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Here is some information for all you Canon SLR users out there. I have been shooting interactivevirtual tours here at BlueLaVaMedia for a little over a year now using a Canon 20D camera witha 17-85mm 4.5-5.6 EFS IS Canon lens. I also use a Canon 550 flash on a bracket attached to theRTV Rotator and use the flash for all my images.This allows me to easily balance the exposure in the rooms with the ambient light through thewindow, as many of the homes here in Northern Michigan have great views. We are nowapproaching our one year anniversary here at BlueLaVaMedia and I have created well over 200Traverse City virtual tours.We are continually expanding our client base and so far everyonethat we work with has been extremely satisfied with the quality of our virtual tours. Exposure isgood, white balance is not a problem, the tours are very sharp and RTV continually adds moreand more features to the system giving Jason and I something new to talk about nearly everymonth.Overall in my humble opinion the tours look just great! As we all know in our industry virtualtour quality is extremely important. Many online shoppers will form their first impression of aproperty, the seller, business owner or a listing agent from the tour. At least that is what myfriends all tell me when I tell them what I do now.Anyway, a
ll was well and good in my world except…when I photographed a property that had
very white or light colored walls. In this type of home I would defiantly have a problem with adark vertical banding where the images were stitched together. It was time to do some troubleshooting. It was not an exposure inconsistency issue as my overall exposures were dead on. Ithen decided that since I was using flash that it must be related to that.I tried two different types of flash diffusers as well as bounced the flash off the ceiling whereapplicable. My flash also has a built in wide angle panel that spreads the light wider then mylens. Nothing was working and I was getting frustrated as I still had light fall off at the imagecorners. I then tried some spins without flash and still experienced the problem. I tried closing
the lens down more, to the “sweet spot” and still light fall off! Ok so what next??
 I tried a newer 580 flash (I have a good relationship with my local dealer so I was lucky enoughto borrow it.) I also have a Canon 30D and I tried that, still the problem persisted. At this point Ifigured it had to be the lens, so I tried an inexpensive Sigma 18-55 lens. (Borrowed that too) and
it seemed to help the problem. It was however still noticeable. What’s
a photographer to do????Well not to long ago I was reading my favorite monthly publication Outdoor Photography andlooked over the initial test report on the new Canon 50D. What to my wandering eyes shouldappear than the addition of a lens peripheral illumination setting to correct light fall off at imageedges. All of that testing for not. It was a problem that Cannon has had all along and they havenow presumably fixed it.
I haven’t had a chance to borrow one of those yet though. (Don’t know if my Canon
dealer likesme THAT much) I still love my Canon system and have quite a few other lenses so I am notabout to change. I still use the Sigma because the problem seems a little less pronounced with
of 00

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