John Houghton
Posts: 2308
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 3 Jan 2008 at 19:52 GMT
updated: 3 Jan 2008 at 20:00 GMT
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I went out on a dismal, overcast New Year's Day morning determined to take a panorama with my NN5 and ended up in the small village of Northill, which I often cycle through. Having mentioned PTgui's viewpoint feature several times recently, I thought this might be of interest as an example of it's use. I took 4 shots around + Z + N (Sigma 8mm F/3.5, 40D). The nadir was taken from the tripod shifted sideways about 70cm and the camera tilted to point at the nadir area. I left the NN5 with the vertical detents activated, which doesn't permit the 5 degree upwards tilt I would normally use to avoid a hole at the zenith. A zenith shot was not really necessary as the small hole could easily be cloned away.
I managed to get a good optimization report for all 6 images with av=0.7 and max=2.6. The images had alpha channel masks applied to hide any intrusive tripod/head parts and the outer edges of the nadir shot (i.e. the not flat ground parts). The final panorama is exactly as output by the stitcher without any editing whatever (apart from colour adjustments and sharpening etc).
I was unable to get the .mov file size much below 3MB without geting annoying posterization in the almost featureless sky, and it's disappointing to lose much of the sharpness of the original equirectangular tiff file in the final spherical display. Anyway, here it is - I think PTGui did a good job with the nadir.
www.johnhpanos.com/northill.htm
John
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DorinDXN
Posts: 1692
Location: Timisoara, Romania
Registered: 14 Nov 2006
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 8:22 GMT
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Hello John,
Excellent panorama as usual, PTGui did a good job with nadir indeed.
I'm very interested on how you find 40D for panorama taking.
thanks,
Dorin
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Smooth
Posts: 1468
Location: Australia
Registered: 21 Jul 2004
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 9:01 GMT
updated: 4 Jan 2008 at 9:03 GMT
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Nice Pano John,
Albeit grey featureless sky. I suppose it is the middle of winter for you, so I won't call it a typical English day! The nadir is good for sure, some weeks ago I tried the same thing with this new feature of PTGui in a tiny bathroom with a tiled floor and the result was great, although I did have some colour exposure differences which I put down to the reflective lighting of the multiple tiles wall & floor.
Funny when I first opened your page the Deval display was only around 60% of the page, so I clicked Quicktime and it was fine - switched back to Deval and it was also now fine? Strange. Also the road lines displayed with Deval are - for lack of a better term "strobed" and this was not as noticeable with Quicktime.
Anyway, another great job.
Regards, Smooth 
www.smooth360.com
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John Houghton
Posts: 2308
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 12:55 GMT
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Smooth, I think the strobing is probably due to the sharpness of the jpeg image which is used for the DevalVR viewer. The strobing is much reduced when zoomed in. I initially just displayed the .mov file with DevalVR, but found the image rather soft, so I tried the jpeg version and found that that looked significantly sharper.
Dorin, I've had the 40D only a few days and took this pano on it's first outing. I'm not therefore very familiar with all its features yet. I appreciate the large lcd display as my eyesight isn't as good as it once was. The three custom settings positions on the top fuction dial are also very useful. You can decide what combination of settings you intend to use in advance, register them for one of the three dial positions, and then simply turn the dial to the appropriate position when those settings are required. I like that a lot.
John
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fiero
Posts: 258
Location: La Rioja, Spain
Registered: 6 Jul 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 13:39 GMT
updated: 4 Jan 2008 at 13:40 GMT
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Hi John,
Did you use sinc256 (or any other good filter) to create your MOV file?
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John Houghton
Posts: 2308
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 16:16 GMT
updated: 4 Jan 2008 at 16:22 GMT
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Fiero, Good thinking - thanks. I used Pano2VR to generate the QTVR and flash versions. Unlike in Pano2QTVR, the interpolator choice is hidden away in File->Settings instead of appearing on the parameter entry panel. It's therefore very easy to overlook the setting. It seems it was set to Mitchell (I think), which is not one of the good ones. sync256 is not available to select in Pano2VR. I generally used spline36 in Pano2QTVR, but that's not available in Pano2VR either. I tried Lanczos3, which is slow but good, and got a 340KB .mov file. In fact all the interpolators are now producing a small .mov file. It's not obvious to me what's gone wrong, but I instead generated the .mov with Pano2QTVR, using spline36 and that has now produced a much better file that displays well in DevalVR. I've uploaded that and changed the html file to use the .mov for both DevalVR and QTVR.
John
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Ed Fruin
Posts: 17
Location: Minneapolis, MN, United States
Registered: 24 Oct 2007
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 16:27 GMT
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Dorin, I use the 40D also and love it. I recently discovered the feature of using the timer and auto bracketing function to shoot all three shots (with or without mirror lock up for shake reduction) without having to push the button three separate times. Just one click. I think this is the same on the 20D and 30D but not totally sure. The timer function is a 2 or 10 second choice also. It's a very nice camera with it's 14 bit versus the previous 12 bit processing.
Ed 
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John Houghton
Posts: 2308
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 18:14 GMT
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Ed Fruin said: I recently discovered the feature of using the timer and auto bracketing function to shoot all three shots (with or without mirror lock up for shake reduction) without having to push the button three separate times. Just one click
Ed, I can shoot all three bracketed shots with one push of the button using the timer, but if I also enable mirror lock up, I still have to push the button three times. If you have a way round this I would be interested to hear what settings you are using. The only way I have managed it is to switch on LiveView mode, where the mirror is permanently up anyway.
John
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Hans Nyberg
Posts: 856
Location: Denmark
Registered: 28 Aug 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 18:49 GMT
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Thanks Ed
Is this some where in the manual?
I did not know this, bit I tried it on my 5D and it actually works.
It looks like the timer gets a different timing .
I have only the 10 sec timer but with mirror lockup this becomes 2sec.
Push button and mirror locks up and you expose 2 sec after.
This gave me an idea. I have the remote timer TC-80N3 and If I set that to 3 exposures with 3 sec interval I just need to push the start ones.
Not sure if you know the very irritating problem that you forgot if you have taken 2 or 3 bracketed exposures.
Hans
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John Houghton
Posts: 2308
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 19:02 GMT
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Hans Nyberg said: Not sure if you know the very irritating problem that you forgot if you have taken 2 or 3 bracketed exposures.
Hans, The 20D and 40D have an AEB symbol (three overlapping frames) in the top LCD display that flashes until the last of the set of three exposures has been taken.
John
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Hans Nyberg
Posts: 856
Location: Denmark
Registered: 28 Aug 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 4 Jan 2008 at 20:17 GMT
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I know that of course but you can not see that when the camera is 50 cm above your head.
Or if it is dark. Light closes after the first exposure, and as far as I can see you can not set the time out.
Hans
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Ed Fruin
Posts: 17
Location: Minneapolis, MN, United States
Registered: 24 Oct 2007
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 5 Jan 2008 at 0:14 GMT
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John,
I tested this once I got home and on the 40D you should be able to set the timer to 2 or 10 seconds and then set the auto bracketing to your preference and fire with the mirror lock up in LiveView mode to auto take the three shots. I have not used the mirror lock up alone. Is that even possible to do and not have LiveView come up? Also if you are not near your camera and want to do something similar to this just set the rapid fire sequence to normal or high speed and with the remote trigger fire your 3 shots automatically. Just hold the button down while in the auto bracket mode and it should fire just the three shots. At least the 40D does this. I'm not sure about the 30D, 20D or the 5D. Maybe someone could test that out.
Ed
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John Houghton
Posts: 2308
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Jan 1 panorama
Posted: 5 Jan 2008 at 7:18 GMT
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Ed Fruin said: #Also if you are not near your camera and want to do something similar to this just set the rapid fire sequence to normal or high speed and with the remote trigger fire your 3 shots automatically. Just hold the button down while in the auto bracket mode and it should fire just the three shots.
Ed, Yes, that's the standard way of doing it and it's fine when the three shots are fired off in quick succession. It sometimes gets confusing when the buffers fill up and there are long delays. I think I might prefer the single shutter button press plus two second delay method.
John
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