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I am building a house at the moment.

At the north side of the house there is a forest.

I wanted to create a very-high res photo of the forest to create a photo wallpaper (rug? what is the correct english word, large scale print to glue to the wall). I do not have any windows on the north side.

This would have a width of >10m though so I would need a high resolution.

I do NOT want a panorama with a visible distortion.

Also as the forest is quite near (see attached picture from the roof, crop of a panorama, in winter, I would take the picture in summer). rooftop picture

What would be the appropriate method to create such a picture? Focus Stacking + Image Stacking to create a superresolution pciture? Would I take pictures from multiple poings parallel to the edge of the forest to counter distortion?

Available Hardware:

  • Sony a6000
  • Sony a7 (friends)
  • different high quality lenses with different focal length
  • Gigapan Epic Pro automated Panorama head

Further Information: The photographic mural should cover the inside of the wall, viewing distance would be between 5 meters (max) at 90° up to 0,5m at 90° and everything inbetween (also other angles).

This would not have to be perfect, but "good enough"

Width would be ~15m, height between 3 and 6

An alternative would be to take an existing ultra-high-res picture of a forest and use this. Not as good concerning locality, but probably much better concerning quality of picture. Any suggestions on a source for a picture like that?

I would like the solution should be doable without heavy investment (Hasselblad, Linear Motion Camera and so on)

mattdm
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DeepB
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    If you want little distortion, you should probably use a tele lens and shoot from afar – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 13:07
  • Do you want this mural along the exterior wall, or indoors? What is the expected viewing distance? What, roughly, is your budget for this? – mattdm Jun 17 '19 at 13:50
  • @timvrhn Which in this case is obviously not possible without tearing down the house, which would otherwise be in the way. – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 13:50
  • @jarnbjo not necessarily – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 13:51
  • @timvrhn If 'not necessarily', then how? Are there tele lenses capable of photographing through the house? – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 13:53
  • @jarnbjo there's elevation too. No idea what is possible behind the house, and how much of the trees OP wants in the picture – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 13:54
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    @timvrhn From the picture in the question, the distance between the house and the trees seem to be about the same as the height of the house. If you wan't to take a picture of the trees from above somewhere behind the house, you would have to do that from an angle of at least 45°. How do you want to do that without distorting the persprective of the trees? If the goal is to make a wall paper with the illusion of looking through the wall out on the trees, the perspective would be way off. – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 14:02
  • Fair point @jarnbjo. Perhaps some lens tilt would work, but indeed not ideal. I was merely stating that in order to prevent distortion, tele lenses are a good option – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 14:05
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    PS: "rug" is almost exclusively for floor coverings. (Or, metaphorically, a terrible wig, but that's a different story entirely.) "Wallpaper" is understandable, although wallpaper tends to be a repeating pattern. Perhaps "large photographic mural". – mattdm Jun 17 '19 at 14:56
  • @timvrhn There's no need to use a tele lens from afar. One just needs to use a wider lens that is truly rectilinear and does not demonstrate geometric distortion. – Michael C Jun 18 '19 at 05:46
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    What is the square root of -1? Sometimes there are no solutions to a particular problem. Creating a distortion free panoramic image of a three dimensional forest from a short distance is one such problem. – Michael C Jun 18 '19 at 05:57

2 Answers2

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What you are asking for is an orthographic view of a very wide, very tall three dimensional subject that can be taken from a relatively close distance.

Theoretically speaking, the most elegant way to do this would be with a linear motion scan camera, a/k/a parallel motion scan camera, such as those used for aerial or satellite ground surveys. Obviously, you'd want a wider angle of view and much shorter focus distance than is typically the case with aerial/satellite photography. Something more like the digital scanning back large format cameras used for art reproduction would be closer to what you need.

The camera scans one vertical line at a time as the camera moves horizontally with respect to the subject or, as is sometimes the case with much smaller subjects, the subject moves relative to the camera as the image is scanned one line at a time.

The camera would need to make several horizontal passes at various heights. The length of each pass would be determined by the width of the forest that you want depicted on the wall mural. Each pass would produce a long strip image with limited height coverage. The collection of the strips could then be stacked vertically in the way panoramic photos are created.

It wouldn't be perfect, but the minor amounts of perspective distortion would all be vertically oriented, so not very noticeable with trees that are much taller than they are wide. It wouldn't be cheap, either. Digital linear motion scanning systems are prohibitively expensive, as is the computational power needed to process such images.

Michael C
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  • Thank you for the answer, unfortunately even though this is technically a solution it is too expensive for me. – DeepB Jun 18 '19 at 08:57
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    @DeepB I think "good enough" can be achieved doing this manually. Draw a line parallel to the wall and take a series of photographs along the line, on portrait orientation. Then merge with a panorama software. The closest I have done is a large field of several microscopic images, and Hugin worked flawlessly (but you'll need quite a lot of RAM). – Davidmh Jun 18 '19 at 15:10
  • @Davidmh With three dimensional subject, what you suggest won't work, as the position of trees further back will move from one side to the other of trees in the front from one frame to the next. The camera needs to be moving the width of one column of pixels as each column of pixels is exposed. – Michael C Jun 18 '19 at 23:57
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I calculated the required image resolution if you have a 12m x 2.5m wall, with a viewing distance of 0.75m.

The rough numbers:
Pixels per inch (PPI): 125
Minimum image dimensions: 58050 x 12300 px
Megapixels: 714

As far as I can tell, the highest MP number cameras can currently reach is 50.6 with the Canon EOS 5DS and 5DS R models. Seeing as how you'll be short by a mere 660 megapixels, there's two options:

  1. Shoot multiple frames, stitch them together later. To create strip-panoramas, the camera moves horizontally and vertically, but keeps the same distance from the subject and does not yaw or tilt. This method will result in a large, high resolution photo. A big plus from this method is that you could effectively counter distortion. It beats the need for a wide angle lens, and instead you can use a regular or tele lens, and stitch together the photos- make this photo a mural, and it will appear as if you are right in front of the trees from any point in the photo
  2. Opt-out of high resolution at close viewing distance, and accept a lower resolution image. Having a close viewing distance is like pixel peeping, that's not how you view entire images and especially with a big wall you will more than often glance over it.

A calculator such as this one should help you in determining the needed image resolution.

timvrhn
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  • I'd appreciate feedback with the downvote. Don't throw a stone and hide your hand – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 14:08
  • OP already knows that he could shoot a panorama, but a requirement is that there is no distortion in the result (which there would very likely be given the constraints of the location). You only answering him that he could shoot multiple pictures and stitch them together, which OP is obviously aware of himself, does not answer the question. – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 14:25
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    @jarnbjo this would be a strip-panorama, a type of panorama without distortion. If you consider this not to be a solution, I happily invite you to present a better alternative – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 14:29
  • If I had a better idea, I would probably already have written an answer. That doesn't prevent me though from pointing out that your answer does not solve OP's problem. I am not sure what you mean with a 'strip panorama' (googling the term only gives me panorama pictures of the Las Vegas Strip), but if you mean a panorama based on a one-dimensional row of source images, these are significantly distorted if you stand close to whatever you are photographing. – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 14:51
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    The whole point of making a strip-panorama by stitching multiple photos shot on one plane is to prevent distortion. As of now it would appear you are disagreeing with the method because you think it introduces distortion, even though it does not! – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 14:58
  • I just asked you what you mean by 'strip-panorama', so using the same term again without explaining what you mean does not bring us closer to a solution. The following paper will explain you why and show examples on how subjects close to the camera are distorted if you make a stitched panorama from pictures taken from one point, where you only tilt or turn the camera: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/multipano/agarwala_sig06.pdf Overcoming these optical restrictions would require a moving camera, but that is not easy without specialized equipment. – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 15:05
  • "the camera moves horizontally and vertically, but keeps the same distance from the subject and does not yaw or tilt". I never said it would be shot from one point, of course that would create distortion! Regardless, I think that paper would make for a good second answer so by all means, go ahead – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 15:12
  • The method described in the paper is also not a solution to OP's question, as the method only solves the problem when photographing subjects within reasonably identical distance from the camera, as in that case the house facades. In this case, there are trees in the forest at different distances from the camera and photographing these from a short distance from different points, e.g. along an imaginary line along the house wall, will caputure the trees at different distances from so different perspectives, that it will not be possible to stitch the images. – jarnbjo Jun 17 '19 at 15:18
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    Given enough overlap, it's definitely possible, just computationally expensive. And maybe not easily done in an off-the-shelf manner. – mattdm Jun 17 '19 at 15:31
  • There are higher MP cameras, but they are fairly specialized/expensive. OP won't escape doing a panorama, if you don't want distortion, do it right, panorama does not imply distortion necessarily.... – Fábio Dias Jun 17 '19 at 15:35
  • @FábioDias right, although trees would move with the camera making it hard to stitch, it doesn't render the method entirely unusable so I don't think the downvote is quite justified. It would be hard, perhaps impossible, to find a proper solution that would capture the scene without any unwanted side effects – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 15:39
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    I don't see how a strip panorama works for a scene like this. There are trees at different distances from the camera; in some shots a tree further away will be to the left of a tree closer by, and in other shots that same tree will be to the right of it. Strip panoramas only work for flat scenes. – Roel Schroeven Jun 17 '19 at 16:02
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    @timvrhn Not my downvote. Ignore the rating, focus on your content. How realistic this thing needs to be, versus the effort? On one side, raze the house down, use a dedicated system to take the picture, rebuild it. On the other, make the wallpaper in sections, edit a bit the edges to remove any glaring discontinuities and move on. Remember, the wall isn't a single viewpoint anyway, the print itself might be the panorama – Fábio Dias Jun 17 '19 at 17:02
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    by the way, another option would be to put some decorative object over the discontinuities, let the brain do the stitching. Like a stylized tree for instance. Makes the whole thing a lot simpler. – Fábio Dias Jun 17 '19 at 17:07
  • @jarnbjo Arguably, you could use a really clean mirror to photograph the trees sideways, putting the necessary distance to the side of the house instead of through it. – Fábio Dias Jun 17 '19 at 17:08
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    One way to bridge the gap from the 50 or som megapixels to the 700 aluded to could be using some supertrsolution technique as described in this article https://m.dpreview.com/articles/0727694641/here-s-how-to-pixel-shift-with-any-camera combined with a high resolution medium format camera like the Hasselblad H6D-400c. The price of this gear is mindblowing but who knows, rental prices might be more manageble. – lijat Jun 17 '19 at 19:07
  • @FábioDias interesting take and that should definitely work. I think such creative thinking is a necessity in this case.. A difficult project – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 22:00
  • @lijat another much cheaper solution would be the use of a medium format or large format film camera. As these are oftentimes still used for professional work, like marketing, their resolution is not to be underestimated. Should work! – timvrhn Jun 17 '19 at 22:02
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    @lijat that's just a panorama with extra steps. Or rather a panorama is a worse version of that. Don't need to be Hasselblads tho, those sonys would work easily. – Fábio Dias Jun 18 '19 at 02:01