that's night, not dusk!

Asher

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 10, 2012

Asher Kelman said:
Cem,

Do you think that can be obviated by taking multiples of each shot? So that would be for lower ISO or for higher ISO. So what could be the best strategem? Maybe higher ISO and many copies? What do you think?

I really guess we need a far heavier tripod with no center stem.

This might mean I have to return to Paris sooner than planned, LOL! Anyway, I'll try tonight, that's night, not dusk!

Asher

One way to eliminate ghosts is by taking multiple exposures and stitching (using selective masks) or by using the average function in PS when 3 or more layers are present. If the light situation would have been stable, I could have gone down to ISO 100 and take multiple exposures of the same tile to get rid of the ghosts. The number of exposures grows very quickly and it becomes impractical to deal with. In this example, I have 32 tiles which are made up of 3 brackets each, resulting in 96 exposures. I need to convert them from raw to tif first. Then I need to run SNS-HDR on 32 tiles. Then I need to stitch the 32 tiles. If I had taken duplicates of tiles to eliminate ghosts, I would have to shoot 192 exposures or perhaps even more. If I wanted to to focus stacking, it would yet again double the figures. Etc, etc,.. The amount of post processing is mind boggling. I have one of the fastest PCs money can buy and a lot of patience but even they have their limits, lol.

Tracy Lebenzon · Jan 10, 2012

Asher Kelman said:
Tracy,

What "gremlins", or "grem-lans" if the hover over the Seine?

...
Asher

You can see some vignetting in the sky. It’s most obvious on the left side of the image. Some is due to the changing light conditions but I've run into this a number of times when doing HDR images and it’s difficult to solve, at least for me.

In my case if I do a work up of any of the image sets within a bracketed group and stitch them, then the effects of vignetting are largely invisible. But when combined and stitched they can sometimes be seen.

This is not mentioned as a criticism of the work but more as a lament due to similar problems I haven’t been able to resolve.

Tracy Lebenzon · Jan 10, 2012

Cem_Usakligil said:
Hi Tracy,

Thanks for the kind comments. I have very many gremlins in there but did not bother removing them in the post processing. I might do that if I ever get to the stage where I will be actually printing this.

I have discovered the issue with the IE, it was the coding of the parameters in the HTML which needed fixing. It should display correctly now. Can you please check and let me know? Thanks again.

I can view the larger version on your web site now. Thanks!

Tracy Lebenzon · Jan 10, 2012

Cem_Usakligil said:
One way to eliminate ghosts is by taking multiple exposures and stitching (using selective masks) or by using the average function in PS when 3 or more layers are present. If the light situation would have been stable, I could have gone down to ISO 100 and take multiple exposures of the same tile to get rid of the ghosts. The number of exposures grows very quickly and it becomes impractical to deal with. In this example, I have 32 tiles which are made up of 3 brackets each, resulting in 96 exposures. I need to convert them from raw to tif first. Then I need to run SNS-HDR on 32 tiles. Then I need to stitch the 32 tiles. If I had taken duplicates of tiles to eliminate ghosts, I would have to shoot 192 exposures or perhaps even more. If I wanted to to focus stacking, it would yet again double the figures. Etc, etc,.. The amount of post processing is mind boggling. I have one of the fastest PCs money can buy and a lot of patience but even they have their limits, lol.

The reasons you mentioned are why I went to a server designed fast machine with multiple multiple core processors and dual RAID 5 arrays. One really needs a lot brute force processing and file i/o power plus a lot of time to do large stitches!

What I often do to eliminate ghosting is to do the stitch and then go back to an original frame and overlay as needed, plus I have cloned out surrounding ghosted details. When doing forest based hdr stitches the process can be maddening.

But mostly, I curse the wind.

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 10, 2012

Tracy Lebenzon said:
The reasons you mentioned are why I went to a server designed fast machine with multiple multiple core processors and dual RAID 5 arrays. One really needs a lot brute force processing and file i/o power plus a lot of time to do large stitches!

What I often do to eliminate ghosting is to do the stitch and then go back to an original frame and overlay as needed, plus I have cloned out surrounding ghosted details. When doing forest based hdr stitches the process can be maddening.

But mostly, I curse the wind.

Indeed, how so true! The wind and foliage don't mix unless the resulting effect is intentional.

ron_hiner · Jan 13, 2012

Beautiful!

I love that you can even see the love locks on the bridge. Outstanding detail.

It would be very cool to print this on transparency material and mount it in a 180 degree curve. Light it from behind... it would look incredible. The curve of the river would disappear.

Nice work Cem!

Ron

Cem_Usakligil · Jan 14, 2012

ron_hiner said:
I love that you can even see the love locks on the bridge. Outstanding detail.

It would be very cool to print this on transparency material and mount it in a 180 degree curve. Light it from behind... it would look incredible. The curve of the river would disappear.

Nice work Cem!

Ron

Thanks Ron, very kind of you. The idea for presenting it a such is quite nice.

PS: the locks on that bridge are very interesting, aren't they? Do you have pictures of them? I do have a couple myself.

ron_hiner · Jan 15, 2012

Cem -- I have many pictures of the love locks! My intent to write up the story of them one day. Here is one frame...

Ron

Asher Kelman · Jan 15, 2012

Ron,

This costs in removal. Apparently the locks can do damage. I'm not sure how. They cut off thousands each year! It's thought that the custom was started by a locksmith at one end of the bridge!

Asher

ron_hiner · Jan 15, 2012

Asher -
The problem with the locks, in the words of the Paris Town Hall... "they raise problems for the preservation of our architectural heritage". Hence they cut them away. However, there is no shortage of enterprising vendors selling new padlocks and sharpies on the 3 bridges of paris that lend themselves to the affixing the locks. I saw no effort on the part of Parisian officials to curb lock sales.

While I took a bunch of pictures of the locks, sadly, I took no pictures of the vendors. That's a funny thing about my travel photography... it's not until I get home that I realize how important the shots are that I didn't take.
Ron

Asher Kelman · Apr 1, 2013

I have pleasure in having discovered Nicolas Claris' pictures taken from the same vantage point on my balcony overlooking the Seine December 2011. Cem's pano is taken with bracketed exposures.

Cem Usakligil: Left Bank of Seine January 2012
Pont Neuf to left and La Tour D'Eiffel on right.
Bracketed adjacent jpgs stitched to Panorama

We were with our dear friend Cem Usakligil who drive with his lovely wife all the way from Amsterdam for an OPF reunion. I was organizing my hard drives and decided to get all Panos in one catalog. Finding Pentax 645D files was a surprise, until I remembered that great crisp balmy Paris evening, with Bordeaux wine in the living room and cameras pointing down more than 6 floors down to the Seine below.

So here's a pano from Nicolas' jpg images. No doubt, Nicolas or Cem could use the RAW files with to do an even better job, but for now, I love this, especially as he has caught the rotating beacons of the Eiffel Tower on the right skyline!

[Group 30]-CLAR8740_CLAR8768_1146 pixels.jpg

Nicolas Claris: Left Bank of Seine December 2011
Pont Neuf to left and La Tour D'Eiffel on right.
Contax 645D single adjacent jpgs stitched in AutoPano Giga
HDR adjustments in Nik Software

I'll have to find the same view stitched but I did discover this image, the right side of the view shown by Cem and Nicolas.

[Group 2]-_0037015__0037022-8 images_800pxl.jpg

Asher Kelman: Left Bank of Seine December 2011
Right half of view shown by Cem and Nicolas, La Tour D'Eiffel on right.
Canon 5D Mark II, stitched in AutoPano Giga
8 images stitched in AutoPano Giga,
Finished in Photoshop CS5

As you can imagine, it's a thrill to be in Paris and even more to be there with really great people one loves!

Asher Kelman · Apr 1, 2013

Finding forgotten shots of Paris!

Well, I did some hunting, and here's what I have so far, taken with the APS-C 16MP Ricoh GXR with the 50mm f2.5 prime macro module at ISO 400, f 4.0. (Other shots of Paris here).

Asher Kelman: Left Bank of Seine December 201, January 2012

Pont Neuf to left and La Tour D'Eiffel on right.
Ricoh GXR 50mm lens APS-C lens module, stitched in AutoPano Giga
22 images stitched in AutoPano Giga,
Finished in Photoshop CS5

Notice the magenta and pink sky to the right at dawn. The cars still have their lights on in the busy street below that large clock face. The light is shining on the Pont Neuf at the left. The image has been brightened and the sky desaturated as the strong hues colors were really distracting to the architecture of Paris in the panorama. Those two bridges are pretty well parallel to each other, but the 180 degree panorama removes the curve and we get the appearance that the bridge ends are much closer on the southern bank of the Seine!

The final print at 300 DPI can be up to 10" high by 76" long, but I'll likely print it at half that size. I' impressed that the GXR did so well. One nice feature, which I didn't use at the time, is the auto bracketing triggered by just one press of the shutter, captures 3 shots, making it convenient for dealing with shadows and highlights.

Asher

Jean Henderson · Apr 1, 2013

I managed to miss Cem's shot when posted, so I'm glad you have updated and added to the selection now, Asher -- it's probably the closest I'll ever get to experiencing the Left Bank but I do now feel as though I have been there. Incredible work gentlemen!!! Thank you.

Jean

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