Help with my new panorama equipment! – Nikon D800 + 14-24mm & Nodal Ninja

[Douglas Costanzo]

Hi, guys.

I am looking for some help with my new gear.

I have a D800 and a 14-24 2.8 and I bought, from NN, a NN4, the RD16 rotator, the EZ level and the Nadir adapter.

Although I tried a few shots with the instructions I had (6 shots +30 / 6 shots -30 / N + Z), when assembling in PT GUI, I have always one part on the 360 missing, with no capture of a segment, specially if it was at a close range. After that, I tried the same with 8 shots and it worked.

My first question is, although every website that explains how to use the D800 + 14-24 states that it just needs 6 shots, it just worked with me with 8. Something wrong in my shots?

I am seriously thinking about buying the 10.5 DX for this set, as, working with HDR, I am going to shot to many frames for one single composition. Second question is, would be fine to work with this lens, the D800 and the NN4 rotator?

I would really appreciate any help from the members.

Best Regards
Douglas Costanzo
http://www.fdfotografia.com.br

[Sam Rohn]

FX Nikon body like D800 works fine for shooting 360 spherical panoramas with Nikkor 14-24mm rectilinear zoom, you may be having errors where images seem to disappear in stitching app due to lack of overlap info needed to generate control points in those images, like part of a wall or sky that is mostly blank, if this happens try positioning those image by hand in the stitcher and mask out any bits that do overlap other images near edges

14-24mm is a really great lens, but, i would normally only use that lens for panos on a really important museum type interior that had the detail to need it or if i needed more detail at distance in an exterior, or print project etc

Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye (with lens hood cut off) works great on D800 for 360° panos, and much easier shooting, only 4 around at 0° is needed for a complete sphere, this makes life much easier especially if you are bracketing, it gives very good image quality with a manageable workflow, 14mm rect lens shooting 14 images (without bracketing) per pano vs 10.5 fisheye at 4 per pano vs what clients are willing to pay per pano, etc… ;)

here are examples of my own work w 10.5mm fisheye lens on D800 body

http://www.samrohn.com/360-panorama/barcelona-skyline-360-vr-panorama/

http://www.samrohn.com/360-panorama/smith-wollensky-nyc-360-virtual-tour/

there is a brand new Nikkor 8-15mm fisheye zoom which i have been testing the last couple weeks, and i so far like it better than the older 10.5mm fisheye, better resolution at 12mm and better detail especially near the edges, and no need for hacksaw mod on 10.5 lens hood ;)

http://amzn.to/2vK2JTL

with a single row fisheye shooting pattern with 10.5 or 8-15 like i described above, you can also use a much lighter pano head and lens ring combo like nodal ninja R1 or R10 with appropriate lens ring for your lens, this is also much faster to deploy and use vs NN4 or other multi row head

R Series Heads

sam

[John Matulis]

ive used many rigs for many purposes, but its always nice to be able to minimize shots for whatever setup u got. best trick i know to do this is first dial in nodal point really good. then experiment with rotation+tilt+twist to figure absolute min shots needed for sphere. note those angles down, or mark your head/rotator. then in an ideal setting (good static high contrast texture in all directions), shoot with your ideal min shot angles first, then shoot a bunch more at different angles to end up with LOTS of overlap everywhere.

use autopano/panotools/ptgui to find lots of control points in every direction (no bare spots), then spend time getting alignment perfect in ptgui. then delete all source images except your first few ideal min num of shots. save as stitching template.

now u can shoot perfectly stitched spheres, with minimal overlap.

one more thing. manually fine tunning lens settings (focal length, sensor size, multiplyer) is very important.

-budd

[Frank Cornfield]

Hi Sam

When using the new Nikon 8-15 are you shooting with the camera vertical or does it need a tilt back? Also can you show how clean the nadir is before you patch it with this setup.

Thanks

Frank

[Sam Rohn]

nikkor 8-15mm fisheye zoom is fine at 0° at 12mm, but needs slight upward tilt maybe 7.5° at 8mm

these panos were shot with 8-15mm at 12mm on D800, 4 around at 0° + brackets, tripod removal in nadir is hand cloned from surrounding detail but zenith is untouched

Diamond Horseshoe :: NYC :: 360° Virtual Tour

sam

[Frank Cornfield]

Hi Sam, what mount are you using for the d800 with the 8-15?

My initial tests with this lens captures way more of the mount and tripod than I was expecting.

Regards

FC

[Sam Rohn]

any lens that captures more than 180° as nikon 8-15mm does at 12mm will always show a bit of the tripod and possibly the arm on multirow head, but arm would be at edge of image covered by overlap

i have been using the nikon 8-15mm mostly at 12mm and mounting lens on nodal ninja lens ring or camera body on M1-S multirow head, both seem to be working well

https://shop.nodalninja.com/lens-ring-for-nikon-8-15mm-f3-5-4-5e-fisheye-f-mount-f6408/

https://shop.nodalninja.com/m1-s-w-rd10-f8203/

[Aaron D. Priest]

I have both a shaved 10.5mm f/2.8 and 14-24mm f/2.8. I mainly shoot the night sky at wide open apertures. I don’t like my 10.5mm fisheye as a result. The performance is very poor wide open and my copy seems to be severely decentered (one side much sharper than the other when stitching, leaving seams). It’s much better when stopped down to f/5.6 or f/8 during the day for edge sharpness, but it was never intended to be used on a large format camera, especially with the resolving power of a D8xx sensor.

My 14-24mm f/2.8 on the other hand is my absolute favorite lens! Almost half of my Lightroom library was shot with that lens. It is insanely sharp, even wide open. I only ever use it at 14mm or 24mm though, I find anything in the middle to be of little use for 360s. At 14mm my favorite shooting pattern is 2 rows of 6, tilting up and down at ~39°. Most of my night sky 360s are shot with this pattern and stitch very well. You can try shooting only 8 photos with a rotated zenith, but in my experience this does not yield acceptable results at wider apertures, and it doesn’t save me much time in shooting. Here is the more complicated pattern: http://michel.thoby.free.fr/Web_Gallery_&_Tests/Samyang%2014mm/Pano_with_8_shots_only.html

At 24mm I shoot 3 rows of 10 or 12 photos (depending what your rotator supports), tilting up at 55°, level at 0°, and down at -55°. Also stitches very well. I do this more during the day than at night because of the length of time for the exposures at night, but I’ve done it for both. You can also shoot 3 rows of 8 plus a dedicated zenith and nadir, but I don’t find it stitches quite as well if you need to do much deghosting for moving objects.

I’d like to get an 8-15mm fisheye and sell my 10.5mm after seeing Sam’s setup at 12mm on the D850. It works very well!

[Keith Martin]

Really useful info, all of it! But one thing that’s odd is how all Sam Rohn’s posts are ‘by’ Leon. Is there a site glitch?

k

Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.com

[Author]

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