olivare
Posts: 42
Location:
Registered: 12 Dec 2007
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Nikon D80 + Sigma 8mm Lens settings
Posted: 7 Jan 2008 at 17:04 GMT
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Hi im new to all this even photography,
My new equipment has arrived i have a Nikon D80 , Sigma 8mm , Agnos Tcps Head.
Im thinking of shoot 360/180 panos my question is what kind of settings to use on the camara e.g ive been reading talk about bracketing, hdr, Raw, images, ETC,
I was thinking of taking 4 shots at 90 degrees then use photoshop and PTGUI,
if anyone can help me out with the basics it would be very much apreciated,
Thanks in advance! 
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elevation360
Posts: 3
Location: Law, Scotland, United Kingdom
Registered: 21 Nov 2007
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Re: Nikon D80 + Sigma 8mm Lens settings
Posted: 13 Jan 2008 at 13:56 GMT
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Hi Olivare
The D80's sensor is too small to capture the complete circular image from the Sigma 8mm. i.e. The image will be cut off on two sides.
You are better to use the camera in a vertical format, which will give you almost the full 180 from ground to sky (or nadir to zenith) and then take at least 5 shots around the 360 degrees. This will give you more overlap and aid the stitching process.
You can get away with 4 shots with the Sigma/Nikon combination, but only just! You'd be better to play safe and take 5, 6 or 8 shots.
PTGui is certainly the best bet for stitching although you will still need additional software to patch the nadir and zenith.
Once I have stitched in PTGui, I import the PTGui stitched shot into Pano2VTR (Free) and then convert to cubic format. When this is done your nadir (the ground) will be in cube face 5 and your zenith (the sky) will be in cube face 4. These two cube faces can then be edited individually in PhotoShop (or similar) to patch the nadir and zenith, then the cube faces are converted back to equirectangular in Pano2VTR and your 360 x 180 shot will be complete!
Pano2VTR will also output your panorama in QuickTime format in the free version!
Like all photography there are many ways of doing things and this is just the way I do it. Others will have different workflows and different preffered software.
elevation360
elevation360.com
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Doug Aurand
Posts: 3282
Location: Albuquerque, NM, United States
Registered: 2 Jan 2008
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Re: Nikon D80 + Sigma 8mm Lens settings
Posted: 13 Jan 2008 at 16:44 GMT
updated: 13 Jan 2008 at 16:46 GMT
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Olivare
The most common shoot method with the Sigma 8mm on a camera with an APS-C sized sensor like the D80 is to put the camera in "portrait" position (the rotator probably only mounts it that way) and take 4 shots around horizontal, plus Zenith (straight up) and Nadir (straight down)shots
You can see why you need the Zenith and Nadir shot by taking a look at this link on the iPIX website;
www.ipix.com/products_iis_samples.html
iPIX has a plug-in that will let its software use images from the Nikkor 10.5mm and Sigma 8mm lenses, but it doesn't support Zenith and Nadir shots.
It leaves a "hole" of different sizes depending on the lens and camera position. Look at the "Output" for the second to the last row. You can download and test stitch the source photos from each method, too.
Another method with the Sigma 8mm in portrait position, is to tilt the camera up 15° and shoot 4 shots around. This provides enough overlap at the Zenith to eliminate the need for a Zenith shot. This is paticularly helpful with outdoor shots of clear blue skies that have no detail to line up with the 4 shots around. You can then shoot a Nadir shot or just cover the "hole" a the bottom with a tripod cap.
Good luck
Doug Aurand
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