Problem with some straight lines with Hugin

Hello,

I’m regularly making panoramas with Hugin, and I noticed some “style” of pictures are giving me problems. I took many shoots in a railway station 2 days ago, and I can’t obtain a good panorama. The lines on the floor at the foreground are not aligned. You can notice some “gaps” where the images blend. I already had this problem with a guardrail, who would not stay straight.

I already tried to add some control points, but this is even worst.
Has someone see this type of problem, and would have a solution ?

Just tell me if you need more infos and/or images.

Thanks !

Michaël

Here is the second example :

Those look like parallax errors to me, meaning that your camera was not set up to pivot around the no-parallax point (sometimes called the “nodal point”) when the photos were taken.

In a nutshell - the errors are caused by the images being taken from slightly different places. There is very little that can be done to fix it in software.

“Regular” tripod pan/ball heads pivot around the camera sensor, but for stitching panoramas you need to pivot around the lens no-parallax point (the point in the lens where the light rays converge) instead. It’s not always a problem (ie. can be hidden by a carpeted floor, or if you’re shooting from a bridge at a skyline and there are no elements close to the camera, for example.)

There are tripod heads specifically designed to eliminate parallax, but they tend to be expensive and bulky. If you’re doing just a single-row horizontal panorama, you can just use a nodal QR plate with a regular ballhead (I use something like this: Amazon.ca ).

Good luck. :slight_smile:

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It’s pretty easy to find said no-parallax point; stop down the lens and look for the entrance pupil from the front. Then mount the camera on the rail with the entrance pupil dead-centered over the head.

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Thanks for your answers.

For the first picture, i took it with my smartphone. So it’s difficult not too move.

With the second picture, it was shot with my DSLR, but without tripod.

I must admit, I very often shoot with raised hands. Hugin makes such a great job, that I forget about the tripod. But with this type of foreground, it seems you have to take more attention about how to shoot…

Unless you have a really close foreground, panoramas can work handheld.

Make sure you lean back slightly so the lens is centered over a foot, and then pivot around that foot.

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Thanks. I’ll have a new occasion to shoot this again, so I’ll try to follow what you tell me.