OK, I just uploaded yesteday's shot since 24hrs have passed since my last one.
I did a little research and there were two different adapters that could possibly allow the use of old (non-AF)
lenses on Canon's current digital SLRs. However, I haven't run across any firsthand info about folks who've done
this sucessfully.... of course you'd have to manually focus, but I'm not sure if the camera's through the lens
metering would work properly at all... the adapters are very rare (one was never a commercial product, but
released only to a few pro photographers right when Canon started making digicams) and I'm not likely to try it
myself. It's a shame though since a brand-new 500mm lens is no better optically than a good 20 year old 500mm
lens.
For film VFX, lens distortion correction is routine, always handled digitally of course. As distortion can impact
live action compositing, rotoscoping, motion tracking, the addition of CG etc... it's necessary to make sure that ALL
the elements have the same distortion on them so that the match properly. Sometimes this involves removing the
distortion entirely, combining the elements and then re-introducing the distortion again... a similar thing is
sometimes done with motion tracking data for match moves... the natural movement is eliminated, the shot modified
(comped) and then the natural movement is restored.
I don't know how much was ever done to resolve lens distortion issues pre-digital. Of course, a good photographer
knows that the 'best' part of a lens is near the middle, and would thus avoid placing important content near the edge
of the frame (unavoidable with panorama shots of course). I suspect that for some specific industrial/military
scientific uses, corrective lenses were used to manipulate images... i.e.: the corrective lens would compensate for
known distortions from another optical element in much the same way eyeglasses work.
I saw that 360 degree lens too... with software already set up to flatten the resulting image for that specific lens.
Looked interesting.
PS: I'm not suggesting that it's worth trying, but if PS insists that all input images have the same rez, you could
pad the small/orig ones so that they match the pre-stitched segments... going for the highest common denominator.
This workaround would probably work, but of course you'd have to manually adjust some of the blend locations
so as to avoid having the final image contain any of the padded color (padding is just pasting an image onto a larger
image (usually just a flat color) for the specific purpose of increasing it's overall rez). Again, this is probably
not worth the effort, but just thought I'd mention it.
PPS: re: your PS not having some features... I'm using Mac version 3.1, which came bundled with a Canon G5
purchased a few months ago. If you need a newer version, I think you can DL it from Canon if you are a registered
user. Good luck!
