Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Shaving the 10.5 FE for FF bodies
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Re: Shaving the 10.5 FE for FF bodies
Posted: 23 Dec 2008 at 4:28 GMT
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G'day,
There's been heaps of great comments already. I'll just state for the record owning a D200 & D700 what I do.
D700 + Nikon 16mm Fullframe Fisheye = heaven  Same FOV as D200 + 10.5mm requires 6 + 1 etc.
I have shaved my 10.5 and also use it on the D700 for pole shots shooting 3 around at 0 degrees on a 360precision Atome. The Atome has a ring which attaches to the lens, and acts as a quick release, so I leave it on the 10.5mm at all times. Works beautifully.
I'll give Han's recommendation a go and try 4 shots around as well... I did find with 3 shots auto CP generation wasn't brilliant. Here's 18 pole shot examples I did at a motor race in October: with D700 + shaved 10.5mm + 360P Atome + pole/rotator etc.
panedia.com/indy-pole.htm
D700 has 'auto' DX mode when a DX lens is attached. Like the D3, that can be turned off in the menu.
There is no problems having the hood off the 10.5mm. Just need to be a bit careful not to bang it on anything as there is no protection for the lens. Also, as with any lens you're shooting panos with, the focus should be taped down so it doesn't ever move.
Thanks, Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Question about using Flash for a CD (Non-VR)
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Re: Question about using Flash for a CD (Non-VR)
Posted: 7 Dec 2008 at 22:02 GMT
updated: 7 Dec 2008 at 22:10 GMT
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G'day Doug,
To run flash locally the developer takes the .swf file and produces a 'projector' from it. The projector is an .exe file that contains the flash .swf & the flash player so anyone can run it regardless of whether they have flash or not. Separate files need to be made for Mac & PC as an .exe won't work on a Mac, but both projectors will play back the same video content.
Regarding the video, make sure they use H264 compression as it's far better than other video encoding options. Flash will play back H264 .mp4 files which is what I've used when outputting from Adobe Premiere etc.
Good luck,
Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Shaving lenses
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Re: Shaving lenses
Posted: 5 Dec 2008 at 23:30 GMT
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Not quite on topic, but I heard from Nikon Professional Services (NPS) here is Oz, that they'd had one person order a 10.5mm hood section as a spare part with the 10.5mm, then they'd got it cut to size and had Nikon install the cut version. According to the people I was speaking too it looked like it was store bought that way.
Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
My first 18 Pole Panos
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Re: My first 18 Pole Panos
Posted: 26 Nov 2008 at 3:59 GMT
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G'day Epoc, I just tested all the links & they're working here... albeit slowly... everything online is going at little slow here ATM.
Can you let me know if you are still not able to access anything?
Thanks, Aaron.
panedia.com
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
My New music studio!
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Re: My New music studio!
Posted: 23 Nov 2008 at 4:39 GMT
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Sweet Studio, the coloured instruments look great too. I checked out the other pano images, cool stuff there too.
Thanks, Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
My first 18 Pole Panos
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My first 18 Pole Panos
Posted: 23 Nov 2008 at 4:33 GMT
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G'day All,
I shot my first 18 pole panos at the Nikon Indy 300 (street race) here on the Gold Coast, Australia last month. Yesterday I finally got around to figuring out how to stitch & finish them 
panedia.com/indy-pole.htm
I used a Nikon D700 + shaved 10.5mm fisheye + 360precision Atome + gps. The pole consisted of (from bottom to top) a manfrotto monopod + 300N rotator + a few foba 60cm (2ft) pole sections + camera rig.
I used a cheap chinese wireless remote to trigger the shutter & shot 3 images at 120 degrees for each pano. I output the equirectangular images at 7000x3500 which is slightly upscaled according to PTGui.
I modified our batch processing system to create all the original files. Although accurate stitching of pole panos from a template is impossible, I found it worked well to give me a quick & dirty view of all the panos, and did work surprisingly well. I was then able to manually stitch those panos I wanted to keep. Another process that was surprisingly simple using PTGui, Photoshop & Pano2Vr. (I haven't done this much manual stitching in a long time
I did up a quick map using our embedding system (embed.panedia.com) which is the link you see above. This is probably my favourite shot in fullscreen maps.panedia.com/pano?id=00006645 of the winner at the podium being photographed by about 100 people... and me.
BTW: My panos from this event last year were used on the main race website in our embedded multimap system maps.indy.com.au/ This year we shot another 150 ground based panos... with lots of crowds etc which was missing last year. This map has most of what we shot this year panedia.com/indy.htm not including pole panos, all rough batch stitched with no editing. There's plenty of corporate suite boring stuff in there as well.
Thanks, Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Shaving lenses
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Re: Shaving lenses
Posted: 19 Oct 2008 at 2:10 GMT
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I cut the lens hood off my 10.5mm last week. I was going to have it done 'professionally' in a metal lathe, but didn't get it organised in time, so in the end I bought $6 worth of stuff from the hardware and did it myself at the hotel I was staying at.
I took pics & am going to blog the process I used... but the pics are in Sydney with my wife... and I'm home on the Gold Coast at the moment.
In a nutshell:
I bought a very small hacksaw, about 150mm (6inch) long, and some electrical tape.
I used the tape to wrap round and around the lens (6x) above and below the circle I wanted to cut, thereby creating a channel for the hacksaw blade to sit in.
I also wrapped up a sheet of paper into a cylinder and pushed it down onto the top of the lens, protecting the glass from plastic shavings etc.
Final result, fantastic... just a few scratches on the metal lens barrel where I've cut through the paper. I'll colour those in with a black pen and it will be perfect.
Time taken... about 30mins. The hacksaw became pretty blunt about 1/2 way through, so the 2nd half took a while.
Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Anyone getting the Nodal Ninja 180
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Re: Anyone getting the Nodal Ninja 180
Posted: 4 Oct 2008 at 11:14 GMT
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G'day Doug,
Good points you make there but....
1) I'm not allowing hotel marketing people to determine my quality standards. They generally (with respect) don't have the first clue about the web/ content/ interactivity/ virtual tours etc. If we let them set the standard... none of the stuff we do would even exist
2) I'm shooting primarily for the end user (ie destination content) they can & do appreciate the quality. As I mentioned I'm also shooting for the future, by shooting at much higher rez than presently required online. (We do actually use the full rez files for wallpapers & prints.. but that's beside the point wallpaper.panedia.com
3) Shooting at the best time of day (ie dawn or dusk) should allow you to shoot single exposures by waiting until the exterior matches the interior lighting. A camera like the D700 also provides a greater Dynamic Range than a typical DSLR.
eg: panedia.com/client/gccec.htm - these are demo images for the client to choose the 'final' 12 which will be 'perfected'. They're all single exposures that have been batched direct from lightroom.. ie no photoshop retouching.
All shot on a D700 + Nikon 16mm fisheye (6+1 - 6 around x 1 up), using a 360Precision Adjuste, and all batched with a rough'n'ready template I made from one of the panos shown.
4) I'm not knocking your existing setup, just pointing out that IMO a pretty low rez 2 shot system isn't the holy grail, and if you want to spend some bucks, you could do better
Thanks, Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Bonfires and crowd scenes
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Re: Bonfires and crowd scenes
Posted: 4 Oct 2008 at 1:16 GMT
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I've used a similar method to Hans in this fireworks pano:
tinyurl.com/3mpnfy
I only had 1 camera handy so I don't have the crowd looking at the fireworks unfortunately. Nor do I have a pole which would be mandatory as the people crowd right in around you making shooting a standard height pano virtually impossible during the fireworks.
I setup about 20mins before the fireworks, shot a full virtual tour then waited for the fireworks. I shot all the fireworks without moving the tripod/camera, just locked at one of the pano positions. Then for good measure shot another full pano after the fireworks, all without moving the tripod.
In post production I've then selected the best virtual tour scene & the best fireworks shot & combined them.
Audio (as both Hans and I have) adds a LOT to the pano if you can do it.
Aaron Spence
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Anyone getting the Nodal Ninja 180
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Re: Anyone getting the Nodal Ninja 180
Posted: 3 Oct 2008 at 1:16 GMT
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G'day Doug,
For US$4500 you could buy a 'Pro' rig to do vastly higher quality work... and do it much quicker than a 2 shot system.
Example:
Nikon D90 + 10.5mm fisheye + 360Precision Absolute + Di-GPS + Manfrotto 755B Tripod + wireless remote release + small compass
This would provide you with the ability to batch process equirectangular panos to 11,700 x 5,850 pixels, using a 6 around x 1 up method. Shooting would take about 30 seconds per pano.
Sure that's far higher rez than you need online...at the moment, but you'll be able to batch process those equirectangular files into larger online panos in the future when screens are even bigger & bandwidth higher.
Eg. We run our 'fullscreen' panos at 6000x3000 pixels at the moment (we also batch process 3 smaller sizes). But when we started Panedia last year we processed the files to 5000x2500. A few months back I was wanting to increase the web resolution, so played around with resolution & compression to find settings I preferred, then batch processed 5500+ equirectangular panos into the new size & uploaded them. Took about a week all up, but virtually none of my time.
Anyway, just a heads up.. as one who is doing an extensive amount of pano shooting and development, having moved through 4 or 5 pano rigs over the past 8yrs ... a 2 shot system is not the way to go IMO.
BTW: our latest tech. went online a couple of days ago, an Interactive Track Map for the Indycar race in Oz
maps.indy.com.au
Thanks, Aaron Spence.
panedia.com
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
New Panedia Sites (Crosspost)
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Re: New Panedia Sites (Crosspost)
Posted: 23 Apr 2008 at 11:29 GMT
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Thanks Hans,
I agree, that's been on our development list for a long time...ie remembering user settings.
Until we got near final features though (ie now) we didn't want to devote resources to developing features that would constantly change...ie we've been adding more user settings that need to be remembered, ie right side panel open/closed, showing text/thumbnails as well as autospin and hotspots on/off in both types of map.
Anyways....we plan to remember user settings not just in a session, but for future sessions as well
Thanks, Aaron Spence.
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
New Panedia Sites (Crosspost)
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Re: New Panedia Sites (Crosspost)
Posted: 23 Apr 2008 at 11:21 GMT
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Thanks Dave,
I'll check out the check boxes...I recall this issue in the past and thought you could click anywhere, will investigate.
The hotspots looking ugly when panning is something we unfortunately have no control over...like most pano viewers FPP (Flash Panorama Player) drops the quality when things move so that the pano speed remains reasonable. We do plan to add hardware accelerated viewing at some stage (not via flash) so then we'll be able to maintain the quality while panning
Aaron Spence.
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
New Panedia Sites (Crosspost)
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New Panedia Sites (Crosspost)
Posted: 21 Apr 2008 at 12:00 GMT
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G'day All,
Just updating you on some new sites we've launched this week.
panedia.com now points to all the sub sites we're creating.
The most interesting new site we've launched is our flash panorama - Google maps integration. We now have dynamic hotspots being generated inside the panorama and updating the google map, while the map markers in google maps control the panorama....sounds complicated, but have a
play it's very simple and a lot of fun:
pano.panedia.com
(Long blog post details the features: is.gd/7Gg)
This new site also integrates with our existing pano/maps site which as been significantly updated as well:
maps.panedia.com
(Long blog post comparing the Panedia Map site with Streetview: is.gd/7uA )
Most of these sites are in preview with a lot more to come, so please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks, Aaron Spence.
panedia.com
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
Wordpress & Flash Panorama Player - NYC
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Re: Wordpress & Flash Panorama Player - NYC
Posted: 19 Apr 2008 at 2:02 GMT
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Beautiful pano work Sam, really enjoyed looking at the NY stuff, I'll need to come back and view more when I have some time.
I agree with others the inital FOV is too far out on some.
I'd also add, I think it's better to offer people a smaller version up front and give them the option of a big one...a 3mb download is IMO too large to see a small version of the pano.
Also the right menu options in FPP seem to be disabled...I'm not sure if this is default or a setting, but I always use the right menu to go fullscreen etc, rather than figuring out how each site has decided to label the 'fullscreen' button as everyone does it different and puts it in a different place. Right menu is much quicker and easier...for experience users
(LOL after typing this I checked the right menu fullscreen on one of my sites...it's there but not working...will have to take my own medicine
All just my opinion....again beautiful work
Thanks, Aaron Spence.
panedia.com
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Panedia Wallpaper Site - Crosspost
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