Hi guys,

as I don't believe there's a better place (and I don't feel like signing up to another [photography] specific forum) to post this in, I'll just throw it in here, hoping somebody can offer some advice.

Basically, I want to recreate the shot of this album cover:

Spoiler: Niente album cover

Through some research, I found out that the camera must have been standing about 22.5m away from the railing that the band is leaning against and sitting on. 7.5m of the railing is visible in the width of the shot, resulting in an angle of about 20 degrees that is covered by the lens.

Now, I'm not an expert in photography or lenses so I'm wondering what kind of lens (and perhaps camera type?) is necessary to achieve this?
Currently, I'm equipped with a Panasonic DC-FZ82, could that already be sufficient to cover my needs?
Any help is appreciated.

 

I'm photographer (too) and i can tell you can do it with ANY camera and ANY lens.
As long as you can by wide/tele enough.
Your camera is more than enough.

The key here is TRIPOD to do a long exposure with Neutral Density filter, to reduce daylight and getting a long shot (so ppl have time to move/disappear).

Read this :
https://brentmailphotography.com/essentials/neutral-density-filters.html

https://expertphotography.com/remove-people-from-photos/

 

Cool, so as long as the camera is set up on the correct spot on that roof and zoomed in the right amount the composition should be fine, yes?
Mostly caring about the proportions and relative sizes of the visible objects here, blurred/disappearing people aside, I can manage to achieve that effect with some work (thanks for the tips and links though!).
Trying to prevent a situation where I stand up there and the tower and other buildings look smaller/larger than they should with no way correct for it.

 

As your camera can go from very wide to very tele, no problem on composition / perspective side

Getting the right spot, right sun hour (may be) AND weather condition is the next step

 

You do realize the cover image is a composite (done in post post production) of at least 2 if not more separate images? Personally I would use a prime lens (non-zoom) for the sharpest image for the background. Like a 35mm or possibly 50mm, with a skylight or UV filter. You'll definitely need a tripod for that shot. After that it's just a waiting game to get the conditions/lighting (sun weather conditions, etc) correct. Composition wise you can crop the image if needed in post. The band members could be photographed in a studio over a green/blue/gray screen or some other evenly lit back drop that can be easily masked out in post. The rest is simply Photoshop manipulation and filters.

 

prime wide lens would do it, this one looks like a 50mm on full frame. It's a bit in front of range of what human eye see things. The vision is like your eyes is say 2-3 meters in front of you if it makes any sense. You Lumix is 5.62 crop factor which I don't know what lens will fit to get it close to 50mm full frame range. Math is hard. Also your camera is capable to get the picture like above, nothing "expensive" about it, just some clever post work.

 

If the camera was 22,5m away form the railing, you'll need something more like 70 or 90mm to get that shot, not 50mm. (full frame)
And there is nothing wrong with a zoom as long as it's a good one.

 

The exact distance from railing is somewhat irrelevant. You can use a wider lens and can crop in post. There's no sense in having to re-shoot because your scale/width is too narrow (which cannot be fixed in post). As was mentioned above, if you're using a full-frame lens with a camera that has a crop factor (APS-C, M4/3 bodies have different built in crop factors when shooting with full frame lenses.) the resultant photo will be cropped by default. You'll have to look up your particular sensor size and camera model to figure that out. Just FYI, the general rule is that a 50mm full frame lens shooting on a full frame camera is the most effective at translating photographic scale/size to real life.

One other thing to mention - that backdrop is basically a scenic landscape and you will need to increase your F stop (higher Fstop numbers == smaller lens aperture size == greater depth of field) as much as possible to gain the depth of field they have there. As you probably have already noticed the foreground (railing/rooftop) all the way to the farthest building away in the city-scape, are all in focus. THAT is what is meant by a large depth of field. Of course that could be simply more post compositing (combining a photo of a railing, and a rooftop, and a scenic, to simulate the depth...)

When shooting a scenic like that sharpness is king. If a zoom is all you have then a zoom it is - however zooms are notoriously soft looking compared to prime lenses. Well made zooms equate to less comparable image softness, but still in the sharpness realm the zoom lens will ALWAYS render a softer image vs the prime lens. It's simple physics - there are more glass elements to shoot thru in a zoom and also issues to deal with keeping all those extra elements aligned when a moving lens barrel is employed. Personally I would not even attempt that shot without a camera tripod and a remote shutter trigger (my preference is wireless) . Reason being, to get the kind of depth of field they have there, a smaller aperture in not so optimal lighting conditions (after dawn or before dusk, or w/ND filter) will be needed, resulting in a longer exposure time. ANY camera shake or movement will completely ruin the shot.

Someone mentioned using a ND filter which could possibly simplify the time spent waiting for real time conditions to be right and maybe less post processing. However unless you're very familiar with ND filters and how they work, simply waiting for the right conditions and doing a bit more post processing might prove to be less time consuming in the long run...

 

Last edited: Jul 21, 2023

@saccamano it is NOT a composite by any stretch of mind.
Because you see the movements on picture.
It is ONE exposure.
There is nothing stacked here : it is daylight long exposure.

 

Sigma Art 18-35mm.

 

@ItsFine , you might want to stretch your mind. Most likely it is a composite.
I can tell from the different focal points, lighting and shadows. Plus, it's not a normal scaffold,
you wouldn't find such a construction near a roof. Here's 2 different shots:

They also took that tower, polished it, and brought it to the desert..




Anyway, I should go to bed..

 

Sure it could be a single long exposure. However the lack of interim "tweening" blur between each subsequent "still" of the human(s) in the frame indicates some kind of "editing" (like tossing out some of the interim frames of an accumulated long exposure) was involved to be able to precisely control the amounts of tweening "motion" blur to a tee. You don't get that kind of control from just one single exposure. Still, it all requires compositing in post and running some plugins if long exposure was not used..

 

Last edited: Jul 22, 2023

Thanks for all the advice so far, I'll try to get a similar width of the shot with my camera in the garden, just to check if the perspective can be achieved.

As for the blurring effect, never thought of the exact way it was made, but a composite of multiple similar frames with movement in between seems likely as of now.

The shot was indeed taken on a roof, I found the exact one through context clues and trying to match landmarks. I guess the metal scaffold is a servicing overpass thingy, it's clearly visible on Google Maps.

 

Question: is that "tower/needle" thingy in the background actually part of that city-scape?

 

Yes, it's the tower of the waste incineration facility Spittelau in Vienna.