Any photographers in here?
- Thread starter ChopstickHero
- Start date
once you stitch them together, make a duplicate layer. once the layer is made, adjust for the middle part that's dark to be even with the rest of the sky. finally, layer mask the adjusted layer on top of the original and voila, instablend.
or another way is to take the pano, save it as pano1. then open up the original again and adjust brightness/contrast/levels. then cut and paste and then layer mask.
in any case, make sure you use a soft brush of adequate radius.
Well, no, not 123lbs applied off-axis to the cup. BUT, the 4:1 safety factor takes into consideration imperfect positioning, dirty surfaces, etc. Careful placement and a clean surface means you will probably achieve or exceed 123lbs of force even off-axis. Besides, when they use these to carry multi-hundred pound granite counter tops into a home they have the weight off-axis.
I agree about the challenges of extending the camera away from the car. The under-car magnetic mount has two things going for it. 1) it doesn't overlap the body nor appear in reflection, and 2) there is only a single bar to PP out of the image. With a triangulated suction cup mount you'd have two or maybe three bars to edit, plus the cups on the body, if visible. Those cups are sizable, too, at 10".
the problem with under car mounts is in the tuner scene, its not always easy to put something under a car due to suspension changes.
and as you say with suction cups, due to their nature you cant always find a good surface to put them on.
my camera can weigh up to 5lbs. and bogen/manfrotto cups are rated at ~6.6lbs IIRC
would you trust 2500$ on the end of that? I know I can't. add in the weight of the rig and movement, as well as leverage as the camera gets further from the suction cup.
having said that, magnets ARE the cheapest way and strongest way I feel.
some strong magnets and piping is all you need.
buddha: when doing pano's use Manual mode if you arent already. and don't use a polarizer.
and as you say with suction cups, due to their nature you cant always find a good surface to put them on.
my camera can weigh up to 5lbs. and bogen/manfrotto cups are rated at ~6.6lbs IIRC
would you trust 2500$ on the end of that? I know I can't. add in the weight of the rig and movement, as well as leverage as the camera gets further from the suction cup.
having said that, magnets ARE the cheapest way and strongest way I feel.
some strong magnets and piping is all you need.
buddha: when doing pano's use Manual mode if you arent already. and don't use a polarizer.
FunkyBuddha
Tuned by Slick Nick
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- 2003 Spicy Orange MSP
no polarizer and it's all manual mode
Rednecks_wife
Sweet 50 on AZMC
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- 1966 Mustang (gone-but only down the street) 1950 Chevy Truck
I got to thinking about making a camera mount to hang the camera outside my car. Only, I wanted to do it tonight, which meant using just what I had on hand. When I got out to my car to work it out I realized immediately I had all the pieces I needed.
Some time ago I made a scrim to soften light from my flash while taking macro shots. The scrim was mounted to one end of a 1"x3"x18" board using a 1/4-20 screw post. My flash was mounted towards the other end of the board on another post. This then attached to a second tripod which was now a light stand.
For the camera mount I simply mounted the camera where the scrim would go and anchored the tripod to the rear door. A camera mount was born...
The set-up:
The angle of the camera is adjustable. I thought this setting was more visually interesting then level.
The results:
The results were mixed. I had difficult time keeping the camera steady. I also longed for more interesting lights to use as a background. Plus, the location of the camera leaves a lot to be desired. Oh, and I don't have a sweet 12mm fish-eye lens. Or an Audi TT.
Anyway, I am still pretty confident that I could rig something using that Anver 10" pump mount that has a max capacity near 500lbs. I think that could really prove versatile, especially if I can make it part of a larger system.
I like
FunkyBuddha
Tuned by Slick Nick
- :
- 2003 Spicy Orange MSP
I need some critique on this too....
the pic seems a little blurry, so i'm going to have to guess camera shake. increase your iso setting and go to town. if you have slow glass at the long end, don't hesitate to use 800 or even 1600 at 5.6 to get decent handholdable shutterspeeds. remember the reciprocal rule. 1/focal length = minimum shutter speed... unless you're rock solid in that area, then you can have a few stops latitude. if you already have fast glass and were using a high iso and the shutter speed was still too slow, flash is probably the only other option. IS of some sort (either mechanical in lens, in body, or by tripod) is paramount in situations like this. even a monopod will help steady things quite a bit. the tiger doesn't seem to be moving too fast, so it probably could have been pulled off. there also seems to be a bit of oversaturation and clipping of the colors in post processing. ease up on the levels corrections to bring back some of the whites and some of the details in the blacks. the dead space on the bottom of the picture makes me wonder why this pic wasn't taken in the horizontal orientation, so perhaps a post process crop job would be in order. keep shooting!
FunkyBuddha
Tuned by Slick Nick
- :
- 2003 Spicy Orange MSP
This was the hardest pic I had to take that day LOL. I have a bad knee at which I can't crouch down anymore. So that's why the pic was a bit shaky because I was half crouched. Flash was used because it was in a shaded area. I wasn't even thinking about raising the iso at that time so it was shot at 100. All I could think about was getting that shot before it went back into the indoor area. Horizontal position was out of the question as where I was standing..I was shooting between a gap of a fence and a gate. I didn't want the flash to be blocked by the posts. Anyways..thanks..I'll redo the PP work on it and see what I can come up with 
so I picked up a 125lb magnet today...and I have to say it has about 20 lbs worth of pull on the most flat part on my undercarriage.
the problem is in the magnet design. they are designed to be taken off an object easily by tilting the magnet to the side. straight pull its surprisngly strong, but not 125lbs.
also if you do the math, 5lbs worth of camera at the end of a 5' pole = a lot of weight.
to give you an example grab a 5 lb sledge and try tilting it from the end.
definitly need at least 2 magnets to put some leverage on the user side.
the problem is in the magnet design. they are designed to be taken off an object easily by tilting the magnet to the side. straight pull its surprisngly strong, but not 125lbs.
also if you do the math, 5lbs worth of camera at the end of a 5' pole = a lot of weight.
to give you an example grab a 5 lb sledge and try tilting it from the end.
definitly need at least 2 magnets to put some leverage on the user side.
What is the material used to make the magnet? Not all magnets are created equal. The strongest permanent magnets [that are readily available] are neodymium magnets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium_magnet
These magnets are available from places that supply industry and science. I picked-up some small neo magnets to hang pictures on a white board. They are too small for my to grip and pull off the board...they are that strong. These magnets are the very same that power tweeters and very high-end speakers. They are used in hard drives to move the read/write head back and forth 100 times per second, but with incredible precision.
Anyway, check out the magnets online. This one, for instance, is 2" in diameter and 1/4" think. It pulls against a steel plate with 184lbs of force! If you can find a way to mount it then I think you'd only need three or four to support the camera. And at just $13 they are cheap enough to use more. http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=RY0X04
EDIT: Some more poking around on the K&J website found these which are designed to be mounted with a screw. The screw head is recessed to make the entire surface flat...perfect for your nees. The force of a single 1.89"dia magnet is 150lbs. What a deal at $9. http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=MM-A-48
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- 2003 Subaru WRX Wagon, 2000 Miata
I thought this was a useful link to share:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=138789
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=138789
mountjonas
Member
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- 2013 VRM MS3
i took this stitch up in Squaw Valley in by Lake Tahoe last month. Nothing special, I just like the view.
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- 2003 Subaru WRX Wagon, 2000 Miata
it looks adjustable.... i did see some other bigger rigs that you attach to the bottom of a car.....
FunkyBuddha
Tuned by Slick Nick
- :
- 2003 Spicy Orange MSP
It's pretty adjustable . Look at the pics he has taken with it. it's pretty cool actually. I'd like to have a cage around the camera though..just in case LOL
i took this stitch up in Squaw Valley in by Lake Tahoe last month. Nothing special, I just like the view.
I can't wait to get back to Lack Tahoe. I think we're trying to go for our 5th wedding anniversary in a few years. I like the pano, although the railing is a bit distracting.
it is adjustable, but not very far. his full car pictures are taken with extreme wide angle.
this will get you better results, but I hear it is not very stable.
I think this is probably the preferred rig in the industry because it is so easy to edit out in post. I can understand that a camera at the end of that long arm would be unstable. I think a secondary arm to another part of the undercarriage would provide at least some additional stability at only a small cost to flexibility and speed of the set-up.
As for making your own, I think you'd have to have access to metal working tools like a metal saw, drill press, etc. Maybe you could get a local machine shop to donate an hour of work. I think if you worked hard at it, you could put together something similar for $400 or about half the retail cost of the pro rig.
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