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flippant linen [deleted]
Posted 5 years ago
Q. Where does the "Brenizer Method" name come from?
A. This technique was popularized by the New York wedding photographer, Ryan Brenizer. Although the technique was in use by earlier photographers and referred to as; "Bokeh Panorama" (or "Bokeh Pano") the Brenizer name was coined by Ryan's followers and eventually worked its way into general use.
Q. What is bokeh?
A. Refers to the aesthetically pleasing out of focus areas from a shallow depth of field image. Also often specifically related to the large circles created by out of focus point lights.
Q. What is a panorama?
A. Several photos, taken from the same position and stitched together to make a composite image. Emulating a lens with a wider field of view.
Q. What makes a Brenizer different from a panorama?
A. A normal panorama is usually used for landscapes taken at small entrance pupils to maximize sharpness over the entire frame. The Brenizer Method (or Bokeh Pano) uses large entrance pupils to create a super thin depth of field & emphasize isolation of the subject from the background. They also tend to use more images from longer lenses.
Q. What cameras work best?
A. Since the lens is the most important factor in this technique, you will need a camera with an interchangeable lens mount. A full frame sensor size is the most ideal here as it gives access to the best lenses and streamlines the workflow. Smaller sensors will eliminate some image quality issues, but will require shooting many more images to reach the same result. Lenses for larger sensors lenses don't have as much potential for this technique as their entrance pupils don't get as large. Some full frame lenses can be used to great effect on medium format cameras for single images, but will cause more image quality issues when combined with this technique.
Q. What lens should I use?
A. The key here is how big does your aperture diameter appear when viewed through the front element. This size is referred to as the "entrance pupil" and can be calculated by dividing the lenses focal length by its f-stop. Longer lenses can have larger entrance pupils, but supersizing this will increase the size, weight, cost of your setup, as well as the complexity of your workflow so there are sweet spot options for sure. For more info see this page: www.edwardnoble.com/bp-equipment
Q. Can you name some budget lenses?
A. I advise looking for older manual focus lenses that will fit your camera here as that might be the best way to get better value options. Here is a rough generic list, but for more info see the above link:
● 85mm f/1.8 (Best versatile choice, everyone should have one anyway)
● 135mm f/2.5 (Can be phenomenal value, but a bit too long for smaller sensors)
● 50mm f/1.4 (Good versatile choice, everyone should have one anyway)
● 50mm f/1.8 (Great starter lens, but the effect is quite subtle)
Q. What are the best lenses for the technique regardless of budget?
A. In my opinion the sweet spot goes like this (best = first):
● 105mm f/1.4 (Sigma Art version is too heavy)
● 85mm f/1.2 (Canon FD is lightest, but is increasingly expensive for a vintage lens)
● 135mm f/1.8 (Sony, Sigma are great, Zeiss is far behind but still good)
● 135mm f/2 (Canon FD, EF are amazing)
● 85mm f/1.4 (Almost any of these are great)
● 85mm f/1.8 (Budget option but still great on effect vs weight)
● 200mm f/1.8 (Big, heavy, hard to use, but sheer awesome)
● 50mm f/0.95 (A little wide but still compelling)
Q. How do I shoot a panorama?
A. A tripod with a panoramic head is ideal for rotation (I don't use one because it's a lot of faff to set up and extra weight to carry). This rotation axis is often referred to as the "nodal point", but put more simply; this is where the aperture blades are. Keeping this part of the lens in the same place as you rotate the camera. It will feel weird to do this hand-held (especially without live-view) but it works fine with a little practice. See here for more info: www.edwardnoble.com/bp-shooting
Q. What camera settings work best?
A. Everything should be locked (aperture, shutter speed, focus, ISO, white balance (WB). You can leave WB on auto if shooting RAW, as long as you set it up in post later for the batch. Personally I would recommend a small high quality jpg for beginners, but this is personal preference. I shoot RAW (24mp) and output those to a 6mp max quality jpg for the stitching software during batch processing (using Adobe Camera RAW).
Q. What stitching software do you recommend?
A. You can use image editing software (like: Photoshop, Afinity etc.), or dedicated software (like: AutoStitch, AutoPano etc.). My preference is Microsoft ICE (dedicated, Windows only) because it is very simple, extremely fast, memory efficient, fairly feature rich and completely free. It's not so good if you want to set up control points to manually adjust your stitch, but personally I don't like doing that as it takes longer than fixing small issues in post. If you do want to do the time consuming aspect up front then I recommend PTGui, or for a free option; Hugin.
Q. Can I use a normal tripod for this (non-panoramic head)?
A. For longer lenses and focus distances this can be acceptable, but bear in mind that the rotation will be wrong in every axis. For closer distances this can give you more parallax stitching errors than simply shooting hand-held.
Q. What can I do if the stitching process fails?
A. You can change the software (if using Photoshop definitely try that first). You can also try to remove frames on the outer edges of your batch as it's possible they might be causing problems. You can also auto stitching strips and then manually aligning those in photo editing software.
Q. What amount of overlap should I use between each image?
A. Aim for 50% as a little more or less won't hurt.
Q. Which direction should I move when shooting?
A. I prefer a zig-zag motion, from bottom left to top right for most of my batches. A spiral can help when shooting people - starting at the face you will cover the more important aspects first so if the person moves it will be less likely to damage your result. Once you have covered the subject you can tell them to relax while you finish the edges. You can also do strips in the same direction if that's more comfortable to you, but some stitching software will prefer contiguous images so if you run into issues stitching try one of the other methods.
Q. What orientation should I shoot in?
A. There shouldn't need to be a rule for this, but in practice I found portrait to work better for me. This could be that it works better with the zig-zag motion that I use (from bottom left to top right).
Q. Help, I am still struggling to get usable results…
A. This technique takes practice, so persistence and patience will be important. If you're getting stuck on the theory I recommend to go out and shoot as much as you can. If you need more info I made some guides (buttons to 5 pages of help at the top) on my website here: www.edwardnoble.com/bokehpano
Q. Is there anywhere else to post and ask questions about this?
A. Yes, there is a facebook group (if you're into that) here: www.facebook.com/groups/106797716536162/ It doesn't have as many members but there's more activity over there so if you have any questions they can be answered more quickly over there.
A. This technique was popularized by the New York wedding photographer, Ryan Brenizer. Although the technique was in use by earlier photographers and referred to as; "Bokeh Panorama" (or "Bokeh Pano") the Brenizer name was coined by Ryan's followers and eventually worked its way into general use.
Q. What is bokeh?
A. Refers to the aesthetically pleasing out of focus areas from a shallow depth of field image. Also often specifically related to the large circles created by out of focus point lights.
Q. What is a panorama?
A. Several photos, taken from the same position and stitched together to make a composite image. Emulating a lens with a wider field of view.
Q. What makes a Brenizer different from a panorama?
A. A normal panorama is usually used for landscapes taken at small entrance pupils to maximize sharpness over the entire frame. The Brenizer Method (or Bokeh Pano) uses large entrance pupils to create a super thin depth of field & emphasize isolation of the subject from the background. They also tend to use more images from longer lenses.
Q. What cameras work best?
A. Since the lens is the most important factor in this technique, you will need a camera with an interchangeable lens mount. A full frame sensor size is the most ideal here as it gives access to the best lenses and streamlines the workflow. Smaller sensors will eliminate some image quality issues, but will require shooting many more images to reach the same result. Lenses for larger sensors lenses don't have as much potential for this technique as their entrance pupils don't get as large. Some full frame lenses can be used to great effect on medium format cameras for single images, but will cause more image quality issues when combined with this technique.
Q. What lens should I use?
A. The key here is how big does your aperture diameter appear when viewed through the front element. This size is referred to as the "entrance pupil" and can be calculated by dividing the lenses focal length by its f-stop. Longer lenses can have larger entrance pupils, but supersizing this will increase the size, weight, cost of your setup, as well as the complexity of your workflow so there are sweet spot options for sure. For more info see this page: www.edwardnoble.com/bp-equipment
Q. Can you name some budget lenses?
A. I advise looking for older manual focus lenses that will fit your camera here as that might be the best way to get better value options. Here is a rough generic list, but for more info see the above link:
● 85mm f/1.8 (Best versatile choice, everyone should have one anyway)
● 135mm f/2.5 (Can be phenomenal value, but a bit too long for smaller sensors)
● 50mm f/1.4 (Good versatile choice, everyone should have one anyway)
● 50mm f/1.8 (Great starter lens, but the effect is quite subtle)
Q. What are the best lenses for the technique regardless of budget?
A. In my opinion the sweet spot goes like this (best = first):
● 105mm f/1.4 (Sigma Art version is too heavy)
● 85mm f/1.2 (Canon FD is lightest, but is increasingly expensive for a vintage lens)
● 135mm f/1.8 (Sony, Sigma are great, Zeiss is far behind but still good)
● 135mm f/2 (Canon FD, EF are amazing)
● 85mm f/1.4 (Almost any of these are great)
● 85mm f/1.8 (Budget option but still great on effect vs weight)
● 200mm f/1.8 (Big, heavy, hard to use, but sheer awesome)
● 50mm f/0.95 (A little wide but still compelling)
Q. How do I shoot a panorama?
A. A tripod with a panoramic head is ideal for rotation (I don't use one because it's a lot of faff to set up and extra weight to carry). This rotation axis is often referred to as the "nodal point", but put more simply; this is where the aperture blades are. Keeping this part of the lens in the same place as you rotate the camera. It will feel weird to do this hand-held (especially without live-view) but it works fine with a little practice. See here for more info: www.edwardnoble.com/bp-shooting
Q. What camera settings work best?
A. Everything should be locked (aperture, shutter speed, focus, ISO, white balance (WB). You can leave WB on auto if shooting RAW, as long as you set it up in post later for the batch. Personally I would recommend a small high quality jpg for beginners, but this is personal preference. I shoot RAW (24mp) and output those to a 6mp max quality jpg for the stitching software during batch processing (using Adobe Camera RAW).
Q. What stitching software do you recommend?
A. You can use image editing software (like: Photoshop, Afinity etc.), or dedicated software (like: AutoStitch, AutoPano etc.). My preference is Microsoft ICE (dedicated, Windows only) because it is very simple, extremely fast, memory efficient, fairly feature rich and completely free. It's not so good if you want to set up control points to manually adjust your stitch, but personally I don't like doing that as it takes longer than fixing small issues in post. If you do want to do the time consuming aspect up front then I recommend PTGui, or for a free option; Hugin.
Q. Can I use a normal tripod for this (non-panoramic head)?
A. For longer lenses and focus distances this can be acceptable, but bear in mind that the rotation will be wrong in every axis. For closer distances this can give you more parallax stitching errors than simply shooting hand-held.
Q. What can I do if the stitching process fails?
A. You can change the software (if using Photoshop definitely try that first). You can also try to remove frames on the outer edges of your batch as it's possible they might be causing problems. You can also auto stitching strips and then manually aligning those in photo editing software.
Q. What amount of overlap should I use between each image?
A. Aim for 50% as a little more or less won't hurt.
Q. Which direction should I move when shooting?
A. I prefer a zig-zag motion, from bottom left to top right for most of my batches. A spiral can help when shooting people - starting at the face you will cover the more important aspects first so if the person moves it will be less likely to damage your result. Once you have covered the subject you can tell them to relax while you finish the edges. You can also do strips in the same direction if that's more comfortable to you, but some stitching software will prefer contiguous images so if you run into issues stitching try one of the other methods.
Q. What orientation should I shoot in?
A. There shouldn't need to be a rule for this, but in practice I found portrait to work better for me. This could be that it works better with the zig-zag motion that I use (from bottom left to top right).
Q. Help, I am still struggling to get usable results…
A. This technique takes practice, so persistence and patience will be important. If you're getting stuck on the theory I recommend to go out and shoot as much as you can. If you need more info I made some guides (buttons to 5 pages of help at the top) on my website here: www.edwardnoble.com/bokehpano
Q. Is there anywhere else to post and ask questions about this?
A. Yes, there is a facebook group (if you're into that) here: www.facebook.com/groups/106797716536162/ It doesn't have as many members but there's more activity over there so if you have any questions they can be answered more quickly over there.