30" x 80" Print - Help!

I have been asked by my wife's company to provide them with a large panoramic print they wish to have plak mounted and hung in their conference room. Its more like a commssion job as they want the image to be of this years Colorado fall colors. I was gonna head out to for that anyway, but now I have someone looking to have a print made from my future work. I've done this before where someone requests something specific to be photographed rather than just going with an image I already have, but its never been with the goal of making a print that size. I figure a good way to achieve a file that would print that size is to do a multi image stitch with my D200. Does that sound like a reasonable approach?? I also have a Fuji GW670 III camera, but not sure a single frame of 6x7cm Velvia cropped to that aspect ratio would enlarge to that size well. I suppose LF would be the best way to go, but there's no time for me to acquire the equipment and become competent enough with that route. I would appreciate any suggestions folks could provide. This sounds like a fun challenge both personally and professionally and I really wish to make the most of this opportunity.

I would definitely do this with stitched pano in mind. Try some practice shots before fall colors arrive, so you'll be ready when they're prime.

Or you could just give them my number, since I have a whole bunch of half-slide LF fall shots.

Very cool Doug! Good luck with this!

I'm afraid I can't speak to the method of stitching from the D200 files, but it sure seems alot of folks are doing that with awesome results. I'm sure you'll get some great info about that.

What I can answer to is that a good friend of mine shoots nothing but 6x7 trans, multiple frames, and scans and stitches. And they are incredible. Last one I saw ( we printed them here at work) was 33"x96". Not sure how many frames that was though. Of course that means extra money for some nice drum scans too!

Good luck, and let us know how that goes!!

I'd say it's easiest to do the multi-image stitch with the D200 - stitch ~5 vertical shots together and you should be OK. If you want better clarity, you can try stitching multiple rows of shots (2x9 vertical shots or 3x6 horizontal shots should leave you with ~250ppi worth of data after overlap; that's more than enough for that print size.)

Rent a 6x17? Camren has a couple of panoramic-type cameras available, I see.

...hope you have plenty of RAM in your computer!

Good luck with that project - and please post a smaller version here sometime!

Ken

Congrats Doug! You should be able to get plenty of data and lots of detail stitching a pano. I've just started taking panos, so I'm sure there are better people to offer the technical details. I think the shoot is the hardest part. CS3, AutoPano, etc make the stitching pretty easy. If the exposures are good, the blends will be seamless and the post processing will be easier. I'm definately shooting fall panos this year.

I see you have several panos on your site, are those crops or stitches?

The troop here should have good tips for stitches if you need the help, plus the numerous tutorials online. Some things I try to follow:
1. Get, and keep, your tripod and head level
2. Don't use a polarizer
3. Use manual or aperture priority to keep the same DOF
4. Use sunny or cloud white balance, not auto, so the white balance stays the same in each shot.
5. I bracket each exposure. Even if I don't plan to do any HDR/Blend stuff, I've found that an exposure up or down 1/3-1/2 a stop blends better and looks better due to the different orientations. Some of this is how wide your trying to shoot. 150-180 degrees and you can have big differences in the sky at the same exposure.

Sorry if all of this is redundent. Good luck!

Or, you could just farm it out to someone with an 8x10 and get it in a single shot Just kidding! Good luck and as mentioned before, the hardest part will be getting the shot. Let us know how it all goes.

Wow, lots of great suggestions. I sure do appreciate them.
Kalin - Some of the panos on my webpage are crops and some are stitches. I have PanoramaMaker by Arcsoft and it does a great job of stitching.
Tony - When the customer told me how big a print he was looking for I immediately thought about you and your 8x10 rig.

As someone who shoots with a Fuji G617, I'd encourage you to consider renting an MF panoramic camera, whether one of the Fuji models, a Linhof, or the newer Gaoersi or Fotoman camera. I've printed several images at ~26"x72", as well as one that was ~30"x96" with my equipment and Velvia and they're stunning!

Good luck,

Tim!

Doug, stitching sounds like the way to go with this and since you have already done it on other images you have some experience in your pocket too. I don't think the 10MP D200 would make a high quality 30in vertical image, so you will probably want to do multirow stitching. If you haven't done this yet, it's not much harder than the single row, but you might want to practice this before attempting your money shots this fall. A 2x10 image mosaic would really look great at this size.