How do I use the Canon EF 16-35/2.8L with Hugin?

Question

I'm trying to create 360-degree panorama with Hugin, a Canon 5DMkIII, and Canon EF 16-35/2.8L, at 16mm and f/5.

I took 72 images of my surroundings and am trying to combine them in Hugin. I've tried various lens types (normal, panoramic, orthographic,etc.) with no effect. Hugin is unable to align on its own more than 10 images, and when I add control points to the other images, they are not shown on the updated panorama.

What kind of settings should I use with Hugin for it to work properly with EF 16-35/2.8L images?

Should I should try another lens? I've also got the Canon EF 8-15 f/4L fisheye. What lenses have you guys had success with in Hugin?

Answer 1

Your lens should be marked as "Normal" in Hugin, and the focal length multiplier of your camera is 1.0.

The auto-alignment in Hugin can be frustrating at times. I have found that the wider the field of view the more difficult it is for Hugin to align images. There are also a few different algorithms that you can choose to automatically select and align control points. The best one (by far!) is called autopano-sift-c. This algorithm is not part of the official Hugin installer (due to a legal issue related to patents). You have to install it yourself. If you are not using autopano-sift-c then you should give it a try. But even with autopano-sift-c, in pretty much every panorama I do I have to add more control points over the ones that Hugin finds on its own to improve the stitching.

Using the optimizer also requires some practice, since it has a lot of options. I typically start with a rough alignment of just orientation, then incrementally add more variables as needed. I use the "Custom" option a lot, to only optimize for the pictures that have problems, leaving the ones that are okay alone.

I've got decent results with autopano-sift-c using any "Normal" lenses, I believe the widest one I've used is 17mm. I have not had any luck at all using full frame and circular fisheye lenses though, for those I always select my control points manually.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Your 16-35 is a rectilinear normal lens, so you should mark the images as Normal (rectilinear), and fill in the appropriate focal length and crop factor (1.0) for the 5DMkIII. What I'm not sure of is why you have 72 images.

Full coverage of the sphere with a 16-35 on full frame at 16mm only requires 17 to 29 images. Having nearly three times that many images, unless you're bracketing for exposure fusion or HDR, is probably what's causing Hugin to have issues stitching--the overlap is too large.

If you bracketed for high-dynamic range processing, then you simply need to organize the bracketed sets into stacks. Otherwise, you probably need to remove the redundant images where there's too much coverage of the same area for stitching.

You could use the 8-15L, either at the 8 or 15mm end of the range, and mark the images as either Circular fisheye (8mm) or Full frame fisheye (15mm). The advantages would be that you'd only need eight images: 6 images at 0° rotated in yaw at 60° intervals, a zenith and nadir shot. (If you're really careful with minimal overlap, you might be able to get away with four shots at the 8mm end, rotated in yaw at 90° intervals), but your resolution, and probably your image quality, will be lower than if you use a rectilinear ultrawide.

I've successfully used the Sigma 8mm f/3.5 fisheye on my XT, 50D, and 5DMkII, as well as the Rokinon/Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 for micro four-thirds on my GX7. The Sigma 8mm f/3.5 for dSLRs is a popular low-cost option as a pano shooting fisheye lens, but if you already have the 8-15L, you don't need it.