Original subtitles

So next we're going to move into the

next tool in the toolkit and that's Bokeh

Panoramas, otherwise known as the Berneiser Method.

For those of you, I'm sure many of

you have already heard of this and played

around with it.

For some of you it's like a brand

new word you've never heard.

Basically what it is, is it's a wide

-angle image created using a telephoto lens.

So it's essentially a photo stitch.

And actually I just realized I've never noticed

it on this one.

You can actually see some of the stitching

mistakes over here in the file.

But this is about 70 frames stitched together

to create this one giant image.

Each frame is about this big.

Ryan Berneiser is a wedding photographer out of

New York.

The Berneisers, Ryan and Tatiana.

I think we talked about their wedding experience

a little bit already.

But Ryan basically sort of created and popularized

this method kind of amongst the wedding photography

world.

We're actually going to link to Ryan's how

-to Berneiser Method video for you guys.

But what we'll share with you here is

just some of the little tricks that we've

learned in our learning curve through figuring out

kind of how and where to do this.

I want to show you a couple examples

to illustrate the technique.

This is not a Berneiser Method.

This is just, this is not a good

photo at all.

Remember we talked about when you're shooting from

below, perspectives working against us.

So that's where we want to have them

leaning over.

But this frame is 35, like one point

something.

So it's wide open.

But depth of focus is not only related

to the aperture, it's also related to the

focal length.

So in a wide focal length image, even

two point something, one point something, everything's still

relatively in focus, right?

Like all the branches are still sharp, even

at this wide aperture.

So this next example, what I've done is

basically from the exact same position, just took

off that wide 35 lens and put on,

I think it was the 85 1.2

and basically replicated this frame with that 85

at 1.2 to stitch in and fill

the entire frame.

And it gives a much different effect, much

different feel.

Still bad, still bad on the perspective.

And yeah, but, but that sort of illustrates

the difference.

It creates an effect that you can't achieve

with any lens that exists.

You can actually go online, there's some formulas

where you, you can plug in the focal

length that you used, the aperture and the

number of frames that you stitched together.

And then it will calculate like a theoretical

equivalent.

So something like this would be equivalent to,

you know, 24 millimeters at F 0.6

or something that is otherwise impossible.

So I'll just kind of show you when

we do play around with this, how we

do it.

This is one of the few times that

we actually turn our cameras and shoot vertically

because it allows us to get a little

bit closer and fill the frame with the

subject and not have to stitch across their

bodies.

Lenses that work really well for this are

your big telephoto lenses.

So your 70 to 200 at 200 at

2.8, 135 at 1.8 or 2

.0, the 85 at 1.2. Those lenses

work great for this.

And when, when we're drawn to do this

is when we're in areas where there's a

lot of depth and a lot of texture,

like this forest, for example, there's lots of

depth, there's lots of texture, there's lots of

lines.

It doesn't work in areas where there's large

areas of uniformity and there's no point to

it either.

Like a whole bunch of sky.

Yeah.

Plus it also, it's very hard for the

software to figure out how to stitch those

together.

It doesn't have the lines to put together.

Yeah.

But often if we've got foreground and background

and depth, we're thinking Berneiser method would be

pretty cool.

So what we do is, like always, just

try to, you know, coach them through some,

give them some actions, try to get some

nice emotion.

We'll get, we'll make a whole bunch of

frames like this, right?

Until we feel like we've got some nice,

nice moments.

And then we lock it.

You have to lock everything now.

So white balance, focus, obviously nothing changes.

Every setting remains exactly the same.

They don't have to freeze.

They don't have to hold their breath.

They just have to stay in the same

general position reference wise.

So you can then add in all the

frames around them.

So there I've got my pictures of the

couple and then I'm going to click, click,

click, click, click, click, click back to the

couple, click, click, click.

And I got about 20, 30% overlap

and I go up and then sometimes I'll

go down.

So just, yeah, just handheld.

You have to, you know, stay in very

close to the same position and some photographers

go in spirals.

We like to go left and right.

You got to keep coming back and referencing

so you don't miss any gaps.

20 to 30% overlap is a good

ballpark it seems.

And most of the images, of course, end

up out of focus, which is exactly what

you want.

Yeah.

If the light changes midway through, you kind

of have to start over.

Yeah.

Right.

You're going to want to size these down.

Okay.

If you try to run this with your

full res raw files, you're going to crash

your computer.

So usually it's size them down to about

a thousand pixels across.

And that way, even still, once you stitch

these together, you're going to have like billboard

size resolution, right?

Enormous gigabyte, big pixels galore.

Once you've, you know, you've chosen your favorite,

your favorite reference point for the middle and

then all the others, before you size them

down, run a batch edit on them.

Like, like basically a global edit based on

their skin tones, essentially put all the sliders

in this exact same place for all of

them.

Push play, go have a coffee, come back.

It's doing its thing.

It's basically going to try to figure out

how to stitch them together for you and

create all the layer masks and blend them

together.

And that takes a lot of processing power.

If you really want to go crazy with

this, there's actually dedicated third-party softwares.

This is all that they do.

Gigapixel panel something.

Yeah.

You can even do it in Lightroom now

to a certain extent.

Right.

Yeah.

I wouldn't recommend doing like a 70 frame.

Exactly.

Sam, Sam heard actually does some really great

portraits, just headshots with three, right?

So he's goes, you know, chooses a big

lens wide open and does like a one,

two, three across the, across the head.

And the depth of focus is just so

narrow.

Like the eyeballs are tack sharp and the

ear lobes are totally out of focus.

So it's pretty cool.

And if you really want to see somebody

who's pushing in the other direction, the extreme,

like 380 some photos stitched together across a

bride, like sitting in the forest, Ollie Sampson,

uh, Google him out of Australia.

He does some crazy Berneiser methods.

So if you're lucky, it'll stitch them together

for you, something like this, and then you

can crop.

And then you can do a master edit

on, on it from there.

Bring up the punch.

You can crop it from there if you

like.

Got a few other examples that just to

kind of look at the, the effect, it

sort of creates this ethereal, almost kind of

tilt shifty.

Um, look, it's not tilt shift though.

The plane of focus is not shifted like

on a tilt shift lens.

The plane of focus is the same equidist,

equid, equal distance from the lens, but it's

just super shallow because we're essentially using the

compression of a big telephoto lens, which doesn't

exist in these wide, wide lenses.

This is about, this is about, um, 80

or 90 frames stitched together.

We just had them walk back and forth

across this small little section a bunch of

times, and then have them stay in one

position ish, just for reference, and then fill

in the entire frame.

A couple more examples.

So this is kind of what it looks

like once you, once Photoshop does its thing,

all of the pieces of the puzzle that

it figures out how to stitch together will

be right here, and all the ones that

can't figure out will be stacked down or

above.

And so usually when it doesn't work, what

you get is just this big vertical strip

of a whole bunch of files that couldn't

figure out how to stitch them together.

And when we first started doing this, I

would say it didn't work a lot of

the time.

So expect that.

Like I'd say we were successful with it

40 to 50% of the time, and

now our success rate's more like 60 to

70%.

And we'll often, and even still, we'll say,

Hey guys, do you mind if we take,

take five minutes to try this, to try

something that might really suck?

And they're like, yeah, cool.

That sounds, that sounds worth it.

But we just warn them, it doesn't always

work.

Just so they don't, they don't aren't like,

well, where, what happened to that shot where

you did that thing?

Yeah.

Just in case.

If nothing else, it's something that Uncle Bob's

not doing.

So it's like, they've never seen it before.

So it gives you something to talk about.

But anyways, in this case, we had enough,

right?

So the rest, we were able to drag

manually into position and, and sort of paint

our own layer masks in.

You see all these layer masks were created

for us.

So then we dragged those ones into position,

dragged those ones into position.

Okay.

And then we start cropping.

Okay.

And, and filling in a few gaps that

we missed.

Yep.

Content fill aware.

Okay.

Clone stamp.

And also as we're cropping, we're starting to

realize that actually the sky, even though we

included them all, I just want to go

back.

It's kind of, these highlights are actually competing.

I really liked how their white clothes were

just such a contrast to the dark roots.

So we ended up actually cropping the sky

out entirely and just making it about that.

You like the sky?

I do like the sky.

And then a little cloning down here to

fill in the gaps.

And that's the last one, I think.

Yeah.

So, so that's something fun to play around

with.

Really, it's only practical in a portrait situation.

And for the most part, probably just a

natural light.

Yeah.

There's, yeah, we haven't tried to pull this

off in a, in an off-camera flash

situation yet, but maybe that's the next frontier.

All right.

So that's the Berneiser method.

Have fun with it.

It's, you know, it's, it's something else.

It's another tool in your toolkit to pull

out when, again, when it's calling out to

you, right?

Like you'll see, it's like, wow, the depth

here.

Let's try Berneiser.

And we're going to go out into the

field and demonstrate how we do this.

And hopefully we'll succeed.

Yeah.

We're going there right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Be there.

See ya there.