Forum/thread	Message
Forum: Galleries Thread: HDR Feedback Appreciated...	Re: HDR Feedback Appreciated... Posted: 8 Nov 2007 at 21:00 GMT go to thread Thanks for the feedback! I agree 4.7mb is too large. I should have paid better attention to the size. It's all the fine detail in the rocks and pine needles that bumps the size up even though I used the same compression levels which produced smaller panos with less detail. - David alert moderator
Forum: Galleries Thread: HDR Feedback Appreciated...	Re: HDR Feedback Appreciated... Posted: 8 Nov 2007 at 20:54 GMT go to thread Thank you! I've had to work hard to control my impulse to over use HDR. I think many of my older panos on the same site are a wee bit over the line. One problem I run into is my laptop's LCD panel is a bit undersaturated, leading me to create panos that are oversaturated on most other displays. I use three bracketed exposures (-1/0/+1) and Photomatix first to create the HDR tone-mapped images, which I then stitch with PTGui. - David alert moderator
Forum: Galleries Thread: HDR Feedback Appreciated...	HDR Feedback Appreciated... Posted: 8 Nov 2007 at 19:10 GMT go to thread I have long been using the HDR technique when creating my panos and always try to achieve a realistic effect. I'd appreciate feedback on whether I met this goal with my latest work: www.vrroadtrip.com/texas/bastropSP/4/pano.html As always, thanks! - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: Immervision PureTools vs DevalVR	Re: Immervision PureTools vs DevalVR Posted: 11 Feb 2007 at 5:42 GMT go to thread I bought and used PureTools, but then started noticing I could never get my fullscreen VRs to be as sharp as those of QTVR I saw on the web. So, I bought Pano2QTVR and did a side-by-side and sure enough, the QTVR was noticably sharper with the same source jpeg. I decided sharpness trumped the cool dynamic lens flare and I haven't used PureTools since. Has anyone else had a similar experience? - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: Carel Struycken Promotional Shoot for Nodal Ninja	Re: Carel Struycken Promotional Shoot for Nodal Ninja Posted: 5 Feb 2007 at 2:58 GMT updated: 5 Feb 2007 at 3:03 GMT go to thread Bill, I think it is a very well done pictue with a clever composition that accomplishes the essential goals: 1. Showcase the Nodal Ninja 3 2. Make Carel clearly identifiable, which easy to do, IMHO, by viewing his face as much as his height. I also enjoy the clever tie-in to his Lurch the butler character, which adds to his identifiability. I think it was very generous of Carel to donate his time and the quality of your photo makes it worth while. Finally, I must say, I have long enjoyed Carel's HDR VRs even before I knew who he was. I am grateful to him for making such breathtaking VRs available to someone, such as myself, who cannot spend the time or money to travel and see the vistas myself. Thank you, - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: can somene pls merge this 3 images in photomatix ...	Re: can somene pls merge this 3 images in photomatix ... Posted: 1 Feb 2007 at 19:50 GMT go to thread Photomatix can generate some slightly, as in the above case, or very other wordly looking tone-mapped HDR images. However, the tone mapping can and should be configured to give you the results you want, which may be a very natural look, such as that achieved by John above using a non-Photomatix process. I appreciate this configurability of Photomatix as well as its batch feature. - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: Templates in PTGui - how precise?	Re: Templates in PTGui - how precise? Posted: 1 Feb 2007 at 18:13 GMT go to thread Take a look at this recent thread on sensor cleaning: www.panoguide.com/forums/tipsntricks/2485/ -David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: Suggest Pano Head	Re: Suggest Pano Head Posted: 24 Jan 2007 at 18:17 GMT updated: 24 Jan 2007 at 18:19 GMT go to thread I use a Nodal Ninja 3. I replaced my Kaidan with it recently and couldn't be happier. The main thing I like about it, other than its quality and precision, is how small and light it is - I can pack it in my tripod bag. And, it only costs about $200. - David alert moderator
Forum: Tips & Tricks Thread: Sensor Cleaning	Re: Sensor Cleaning Posted: 24 Jan 2007 at 17:28 GMT updated: 24 Jan 2007 at 17:31 GMT go to thread Alan, I too have constant dust on my sensor from switching lenses. After doing a lot of obsessive reading on the subject I bought and use The Arctic Butterfly 700 brush. It is expensive, but not relative to the cost of the camera or the time it would take to post process the dust away. The URL is: www.visibledust.com/products.php?PID=1 The brush is motorized so you can spin it before using, which removes any dust on the brush and statically charges it to pick up dust from the sensor. Most importantly, it is soft and cannot damage the sensor, and it is reusable and self cleaning. I use it frequently and it always removes any dust that is at all visible in a normal image. I say normal because there have been, from when I first purchased the camera, very minor specs adhering to my sensor that only show when I shoot an image designed to show dust on the sensor. This is done by shooting a white full-screen image on my LCD panel with the lens out of focus and stopped all the way down to f22. I then post process it to increase the contrast considerably. With this approach anything consequential or not to real images jumps out. I do not worry myself over such specks that are not visible if I instead take a focused shot of a blue sky. That way I won't accidently wear or damage the sensor by obsessively over-cleaning with something other than the brush and, more importantly, I will live longer! Hope this helps. - David alert moderator
Forum: Galleries Thread: The most difficult pano I have ever stitched	Re: The most difficult pano I have ever stitched Posted: 20 Jan 2007 at 23:16 GMT updated: 20 Jan 2007 at 23:18 GMT go to thread Jan, Wow! The hall is beautiful, but the lighting and your expert handling of the exposure makes it art! I couldn't imagine it being done better. I envy you the gorgeous architecture. - David alert moderator
Forum: Panoguide website feedback Thread: Can't Edit Our Posts - What do you think?...	Re: Can't Edit Our Posts - What do you think?... Posted: 20 Jan 2007 at 22:58 GMT updated: 20 Jan 2007 at 23:00 GMT go to thread James, I understand the benefit of the time limit better now thanks to the scenario you described. As I think about it more, I am realizing it was only the shortness of the window of time that I found inconvenient. You having lengthened it has taken care of that! I also understand about the coding issue as programming is my day job . Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it. - David alert moderator
Forum: Panoguide website feedback Thread: Can't Edit Our Posts - What do you think?...	Can't Edit Our Posts - What do you think?... Posted: 20 Jan 2007 at 15:50 GMT go to thread I have found it, at times, fairly inconvenient not being able to edit my posts except during the couple minutes or so after creating them. I have not run into this before on a forum. My understanding is the reason we have a limited time to edit our posts is because, in the past, members were deleting posts, even after replies, which goes against the spirit of sharing information. I wonder if this is a situation of penalizing the many for the actions of the few? In other words, how often did this happened and is it worth penalizing us all, if it happened rarely? Even if the answer is yes, could the time for editing our posts be increased? What do you think? Thanks, - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: first hotel virtual tour	Re: first hotel virtual tour Posted: 18 Jan 2007 at 19:45 GMT go to thread After playing around with posting the URL, it seems there is no way to do so without the forum software escaping the first "&" to "&". The interesting thing is I am sure the intention of the code is to escape all occurences of "&" and not just the first. I agree that a tinyUrl is the way to go. A work around is to simply past the entire URL, link and text part, in your browser's location field and then replace the "&" with a "&" manually. I did this and it came up fine. At first glance, the VR looks good, but I did see some stitching errors. I'll leave further analysis to those on this forum with more experience. - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: first hotel virtual tour	Re: first hotel virtual tour Posted: 18 Jan 2007 at 19:29 GMT go to thread The "&" in the URL has been replaced by the escape sequence "&" - David alert moderator
Forum: Q & A Thread: Work sequence for shooting VR panorama	Re: Work sequence for shooting VR panorama Posted: 18 Jan 2007 at 17:42 GMT go to thread Why does the tripod, as well as the head, need to be leveled? Isn't it enough that the head/bracket is leveled? - David alert moderator