Panoramic Photography DO WE NEED THIS?

hi guys and welcome to this week's video it's about this thing it's called a nodal rail or a nodal slider or a no parallax rail or a no parallax slide it's known by many different things but the most important thing is it's used quite extensively by photographers to take panoramic images about two years ago i created a guide on how to take the perfect panoramic image but quite a few of you moaned and complained because i didn't use one of these things i didn't use one and the truth be told i never used one never have used one and it's for a very good reason but just to prove either my point or to prove the fact that i'm wrong i've now bought a nodal rail and i'm going to extensively test whether i need to actually use a nodal rail or not so i've devised a series of three tests two of them i'll perform here and the third one i'll perform at another location in glencoe the third one in glencoe by the way is the one that will definitely determine whether this thing is more beneficial for us as panoramic landscape photographers so please don't miss that one anyway that's it that's what this video is all about in case you didn't know what this device was designed to do or to prevent it's to prevent what's called a parallax from happening whilst taking a panoramic image there are lots of good videos uh on youtube and i would suggest that you go and check them out but i'll briefly explain it if you have an obstacle in the way of the camera there whilst taking a panoramic image from left to right then the camera will notably pick up different elements behind the obstacle depending on where it is a bit like myself moving back and forward if i place that there right in front okay it's a bit like me taking a panoramic sweep like this now you could see if you imagine i'm the background the camera when it moves from left to right or right to left whatever will actually pick up different parts of the background it's a really basic explanation that like i say there are lots of good videos online i do urge you to go and check them out just so you've got a basic or a better understanding of what this device is really designed to prevent having said that let me now give you the reasons why i feel before we even start this test why i feel we don't need one of these or why up to press i've never used one now i could be going out on a limb here because i'm going to explain to you before i've run any of the tests i promise you i'm going to make this bold statement before i have run any of the tests so it might well be that i have to eat uh humble pie at the end of the series of tests but i don't mind being proven wrong every now and again but look let me explain the reasons why i've never used one of these and in my opinion the reasons why i and you will never need to buy one of these now we talk about the parallax effect and it is it is a thing it definitely is a thing but it's only a thing if the object you're photographing is very close to the camera now us as landscape photographers tend to photograph things that are miles away in which case a slight movement of your camera here makes no difference when you're photographing something that is miles and miles away possibly it just won't have any effect whatsoever when i climb a mountain sometimes i don't take all my heavy gear with me sometimes i'm out about just with my camera if i see a scene and i've seen lots of photographers doing this as well i might put my camera in portrait orientation and hand hold my camera and i'll do this now that is definitely something you should not do according to the purists that always use a nodal slider i'm now moving the camera front element this distance and yet when i stitch them together in post-production it makes not a jot difference again because i'm focusing on something that is miles and miles away very often likewise my tripod head i don't use i haven't got an akka swiss head on there i don't use an l bracket i will do for the purpose of this test or these series of tests my camera tilts in portrait orientation all the way over here it's not even on a center point it's not on a center point it's over here so my camera is over here and i will basically do a sweep from left to right and once again i've never once had an issue stitching the images together or ever once thought damn i wish i owned a nodal slider or one of these call it what you may so there you go that's my bold statement before we even get going if i have to eat humble pie then so be it by the way i mentioned hand holding that wasn't going to be one of my tests i'll now add it to the tests in which case instead of three there will now be four separate tests all right let's crack on [Music] i'll very briefly talk you through each of these setups but if you want a more comprehensive guide on how to shoot panoramic images then i'll leave a link at the end of this video for this first test i'm going to shoot handheld then i'm going to shoot in my normal way and then i'm going to shoot using my slider [Music] i'm going to set my camera up just like i would do if i was on top of a mountain just so you know and for consistency i've got my 16 to 35 mil lens on the front of the camera and i'm going to set it at 35 mil like i say just so it remains a constant i've checked the settings and everything seems to be perfect my iso is at 500 i'm at f 8 and i'm at 160th of a second that should be good enough for me to hand hold this camera next i've chosen my focus point which is going to be that building and then i'm going to set my focus to manual so therefore my camera set in manual i've got my settings right and i've got my focus point so nothing will change while i do a sweep from left to right portrait orientation get a nice firm grip i'm going to aim from the left hand side perhaps going a little bit further out than i need to and i'm going to take the first picture and then i'm going to move my body and make sure i overlap quite considerably overlap take your time there you go now that is exactly what i would do if i was on top of a mountain no filters nothing test number one in the back next i'm going to set my camera up in the normal way so what's really important before i do anything is to make sure that my tripod head is nice and level luckily on this particular tripod i have a level head on there so that's perfectly fine that is so so important next is to make sure that my camera is level as well just bring up the level on there and make sure that's level and that's as good as level make sure i'm at 35 mil just to keep it nice and consistent and now of course i don't need to worry about the iso because i'm not hand holding it so i'm going to drop my iso right down i'll leave it at f 8 but this time slowing my shutter speed down using my histogram i've ended up at an eighth of a second which is perfectly fine so now i'm just going to set my two second delay timer and as normal i'm using a 0.9 soft grad nothing else apart from a 0.9 soft grad just to balance that light out in the sky with the light on the floor that looks fine okay i'm just double checking to make sure that that focus is on the body which it is focus straight to manual of course you won't have to do that if you use back button focus and that's it so that's the camera now set up ready and raring to go remember this is how i would normally take my landscape panoramic images and you could see where the camera now sits on the tripod it's all the way over to the left hand side so therefore if ever there was going to be an issue with parallax it's going to be now cool okay two second delay timer let's go a little bit further out than we need to so that shutter speed down touch more that's it sixth of a second happy with that okay let's go for that one image now i'm going to go one two three that's the beauty of having a a tripod head like this i could keep consistency now throughout the range of images one two three oh it's getting cold it's bitingly cold one two three there you go that's that shot taken care of next i need to put my camera onto an l bracket and set up my slider this is the third and final test as you can see my camera is now set up on an l bracket and the l bracket is set up on the slider now this isn't a comprehensive guide on how to use the nodal slider but basically what you're trying to achieve is the front element of the lens needs to be in the center axis the center point of your tripod head so in other words if i just briefly show you the camera is normally sat like that that's where the tripod head is and that's how far forward the lens protrudes so as you now move from left to right you could see that the movement of the front element is protruded out and that's what causes the parallax so to overcome that we have a slider whereby we can now slide it back and bring the front element right on the center axis right on the point on the swivel point i think that's the best way of explaining it right there and that's perfect so now you can see when i swivel from left to right it's the back of the camera that has all the movement it's the back of the camera so normally it's that but with a slider on move the slider on and now it's the back of the camera that does all the movement and not the front element of the lens i think that's the best way to describe it right so everything is set up as normal live view let's go all the way out to the left hand side from where i was before and make sure double check everything's level i've got my focus point on to the botty exactly the same as my other two shots and let's grab the shot two three and basically it's just rinse and repeat i'm going to post-process these in exactly the same way so first of all let's look at the handheld image i'm going to open all 10 images up into acr of course you could do this in lightroom if you want to or whatever post-production software you use press control and a right mouse click and merge to panorama now there's so much we could do with this image we could click on the boundary warp to get these edges right and get that horizon and floor nice and level we can click on fill edges to fill all of those edges in and that's before we've even placed this image into photoshop however for the purpose of this exercise i'm leaving everything off everything even the auto crop except apply auto settings that's the only thing i'm going to leave on let's call that pano handheld and click on save let photoshop do its thing and then click on open and that is exactly what i expect to see the image look like now we're just going to repeat the same process [Music] so in conclusion that's the handheld image and i expected it to look just like that that is the image that i took in my normal way with my camera tilted at 90 degrees over to the left hand side of my tripod head and that is the image captured on an l bracket with the nodal slider and my normal way and the nodal slider as you can see what we need to look at a true representation of how well this image has been taken or captured is by the amount of gap on the edges there remember there's no correction done on any of these images as you can see from that image there and that image there very little difference in the corners if at all any on to test number two as you can see i've moved a lot closer to the body i've even placed the botties roof and chimneys into the land into the background so if anything i'm trying to encourage a bit of parallax i am going to have to move fairly sharp though because every five minutes the heavens open so i'm really struggling in terms of i'm having a rush this bit so i do apologize the only one tip i will give you is i want to flatten that water out because if you flatten the water out then it'll make stitch in the images a lot better or a lot easier should i say that's a good tip especially if there's a lot of wave action if you find yourself at the seaside and you're taking images of the sea with a fast shutter speed then sometimes you'll find it's very very difficult to stitch those images together flatten the water out that's the answer i carried on with the experiment photographing in my normal way and then in with the nodal slider and once again there's very little difference between them this image you're looking at now is the image that i took in my normal way and this one with the pano slider this one my normal way this one with my nodal slider and as you can see if you again concentrate on these edges this is normal this is what i'd expect to see no matter how you shoot a panoramic image and click on the nodal slider and it's exactly the same the pattern is ever so slightly different but the image has stitched together exactly the same for the final part of this experiment welcome to location number two [Music] [Applause] [Music] now it's a bit of a weird thing to say this when i get set up but this is the least important one but the most important one i'll let you explain um i would never claim that you wouldn't need a nodal slider when you're trying to take a panel shot where the subjects are this close to the camera if you remember i said right at the start of this test that a nodal slider is really ideal for anything so it's really close to the camera now we're talking about subjects that will be in the frame that are only three feet away so i must admit when i captured a pano shot in my normal way even i was very surprised by how this image turned out so for me i'm expecting the nodal slider to be really advantageous at this point but uh yeah i'm gonna go i'm gonna i'm gonna shoot them both anyway because i personally am really interested to find out how much better the image will look if at all when you use a slider okay so let's get set up it might be a little bit noisy here and i apologize if that is the case all right let's get started in my normal way i want a 0.9 soft grad filter and i'm going to use my polarizer as well make sure my tripod is under percent level next let's make sure my camera is level so now i should be able to do a sweep from left to right and i'm going to replicate the shots that i took here i'm gonna try and replicate them the best i can now this is gonna be a real test because i'm at 16 mil here like i say the first subject in actual fact if i put you on video mode the first subject is here and that's really close to the camera so if i would do a sweep like so like that then if ever there was to be any obscurity in the image it would be now so for this i want to slow that shutter speed right down i want movement in the water because it's easier to stitch plus as far as i'm concerned it looks much nicer next i'm going to choose a focus point and i'm going to choose a focus point on that wall just over there only because the viewers i will probably be drawn into that but at f16 if i focus there everything in the image will be suitably sharp so let's get a focus point on that rock like so once again just a recap tripod nice and level camera nice and level my settings are in the camera in manual so they will not change when i do a sweep from left to right i could adjust the 0.9 soft grad ever so slightly as more of the sky is in the juice as i come along but i really won't need it right okay let's go from there two second exposure let's see what that looks like one two perfect that looks really nice right so i've now attached the normal slider i've set everything up in exactly the same way as before i haven't made any adjustments um the lights come out a little bit in the sky [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Gary Gough

Views: 12,273

Keywords: How to photograph Panoramas, landscape panoramas, photography, landscape photography, panorama, how to, tips, making a panorama, tricks, photoshop tutorial, landscape panos, create panoramas, photography ideas, photography tips, learn photography, gary gough, landscape photography tips, landscape photography settings, nodal slider, nodal rai

Id: I5odGcQPodY

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021