stitched atp 1.1 (30 images) - just following up

[dafy]

I've made a few posts on what I'm trying to achieve - platinum prints from stitched film. I have had good success with stitching digital files, and had some promises scanning and stitching old film (cut up 6x7 negs lol), so I tried one. It's ATP 1.1+SPUR, 3x10 images=30, minus a bit of cropping. The image is a disaster, there wasn't enough fluid in my tank (seems it takes approx. 325ml fluid, not Rollei's 250) and there are water marks, but hey, it's the first roll of film I've developed in ten years lol. But I figured I'd try to prove the concept to myself anyways.

What it DOES show, is that there's some promise with the idea of stitching film.

Dead Link Removed

And here's a 100% crop, it was shot at f8, next time I'd shoot at f16:

Dead Link Removed

I gave up on the image cuz, as I say, it's a disaster, but at least I know I can hop on my bike when it warms up and make some beautiful landscapes, or indeed things like this, "found chaos". Hey I did clean the kitchen when I was done

Not sure what the point of this post is, except to say if you're like me and don't do LF or ULF photography, and can't afford a MF digital back or a MF scanner for film, this seems to work

Shawn

 

[gmikol]

Thanks for the post, Shawn...it's an impressive result for a first-try.

In a previous thread, you had said you were using a Minolta 5400...I assume that's what you used to scan this, but what did you end up using to stitch it?

I ask because it looks like there's a really obvious seam-line on the left-hand drawer that's below the sink, but I don't know how evenly-colored your cabinets are, or whether it's a development artifact.

--Greg

PS--with a kitchen that looks like that, I *hope* you live alone

 

[dafy]

Hey Greg, yeah it was the Minolta. The film has a band approx 25%, from start to finish. At first I thought it was a light leak in the camera, but then I realized the band is underexposed, not over. This lead me to think I didn't have enough solution. So I threw a reel in the tank, added 250ml of water, and sure enough, there was about 1cm still left to go. I think it's closer to 325ml of solution required with this tank. I am curious if I can just add the same solution of SPUR (I only have one 'trial pack' left from freestyle, and can just extend the development a bit, or if I need to order more developer? Not a big deal, eventually I'll buy more film, bulk roll and large bottle of SPUR.

So in short, the artifacts you're seeing are the film. I brought each image into Photoshop individually, and started auto-aligning from there. Took quite a bit of work lol. And trying to use the Photomerge option, after a week of trying, I gave up - many crashes, and when it DID work, it did not at all come out right, lots of totally unplaced images. Manual (auto-align a few images at a time, auto-blend, flatten, bring in more images, do the same) was the only way to do it. I'm going to look into other software for this going forward.

Also, I believe Rollei recommends against Photoflo, but I think I need it; the water stains are very prevalent. I used distilled water and no stop bath as recommended, but I should probably buy a squeegie, as someone around here recommended.

Kitchen is clean again I was on holidays for almost two weeks and made a hurricane of the place lol. Yes, I live alone lol...


Shawn

 

[gmikol]

Thanks for the update, Shawn...

I'll recommend Hugin (as I think I did in a previous thread where you brought this up). It's free and open-source, and very powerful...a bit of a learning curve, but not too bad, IMO. I've never used the alignment and merge features in Photoshop, having used Hugin since it's (relatively) early days.

Download it and give it a try:
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

Good luck--

Greg

 

[banksy]

What it DOES show, is that there's some promise with the idea of stitching film.

There's a bit more than 'some promise' - people have been shooting film, scanning it, and stitching together the results into panoramic images for years .

Generally the images are derived from shifts on the front/rear standard of LF gear, or by rotating smaller format cameras about the nodal point of the lens (for distant subjects rotation about the nodal point is less important).

 

[dafy]

Ah, I remember you saying that now, Greg, I'll try Hugin for sure.


I'm aware that you could stitch a few images, I've been able to myself as I say (from cut up MF negs), but I'm surprised for some reason that I was able to do it with 30 images using film. I'm not trying to say I invented something, only that I was able to prove the concept to myself - enough to consider doing it seriously

There's a bit more than 'some promise' - people have been shooting film, scanning it, and stitching together the results into panoramic images for years .

Generally the images are derived from shifts on the front/rear standard of LF gear, or by rotating smaller format cameras about the nodal point of the lens (for distant subjects rotation about the nodal point is less important).

 

[gmikol]

Following up on a conversation I had with Shawn, here's the same 30 frames stitched "automatically" with Hugin.



(click for full-size)

It took me maybe 90 mins., start to finish. I didn't even try to eliminate the density differences. The granite pattern on the countertop, plus the processing artifacts gave the automatic control point generator fits, so about half that time was manually locating matching points between pairs of images. The actual rendering (of 1500 dpi frames) only takes a minute or 2 on a 3 year old Win XP machine.

There's a minor defect in the line of the drawer and cabinet door below the dish drainer, and on the handle of the oven door, because there were just no landmarks to create control points from.

I decided to post this not to illustrate that one way is better or worse, but since I suggested using Hugin instead of by hand, I thought I should "Put Up or Shut Up".

Personally, I think the perspective is better with this one...on Shawn's, the cans at the right edge of the frame were looking a little distorted.

--Greg

 

[pellicle]

looks good ... did you try ptgui?

 

[dafy]

Wowzers, that's the perspective right out of the software? Mine looked like a fisheye lens, no matter what settings I chose. So it's settled: I'm switching software. Good job man!

Shawn

 

[gmikol]

looks good ... did you try ptgui?

Nope...at $100-$200 USD it's just not worth it to me. (I know there's a watermarked free trail available). I've found Hugin to do everything I need it to do.

That being said, PTGui and Hugin share a common ancestor (the original Helmut Dersch panotools libraries), and have more-or-less kept pace with each other in terms of development, AFAIK. I can't see PTGui producing results that were substantially different from what I produced, given the same inputs, though I don't know what it currently uses for automatic control point generation.

--Greg

 

[gmikol]

Un-cropped version:


(click for full-size)

It's a rectilinear projection, so the perspective is the same as that of an ideal camera lens with HFOV sufficient to cover the area, about 20-24mm on a 35mm frame in this case. I compromised a little bit, as you can see not all the verticals are perfectly vertical. But everything started to look a little stretched when I tried to straighten all the verticals.

And final image placement and projection preview are real-time and interactive with an accelerated (OpenGL) graphics card, so it's easy to fine-tune the look of the final image.

--Greg

 

[dafy]

Hugin seems to have installed on my obnoxious iMac (new 27" top of the line which is a POS). I'll give it 6 hours to do it's thing before I open Hugin, have a few beers, sleep, and wake up tomorrow to find out my Apple yet again is confused...I wish my PC worked...

 

[gmikol]

6 hours? What does it need to do?

FYI--One thing I ran into while putting this together is that not all images had *exactly* the same dimensions. That's an absolute must.

--Greg

 

[dafy]

Nah, I'm just Apple averse. Truth is I need to add some RAM and an external drive or two, and the iMac should be OK. I do find its interface quite unintuitive, though, after decades of Windows.

I believe they have to be the same size too in Photoshop if you use the merge feature. However in my case I simply added each image as a layer in a file and auto-aligned, one image at a time, I think is how I finally did it. I tried several ways...

Hugin is installed and seems to be running fine.

I'm not going to waste any time on this image though, except to learn the Hugin interface, since it's just a test. I'll do another one with actually enough developer in the tank this time lol...I guess that means I need to drink more beer and make more dirty dishes to get the shot

Shawn