hi this is les picker with Lester picker fine art photography welcome today we're going to be doing the second video involving panel how to take panoramic photographs and this follows the video I did earlier in the year that I took in the field in Hawaii while I was on location explaining how to take a panoramic photo however during that video I mentioned to two phrases if you will one was parallax issues and the other one was nodal points and people were confused about that and asked if I would at least explain what I meant by nodal points and how does one determine nodal points in order to take more effective and more detailed panoramic images so today we're going to go down to my studio and actually go through hands-on how to determine the nodal point let's start by talking about parallax it's a real issue in photography and basically what we mean by parallax is the repositioning of an image or the what is technically known as the displacement of an image based on the line of two different lines of sight that you're using to look at the image perfect example is this if you take your thumb and hold it out straight in front of you and then just close one eye and then close the other eye alternating between the two your thumb even though you know you're holding it rigid in front of you seems to change position actually what you're seeing is that the background is changing position because from the the angle of view that you're looking at with your left eye differs from the angle of view on your right eye parallax will cause wreak havoc with your panoramic photography if you're not careful so today I thought we'd clear that up and I give you some pointers some very detailed hands-on advice on how to determine your nodal point so that your your panoramas end up being picture or we call pixel perfect similar to this one that you're about to see that our videographer Tim Barker will show you right now if you try to take an image a panorama without taking into account parallax you can run into trouble with your stitching programs it won't always happen so let me stop here right now and say and point this out if you are an amateur photographer you're just looking to take a quick panoramic image forget about what I'm about to say for the rest of this video in fact go watch something else but if you are concerned with pixel perfect panoramas especially if you have objects in the foreground as well as in the background you must take parallax into account so with that as a bit of background let me tell you where nodal points or a pupil entry point comes in the attempt in an attempt to solve that parallax problem it's important for you to determine assuming you have a DSLR what and that you're using a tripod we'll get into that in a moment it's important to determine what the nodal point is now I have to tell you right off the bat that nodal point is the wrong term for it I won't get technical about it but it's become the accepted term in in photography it should really be the pupil entry point that we're talking about it's mainly the place where the lines converge and cross each other as they enter the camera and then cross to hit the sensor we need to determine what that point is and rotate the camera around that point in order to get panoramas that don't display parallax it will make stitching your images much easier in whatever program you use and today's programs like whether it's Photoshop or ptgui or or Nik software these are all very fine products they do an excellent job even if you mess up a little bit but it makes the job far easier with higher quality output if you determine the nodal point of your camera with each lens specifically every lens will have a different nodal point and you must take the time as I'll show you how to do and determine what those nodal points are so without any further ado this is background let's get to looking at the setup I use to determine my nodal points here in our studio alright so in order to get started with this we need to set up two objects that are vertical I'll explain to you how that's done I tend to use the square D products which are a stand like this real simple you can use candlesticks you can use two two poles and whatever you have at home that is straight straight vertical and I'll show you how I get it set up and we'll be right back so we have here the two vertical poles as you can see set up well first hint that I want to give you is whether you use black poles white poles two brass candlesticks makes no difference the problem is going to be that in order to differentiate the two poles you need to make one stand out a little bit the trick I learned is to I just take some painters blue tape because it comes off real easily and I just go like this right down the pole that's going to be in the back so I know there it goes just nothing fancy just wrap it like that and we're done with this part of the of the project to determine the nodal point all right the next phase is I have now as you can see in this video right now I've set up the two poles one is about two meters from me six feet away the other is probably 15 feet away it's not critical you just want one relatively close six to ten feet away and the other about twice that distance there's no formula for it as long as you line them up in a straight line as I'll show you looking through the camera in just a moment now with our vertical pole set behind me as you can see that taped one is in the far distance the plain black goes in the front let's turn our attention to the equipment that we're going to be testing people ask me often what equipment I use I'm not plugging any one product I'll use Nikon Canon just as good you know name the the major brands and you're all fine but critical to any good pano is a stable platform of good tripod in other words I use a get so 35:41 I then mount a really right stuff BH 55 ball head with a leveling base underneath it so I can quickly adjust my camera to bring it to level I also have my nikon d800 mounted with a 2470 lens nikkor lens on it i must tell you i rarely use a 24 74 panel work I usually use a 7200 because I want to focus in real tight and get a whole lot of images so I have a huge pixel count so I can get a lot of detail crisp detail in my panels but in this case just because it will be both too bulky for this video instructional video I'm doing this as a with the 2470 on it just FYI I also have here a really right stuff panel package they sell this it's allows me to not just rotate the camera that's a tripod function but allows me to move the whole package camera and lens horizontally I can also go up and down for if I want to do a multi row pan oh shoot maybe 10 images on the top 10 images in the middle and 10 images down if I'm shooting a valley scene as a landscape and it also allows me to make other adjustments which you might want to make in the future so that's basically the the story here the first thing that you want to do with any panel work is level the tripod so what I'm gonna do first is I'll level the tripod I actually my tripod this floor is pretty level I then go ahead and use this a quick quick leveling base and now I know my everything from the ball head is level and then the final adjustment is using the coarse knob on the tripod itself I will move move this so that it is level so that everything from this point on is level and I can see from the bulb it everything is nice and level alright we're level let's talk about now the the nodal determining the nodal point the first thing that we have to do to determine the nodal point is make sure that the lens is exactly over the rotation center of the tripod notice as I turn this thing around the camera system around the center is here but the lens is way out there it's not rotating right on that pivot point we've got to correct that so I'm going to torque down my tripod nice and good and here's how I determine how I do that really simply I just move this down like this so it's facing straight down with the camera and lens so it's facing straight down next I use either one of these tools here to move this until I see it I just I'm going to eyeball it and I think that that's pretty well right over the center alright there we go now I know that lens is it will rotate as I turn it around that lenses and camera body will rotate as a unit over the center of that the pivot point of the tripod but we're not done because while the camera and lands as a unit are sort of over that pivot point the nodal point is not the point where the light comes in and crosses over to hit the sensor is not over that over the center of the tripod so I have to correct for that and that is where the vertical poles come in to make sure that we we get this right I can see from just looking at it I know the center that nodal point will not be where the camera is now because it's the sensor that's over the center of the of the tripod what I need to do is find out where in this lens that crossover point is so my guess is that it's going to be have to be moved back somewhat like that and then once it's moved back I'll be able to rotate it around and then I know everything is rotating right around the central point where the what is known as the entry pupil the nodal point as we call it will be located and that's where we're going next we're going to figure out how to do that now has gone to the next point which is the exciting point where we're going to actually determine what the nodal points of each of our lenses are first thing I want to tell you is that you'll notice here I have been set up all this time in portrait mode the cameras been in vertical or what we call portrait mode that's because most of your Panos will be shot in portrait orientation don't forget you want an going from left to right as you shoot your pan out you want to get as many slices as you can so when you stitch it to the gate together you have a lot of pixels and they come out crisp and clear and and so on so the first thing so that's that's what I want to do is make sure that it's always in portrait orientation however to determine the nodal point while you can leave it in in portrait orientation most beginners find that it's a whole lot easier if you orient your camera into landscape mode so I'm going to do that now I'm going to torque down my camera so it does my tripod so it doesn't move and then I'm going to just turn this around put this in here and I'm going to tighten it down so that now it's in landscape mode it's nice and sturdy okay we're set the reason why let me show you real simply why it's better in landscape mode is because what we're going to be actually be doing is rotating this camera back and forth to make sure remember the thumb analogy that we use your thumb is going to be solid in front but when you when you close one eye versus the other eye the thumb seem to jump the first pole is going to act as our thumb so to speak the second pole is the background what we want to try and do is get this find the point where the light rays intersect and that way nothing will jump between foreground and background and that creates seamless easily stitched images all right so that's the first thing that we wanted that that's what we have to determine now and we're going to get going with that alright notice how we set up our camera to determine the nodal points where we set up the camera so that and the lens so that it's looking straight in line with both poles that's critical the way I make it easier for myself is I just point the forward leg of my tripod to be in line with the poles and it's just sort of an easy way to to do that I just pointed as as best I can in line with it it's not totally critical some people even go so far as to set down a piece of tape I don't think that that's necessary but whatever okay now the next phase if you recall we already made sure that our lens was right over the center of the tripod that's still true we're going we switched our camera orientation from portrait view to landscape view that was simply so that it makes this process easier the next step is make sure that your camera's right in front of the two vertical poles and slowly I have this as a 2470 lens as I mentioned I actually have it set at 70 the reason is I would never take a pan oh with less than a 70 let's say sometimes perhaps a fifty but 70 is more likely up to maybe 200 is 200 millimetres is how I would shoot a pan oh so as I mentioned I'm just using this lens as an example because it's small and handy so I'll set it to 70 and at 70 I am going to determine whether when I move this camera to the right and to the left whether the pole behind it becomes visible if it becomes visible either way either side you have not achieved the nodal point and all you simply have to do is adjust the camera forward or back until when you do that motion right and left you'd never see the back pole simple as that now it could be like I said candlesticks on one table and then further back on a counter whatever it is it's the same process that's involved you just turn left and right and see if the if a thing moves now something very critical here you've got to do this with every lens that you intend to take a panel with because they differ the nodal point for the camera differ not only that but you should also have the nodal point for each focal point that you will be shooting at so for example I always have on my iPhone I have a I use my Evernote program and I have written down every one of the measurements here for when I'm taking a panel at 50 with this lens at 70 with this lens and since I use my 70 to 200 nikkor mostly to do Panos I have figured out the nodal point at 70 90 110 150 and 200 so I have those as base as the basis and that way when I come into the field I don't have to fiddle around with it I just right away know where to put my camera where to put those brackets I have just moved this attachment to just where it needs to be and Bango I'm ready to shoot of course the camera would be in in portrait orientation so given that I'd like to actually show you some video captures of what this process looks like looking at it through through the through the viewfinder so and here's my this incredible trick that Tim Barker my my videographer and I came up with I have to give credit to Tim because he noticed it as as we were doing this we if you do it in live view I'm going to show you how just stay in Live View and keep it move it to the right or to the left as I mentioned to you and then while it's in live you zoom in one or two clicks and then as you move this as you're watching it in Live View when you get to the nodal point Bango it clicks right in the pole that you used to see to the right or to the left when you get to the right nodal point Bango it disappears so now once you have your nodal point set the only thing left to do is to record the actual information so that when you're in the field you don't have to fiddle with everything you have your marks and you just set up the camera so what you want to do is make sure you know where the mark is that sets the cat the lens over the center of the tripod you come over here you look at the hash marks here to know where in terms of the forward and back orientation this this is and then you want to make a note of this hash mark here to let you know how far forward a fine adjustment you have to make so that the nodal point is in exactly the right spot once that that's done put it in your iPhone put it in your whatever or carry a little card with you make sure you laminate it so it sits at it doesn't get wet and have that card with you at all times have you phone with you and that way it's such an easy process once you get set up you won't even it'll be a no-brainer set no second thoughts you just set up and you're ready to go now that you got your numbers set the hard part is done now you're ready to go out and take some beautiful Panos I wish you the best of luck and I hope this video was helpful to you would love to hear your comments and go out and shoot some lovely Pano's on your own