- We've talked about fish-eye lenses, and now we have a few
standard wide-angle lenses, so let's talk about some
of the pros and cons of this kind of lens.
- Yeah, well I think the first pro is that
many people already own these lenses,
and let's be honest, if you're looking to reduce
the barriers to shooting, having the lens already
in your kit means that you can go shooting this afternoon.
So, I think that's a big benefit is that these
are standard lenses that most people have.
For example, on this Sony here, I've got a 16 to 35
which is sort of my workhorse lens
on this full-frame sensor.
I use this a lot with landscape shooting, panoramic shooting
and at 16 millimeters on the full-frame sensor,
that's pretty usable.
- So these are still wide-angle lenses.
I wouldn't consider it exactly a standard lens
that we carry around with us everyday
but if you have something in the range of 24 millimeters,
I think that's a really great place to start
to shoot some panoramas.
And if you have something as wide as 16 millimeters
that's even better because one of the negatives to this
is that you're gonna take more shots.
The longer the lens, the more shots you're gonna need.
- But you do get higher resolution
so while it means more work, you're gonna end up with
more resolution in the photos and if print is
an intended output, well, that could be a benefit.
Particularly, we have a micro four thirds camera here.
And, smaller sensors so that 12 millimeter lens
behaves like a 24, but it's decent megapixel count
and we can get pretty good results.
Something sort of insane here, like the A7R II
with incredible resolution, well we've got a very easy time
of making high-res photos,
but shooting this is gonna give us a good balance
of the effort.
It's not like were on a telephoto lens here.
We could still get by at 16 with probably doing
45 degree turns which is really gonna be something
like 45, 90, we're looking at about eight shots total.
- So you'll us that sensor eight times over,
so you'll use that 42 megapixel for eight times,
although there's significant overlap
so it won't really be eight times, the 42 megapixels
but...
- It's still gonna be freakin' big.
(laughs)
So you'll have a lot there.
- And one of the advantages too if you don't have
one of these enormous amount of resolution cameras,
using the less-resolution cameras allows you again
to use that sensor over and over
and then stitch them together so you in effect
can have a very large resolution result.
- Now if you are gonna be shopping for a lens like this,
one thing to keep in mind that buying a zoom lens
may be more expensive than buying a prime lens.
And while I like zooms because they give me a lot of
flexibility in my photography, there is a certain benefit.
Ron, I'm sure at some point in your career,
and you know people who've done this in the middle
of a shoot, they slightly bump the zoom ring,
and what does that mean in terms of being a 360?
- Well, we haven't talked about parallax yet,
but that will change the point in the lens
where the light is entering, and you could
end up with stitching errors when that happens.
- Yeah it could be very difficult
particularly if you move it a lot to get a smooth 360.
- One of the best things to keep in the camera bag,
couple pieces of gaffer tape.
Just go ahead and tape that zoom ring over
and you can be pretty sure that it won't move.
- And I sometimes just keep some of the rubber bracelets
or a Bongo tie, same idea, just putting something across,
but gaffer tape is nice too, because it's easy to remove.
You don't have to worry about it gunking up the lens itself.
- The pros and cons to the lenses are really the same
as any other photography really where you wanna have
a fast lens, a good quality lens.
I like the prime lenses because you can get a prime lens
better quality, less money typically.
- And less weight.
- And less weight, especially in the situation with these
micro four thirds cameras I can carry that 12 millimeter
lens right in my pocket and always have it available.
- And if you're backpacking or traveling around a city
shooting panoramic photography all day long
every ounce adds up at hour number 10 of the shooting day.
So, this works pretty well.
Any other parting advice for folks
on these types of lenses to think about?
- Well this one if you're going to do a 360,
there's more images, and it's also more images
tilting up and down if you want to cover more
of the vertical field of view.
We're gonna talk more about that later
but the shooting process does take some more time.
- Yeah, and that's gonna effect whether you've got
the camera mounted which way.
In this case we've been keeping both of these cameras
mounted in sort of a landscape orientation and we'll dig
deeper into this later, but you can certainly
turn the camera into more of a portrait orientation
and that's gonna effect the number of shots
that you need as well.
- When it's time to shoot, I highly recommend you do it
in portrait orientation, yes.
- Well, we're gonna walk through all of those settings
and while we've talked about fish-eye lenses
and sort of standard wider angle lenses,
sometimes there's a reason to shoot on telephoto lenses.