Deer feeding in Nara Park, Japanese National Treasure in Japan
View all panoramas by H. Adi Saputra
Deer feeding in Nara Park, Japanese National Treasure in Japan
My name is Adi Saputra,
I am living Japan, one of a photographers paradise.
I started photography when I was in College, the first DSLR was Canon 10D back then, but it was too expensive to own one.
So after I got a job I immediately get myself a Canon 20D, it was a dream come true owning a DSLR back then. Soon after I discovered QTVR while browing on the web, someone was doing QTVR with a 10D, sigma 8mm f4 and a Manfrotto pano head, so I decided that I must get a fish eye, so I bought a Sigma 8mm, and the party begins ...
At that time it was unnusual to find a reasonable panohead, I made my self a home made pano head from 2 pieces of steel frame. It was very light but suffers from parallax error. The stiching software was also rare, some kind people provide home brew panorama software, but the more sophisticated software was still ridiculously expensive, for example, a plain panorama stiching software was about US$600 at that time.
Finally PT.GUI came to the rescue. It was about $50 with lots of editing features. By now there are many photo stich softwares out there with wonderful features (I am still waiting for affordable controlable time lapse and pin point sound source, I am sure it`s just around the corner now).
Nowadays I use a Canon 40D nodal ninja 3 II and a Tokina 11-16 for panoramas.
My equipment for panos:
.Canon 40D the live view mode is indispenable, sometimes the 20D.
.Cable release is a must.
.Sigma 8mm F4: only need 4 photos, + zenith to ellimiate vigneting. This lens is good for night photos, or with lots of people. but the resolution is limited. I rarely use it anymore unless for small spaces, crowded places, or night photos.
.Tokina 11-16: much sharper corner to corner than the sigma. I bought it not for panos, but it takes sharp photos that I end up using it the most for panos too. The downside is I need 24 photos, not a big deal on tripod, but a headache with scene with people (you got chops of people); at this time I sometime use a CPL or a 3 stops ND filter to blur up the people.
.Nodal Ninja 3 II, good affordable pano head.
.Slik monopod for tripod forbiding places
.A carbon fiber tripod (if you can afford it, get a carbon fiber).
.A ball head, it let you set up quickly, and get the quick release!
Cheers
-Adi-
