Creative photography

[Jeff Hewleg]

I am interested in taking pictures of large carpets from a bird’s eye view, as if I was on top of the center of the rug.

If I take pictures by standing on the floor at one end of the rug, then I have the problem where the rug narrows in with depth, the far end of the rug does not look good, and I cannot capture the full width of the end that I am standing by (the rug is 10 feet by 14 feet).

I was thinking about suspending a camera on the ceiling, remotely turning the camera on and off, and remotely shooting images with the camera.  But, I thought, there must be a simpler way.  I own an Olympus D-360L and a Canon Powershot A610 digital cameras.  Please let me know --- thank you.

[bdery]

Hi, Jeff and welcome!

If you have a room that's large enough, why not suspend the rug to the wall? Seems simpler to me than climbing to the ceiling. Or you could do this outside if the weather allows. Last idea, you would take pictures of parts of the rug, then assemble it like a panorama to make one big picture.

One thing that is sure to help you is to use a wide angle lens, or a converter to get a wider angle on one of the lenses you have.  I know the A610-A620 cameras accept converters. This could help.

Good luck!

[Jeff Hewleg]

Hi Moderator,

I have many carpets that I want to take a picture of, so it is not practical for me to suspend each rug on the wall.  Opening each rug on the floor is much easier.

Would a wide angle lens completely solve this problem or not?  I have no problem buying a new lens or a new camera to solve this problem, but I want it to be an easy and simple solution that wont require me to spend time editing each image significantly.  There must be a standard way to solve this problem that all photographers use, because they are many pictures of rugs on the net in the bird's eye view fashion.

Please let me know and thanks for the previous reply.

[ShutterbugGail]

Jeff, before you go out and buy a new lens, I highly recommend you stop by the Pro Digital Forum at dpreview.  I can't speak for the other mods but I've not had experience photographing something as large as a rug from a birds eye view.

I do know that when photographing smaller items with perpendicular lines, you'll get that type of distortion when shooting at the widest angle of a zoom lens. You can minimize the effect by moving back and zooming in instead of standing close and shooting at wide angle. A focal length of about 50mm (35mm equivalent) works well. You can see a photo illustration of how effective the method is here:

http://www.digicamhelp.com/what-is-barrel-distortion/index.htm

However, whether or not you can accomplish the same thing as easily with a 10x14" rug, I honestly don't know. As I said, ask around at dpreview. If you get an answer and have a moment to share it, please consider doing so. Sorry I can't be of more help.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1014

[bdery]

A wide angle lens would allow you to see a wider view, as if you walked back a few steps from your subject. So that can be very handy. There are some cameras on the market with wide angle lenses built-in, and these generally produce less distortion than wide-angle converters (distortion is still one thing to worry about with any wide angle shot. It shows when you have many straight lines).

A thing you could do is climb up a ladder, brace yourself, then stretch and get the picture from there. That's what I'd do I think. But if your carpet is 10x14 feet, you,d need to stretch to about 5 feet to get it all, that could be tricky. Or maybe shoot from a balcony or something. If you know some people who did it, maybe ask for their tricks, if they're willing to tell...