Nirque has begun using multi row panoramas (stacking them too)
and they look great. Now this is a lot of work as I well know
because I have done a lot of focus stacking. I needed to find a
panoramic head and see what it would do for my languishing dream
of small worlds – macro landscapes. I ordered a panoramic head
but it took a while to arrive. In the meantime it occurred to me that
the three Nikon
PC lenses I have (45mm, 85mm, and 24mm) had not only a tilt
feature (which is why I bought them in the first place) but also a
shift feature which I had done little to nothing with up until now.
These lenses have a much larger image circle than normal lenses
which is what allows one to shift left or right and still have some
subject in view. I thought: why not take shift left, middle, and right
photos and then stitch them together with Photoshop or PTgui. And
so I did. Of course this was not a new idea.
And sure enough, they worked pretty well. Photos taken with the
shift feature of PC lenses certainly stitch easily because they are all
from the same image circle. And why not stack each of the three
photos, retouch them if needed, and then stitch them into a
panorama. The result was relatively great (at least eye opening)
and did not require a lot of special equipment or even a panoramic
head. Plus I could take three photos (left, middle, right) and then
two more, above and below, and stitch them all together into a
single photo. Those of you with PC lenses might want to check it
out. That is the good news. There is some bad news as well.
The shift on Nikon PC lenses goes 11 degrees both to the left and
the right as a maximum. This works pretty well for the resolution but
not as well for handling light. There is moderate to severe vignetting
at 11 degrees. For some reason it seems to be worse on the left
side than the right. It may just be my lens or perhaps some of our
tech folks can explain that. Although the shift can go 11 degrees on
either side, Nikon suggests (and gives marks for) half that range,
about 5 ½ degrees left and right. This is a lot safer and produced
relatively little (certainly less) vignetting.
Another problem with the PC lenses is the focus throw on these
lenses is extremely short, something like 120 degrees and a far cry
from my CV-125 which approaches 720 degrees in focus throw.
The downside of this is that you must focus very, very carefully.
Even a little movement moves the lens a lot, especially on the