Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 276
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 1:39 GMT
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to roll or not to roll, that is the question.
recent discussion has convinced me the advantage of having a roll of 30 deg (aligning the diagonal of sensor vertically)for single row spherical pano. I am thinking of making an adapter for Nodal Ninjas for this purpose. Will this capability bring advantage to a spherical pano head? After all, one can cover the zenith by tilting 5-10 deg upwards with 0 deg roll.
To keep the adapter compact, the NPP will not be at the pitch axis. So it is limited to single row only. I guess it is pointless to take zenith shot with 30 deg roll, right?
what do you think?
thanks a lot.
nick
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mhc1
Posts: 185
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Registered: 29 Dec 2005
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 8:31 GMT
updated: 5 Jul 2008 at 8:36 GMT
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Nick,
great idea.
For my opinion you have to roll = slant by 60° ( bring the diagonal line vertical to archive 180° FOV) like Luca Vascon describes it.
Agnos has a bracket for that already and Ring- users take advantage from the ring though.
Yes- you can take 360 x 180 with 1 row with very little retouche in the Zenith - sometime even nothing to do- and remakable good Nadir.No tilting necessary.
PTGUI and Autopano stitch these images as goog as "unslanted".
I made a bracket for my NN - works well.
But you have to consider, taht fixing a 60! bracket on a NN will increas the vibrations in the whole gear.
I took some panos in a restaurant in a cellar not far away from a metro station:
- you could feel vibrations slightly
- when turning, you have to wait 10-20 sec before shooting to calm the system down.
I had to choose ISO 800 to get F8 and 1/2s.
Came out very well with the 40D though.
Please announce your solution so I can think of getting it.
If you qant, I can post an image of my solution, but I guess your mechanical thougts must be much better than mine 
Ciao
Mike
www.360de.de
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 276
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 9:17 GMT
updated: 5 Jul 2008 at 9:20 GMT
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Hi Mike,
thanks for the reply.
hmm, roll=60 deg? which is right? 30 or 60 deg? PTGUI defaults the roll to 0 for portrait images. So it should be 30 deg in PTGUI. For me 60 deg should be the right number as in general photography most images are taken in landscape mode. So for a camera in landscape mode, the roll should be 0.
There are a number of ways we can achieve roll of 60 deg.
we can make a simple adapter for NN3/5. this is cheapest. But you pointed out potential problem of vibration.
we can make a slanted bracket for our new Nodal Ninja 180. This is more costly. But it is more stable because of fewer joints and better rotator.
we can make a lens ring. This will be most costly but also most compact and stable.
What do you think? Would you upgrade your home-made ring to our lens ring solution? 
nick
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mhc1
Posts: 185
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Registered: 29 Dec 2005
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 9:27 GMT
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Nick
Ring-technics are worth another discussion.
It´s only for ONE lens - so not very flexible like NN are.
But very stable though - for monopods, poles etc.
Also you can´t tilt - even if you ant - Agnos is tilt up by 6° I guess.
A bracket for a NN3/5 would be best I think: you have a lot of customers using this gear already and NN3 users won´t have to change this when upgrading.
So it would fit best in your portofolio.
You could think of a usage with the NN 180 and the NN3/5 versions.
Mine is a little sensible because it got too long.
When it was first made, the camera hits against the axial- arm, so it had to be changed.
Also: the bracket has to point zowards the tripod center. Mine point outside, so I have to move the horizontal position toward the center to keep the NPP. This was not possible because the srewa hits against the rotator.
So I had to add some material at the bottom of the bracket to keep it inside the possible distances.
Ciao
Mike
www.360de.de
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Hans Nyberg
Posts: 803
Location: Denmark
Registered: 28 Aug 2005
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 9:39 GMT
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Nick
If you assume landscape you should actually say roll -60
However as everyone of us who has done panoramas for many years are telling all people to always shoot raw and always rotate the images to portrait we also talk about 30 degrees roll for this to me rather stupid way of doing panoramas.
Remember that the Sigma 8mm is only 180 degrees cropped exactly at the edge and that is not enough to get a decent blend at the zenith unless you tilt it a couple of degrees also when you do the roll 30 degree.
You have to do a forced optimizing without FOV in PTGui to get PTGui to use the full 180 degree.
If the optimizer is allowed to optimize the FOV it will almost always optimize it to less than 180 and that means you get a hole at the zenith even if you have in reality 180 degree covered.
So you still will have to do some retouching if you want a perfect zenith.
Hans
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 276
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 9:44 GMT
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mhc1 said: Nick
A bracket for a NN3/5 would be best I think: you have a lot of customers using this gear already and NN3 users won´t have to change this when upgrading.
So it would fit best in your portofolio.
You could think of a usage with the NN 180 and the NN3/5 versions.
Good points.
I can make a 30 deg wedged adapter for NN3/5 in place of the camera mounting plate.
The question is do you prefer use of such adapter over tilting up by 10 deg? Such adapter can cause more vibration.
nick
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 276
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 9:47 GMT
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Hans Nyberg said: You have to do a forced optimizing without FOV in PTGui to get PTGui to use the full 180 degree.
Hi Hans,
Thanks for the input. What is the consequence of optimization without fov?
nick
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 276
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 10:17 GMT
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Hi Hans,
Do you see any advantage of my proposed adapter?
thanks a lot.
nick
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mhc1
Posts: 185
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Registered: 29 Dec 2005
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 10:21 GMT
updated: 5 Jul 2008 at 10:28 GMT
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Hans Nyberg said: Nick
If you assume landscape you should actually say roll -60
However as everyone of us who has done panoramas for many years are telling all people to always shoot raw and always rotate the images to portrait we also talk about 30 degrees roll for this to me rather stupid way of doing panoramas.
Remember that the Sigma 8mm is only 180 degrees cropped exactly at the edge and that is not enough to get a decent blend at the zenith unless you tilt it a couple of degrees also when you do the roll 30 degree.
You have to do a forced optimizing without FOV in PTGui to get PTGui to use the full 180 degree.
If the optimizer is allowed to optimize the FOV it will almost always optimize it to less than 180 and that means you get a hole at the zenith even if you have in reality 180 degree covered.
So you still will have to do some retouching if you want a perfect zenith.
Hans
Hans I can not agree.
My setup:
A Zenith with 40D, 60° slanted and levelled, monopod in the belly-belt (!!!):
A set of test I did some times ago:
Beware: app. 20 MB each, complete projects inkl. final panos and PTGUI project files.
All Sigma8 with Canon EOS 40D and Nodal-Ninja :
unslanted levelled:
netzserver1.de/ptgroup/40DS8-lev.zip
unslanted, app. 5 ° up
netzserver1.de/ptgroup/40DS8-5up.zip
60° slanted and LEVELLED
netzserver1.de/ptgroup/40DS8-slanted-levelled.zip
edit:
corrected the links- they work now.
Ciao
Mike
www.360de.de
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Mark Schuster
Posts: 709
Location: Welwyn Garden City, United Kingdom
Registered: 25 Jan 2006
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 11:14 GMT
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Nick,
A great idea. A fixed upward tilt of 5 degrees is all most of us need, but still better would be a quick release between NN and camera in order to quickly separate the camera so as to shoot a handheld nadir.
The device should be as small and light as possible, but of course you know that already.
Look forward to seeing your finished design.
Mark
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gus
Posts: 381
Location: United Kingdom
Registered: 19 Jun 2007
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 12:31 GMT
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My personal opinion: I would rather take an extra shot, than increase the instability of the whole setup, and realise you have blurry pictures when you get home.
9 out of 10 situations, the zenith is easy to patch, and 8 out of 10 times, the nadir is easu to patch.
If the zenith is easy to patch, tilt down for a smaller hole in the nadir, or better yet, take a handheld/viewpoint corrected shot.
If the zenith is hard to patch, tilt up, and patch the nadir/take viewpoint corrected shot.
I honestly dont understand all the fuss for the sake of reducing the workflow by 2-3 seconds, which is how long it takes for a single image.
Or am I missing somthing?
gus
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Matt Rogers
[360 Precision]
Posts: 209
Location: Oxford UK, United Kingdom
Registered: 16 Jun 2005
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 14:13 GMT
updated: 5 Jul 2008 at 14:17 GMT
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I have to completely agree with Gus on this. For some strange reason panoramic photographers seem to love to make things harder than they need to be. They also seem to really concentrate on the small things that in the end make absolutely no difference to the final pano.
Maybe other photographers feel some sort of satisfaction if they can actually produce a pano after deliberately making things difficult ?
Personally I've shot tens of thousands of panos and I've never tested my lens for sharpness, I've never shot with my lens rolled, I've never worried about which degree between each image the seams overlap etc, etc and I can't remember the last time I had an issue.
Yes, you can test every single setting on the camera, lens, software but at the end of the day if you only upload your final pano no one will be any the wiser.
The best advice I can give is to keep it simple and just go out and shoot panoramas. Actually doing it and learning from your mistakes will teach you far more than you can ever learn on an internet forum.
Matt
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mediavets
Posts: 401
Location: Isleham, Cambs., United Kingdom
Registered: 8 Feb 2008
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 14:26 GMT
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Nick Fan said: Hi Hans,
Do you see any advantage of my proposed adapter?
thanks a lot.
nick
No. A bracket mounted on the lower rail might make more sense?
Andrew
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mhc1
Posts: 185
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Registered: 29 Dec 2005
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 14:45 GMT
updated: 5 Jul 2008 at 14:50 GMT
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Matt Rogers said: I have to completely agree with Gus on this. For some strange reason panoramic photographers seem to love to make things harder than they need to be.........
Maybe other photographers feel some sort of satisfaction if they can actually produce a pano after deliberately making things difficult ?
........
Matt
So what´s wrong with keeping things as easy as possible with a slant though ???
You don´t need to worry about the Zenit, Nadir, overlapp .... --> just make a pano.
I can´t think of any other setup that makes it as easy.
Sure: a Zenith shot // Nadir shot would often easy be stitched in. But .....
Who is able to patch a Zenit or Nadir with the mentoned time of 2-3 sec ???
Shooting, converting, stitching .. - well, may be I´m a little slow though.
What are we talking about ?
If it would be such a useless setup as you all claim - why does Agnos still sell this product ?
Slanted AND 5° for a 1.5 Crop !
Nick asked if a bracket would be appreciated- that´s all.
And it surely would make things easier for 1.6 Crop users.
I personally have to agree Luca Vascons statement "never unslanted, 4 shots" -that´s it.
Ciao
Mike
www.360de.de
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Nick Fan
[NodalNinja]
Posts: 276
Location: Hong Kong
Registered: 26 May 2006
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Re: Sigma 8mm on APS-C: to roll or not to roll?
Posted: 5 Jul 2008 at 14:54 GMT
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mhc1 said: My setup:
Hi Mike,
you didn't point the slanted bracket to the other side because the lower rail of NN3 is too short, right?
nick
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