Using the Voigtlander FE 65mm f/2 APO-Lanthar for Panoramic Stitching
Related: apochromatic, Brian K, image stitching, Inyo National Forest, panorama, Patriarch Grove, peak bagging, Voigtlander, Voigtlander FE, Voigtlander FE Macro APO-Lanthar 65mm f/2 Aspherical, Voigtlander Lenses, White Mountains
I was rummaging through some work from late 2019 and I was a bit annoyed at myself for seeing hundreds of images hardly sorted or ever looked at, and yet there is some good work there. It will probably never see the light of day.
Such a nice year 2019, in 2020 I felt robbed of the fall-color season and most of the entire fall (choking health hazard forest fire smoke). And (ill conceived name) Long-Haul COVID hit me hard for 6 months. But so many of us were degraded by COVID or its policies, so I’ll just look at the bright side for this year.
248GB of memory needed
On a lark I assembled this 34-frame 630 megapixel two-row panorama using the Voigtlander FE 65mm f/2 APO-Lanthar. It is a spectacularly good lens for stitched panoramas. That said, I think the Sigma FE 105mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art would have been better here (did not exist for Sony at the time) for its longer focal length.
It helps to have 384GB of memory and 28 CPU cores and it still is tedious process to work with such panoramas.
I’ve added the 630-megapixel finished panorama below at sizes up to 315 megapixels:
Voigtlander FE 65mm f/2 APO-Lanthar: Stitching and Panorama Examples
Native-mount lenses of this quality* exist for the Sony mirrorless system, but not for Nikon Z or Canon R. It makes the Sony platform the smartest move you can make, barring a specific reason.
* Total sharpness, ultra low distortion, freedom from field curvature and focus shift.
Sony A7R IV + Voigtlander FE Macro APO-Lanthar 65mm f/2 Aspherical
ENV: Patriarch Grove, altitude 11400 ft / 3475 m, 35°F / 1°C
RAW: LACA corrected, vignetting corrected, +50 Shadows, -72 Highlights, +40 Whites, +5 Dehaze, +15 Clarity
[low-res image for bot]
Brian K writes:
I use the 50mm and 65mm APO Lanthars on my Nikon Z7. These are Sony E mount lenses and I use them with the Techart adapter. They function well on the Nikon. The focal flange distance and good quality adapters means that any Sony E lens can be used on any Nikon Z body. And given that Nikon lenses can not be used on Sony because of FF distance, it means that Nikon Z has a greater possible lens selection than Sony.
DIGLLOYD: yep, I wrote about this option in more than one blog post before. While I once used lens adapters a lot, at this point I am not a fan of lens adapters. It is hard enough to avoid optical tilt and swing without adding two more mating surfaces into the mix. I’m stocking with native mount lenses excepting rare situations.
