Panorama update

Peter Rowlands · Issue 25, Jul/Aug 2005 · pp. 39

Products mentioned: PanoramaMaker, Nikkor 16mm lens, Nikon D70, Nikon D100, Subal housing, GS viewfinder, fisheye dome port, magic filter

Panorama update by Peter Rowlands Following on from my article on panoramas in the last Issue UwP24 I thought you might like to know that I have found the perfect lens to shoot the individual pictures which can be combined using PanoramaMaker software (www. arcsoft.com). The lens in question is the old 16mm Nikkor which is a full frame fisheye on a 35mm film camera but when it is used on Nikon DSLR cameras such as the D100 and D70 it’s angle is reduced to around 100°. More importantly, being a non- rectilinear design, the geometry remains constant throughout the frame and the reduction in coverage reduces the pronounced barrel distortion almost completely. Both of these attributes are ideal for panorama making because the scale of a subject will remain constant throughout the frame and the reduction in barrel distortion makes matching up the individual images much easier for the software…