Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
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Re: Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
Posted: 13 Feb 2011 at 16:19 GMT
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Smooth said: dkloi said: Example of handheld 4 around,plus zenith and nadir, using Samyang 8mm and A580:
www.360cities.net/image/glasgow-george-square-chr...
Not your best panorama to point people to. You should remove your feet from the nadir and if you didn't notice them you need to calibrate your monitor correctly. I'm also seeing what appear to be "pole" shadows from your "handheld" example.
Taking the Zenith shot on a monopod is a pain.
Dennis,
FC-E9 consideration, really?
Regards, Smooth 
Take it merely as an example of handheld 4-around with the Samyang 8mm. Your criticisms were unnecessary and irrelevant to the discussion at hand. There was no need to belittle my work, I'm just giving Dennis advice based on my experience, not selling my services or playing one-upmanship. If it was meant as "constructive" criticism, then it did not come across that way.
This pano was taken as test of my newly acquired A580, especially its high ISO performance and dynamic range, I just happened to have it at hand to address a specific issue raised by Andrew.
I didn't point to it as an example of one of my best panoramas, but as an example of being easily able to take 4 around handheld. Andrew queried the horizontal overlap of the Samyang, I was just showing that it was sufficient. The stereographic nature of its mapping means it has a usefully greater HFoV of roughly 103.5 degrees compared with a conventional diagonal fisheye like the Sigma 10mm which has a HFoV of 90.4 degrees.
The extra 13 degrees is sufficient for guesstimated work if you take care lining up the shots and the scene is fairly static. For more dynamic scenes, you'd be doing more than 4 shots around anyway.
The nadir problem was not due to the lens/camera combo, it was due to me standing in the wrong place and not getting a sufficiently good nadir shot due to the darkness and slushy snow obscuring the ground. Had I tilted the lens down to minimise the nadir patch (easily done on a monopod), there would not have been the problem.
As I'm not being paid for this pano, and it was not meant to be showcased, then it's not worthwhile to spend the extra time and effort to clone out my feet. I assure you, it was taken handheld, you are imagining "pole shadows". If I had used a tripod or monopod, it'd have been a lot better in terms of ISO/noise, stitching errors on the stage gantry, and I would have had a much better nadir.
With a NN R1, the zenith should be easy enough to take. With a monopod, the handheld problems of locating the centre of the nadir patch, downward tilt to minimise the nadir, and getting the zenith shot (e.g. with an R1) would be ameliorated.
For use of the Samyang 8mm with the NEX-3/5, the LA-EA1 Alpha to E-mount adapter is not needed (aperture actuation no required). A far cheaper and slightly lighter third-party adapter could work:
www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/17197117/...:1151 cat:17197117|prd:17197117
or equivalent EBay offerings.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
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Re: Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
Posted: 13 Feb 2011 at 1:42 GMT
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mediavets said: dkloi said: NEX-5, alpha mount adapter, and Samyang 8mm will allow 4 around (plus zenith and nadir). If I needed a compact setup, this is what I'd go for. It should be good for 10k by 5k equirect.
That's one more shot - a zenith - than Dennis wished to shoot - tricky too when you are shooting on/from a monopod.
Would the overlaps be large enough to cope with guesstimated 90 degree yaw separations when shooting with a monopod?
Andrew
I've done 4 around handheld with no problems, just some care. I find doing an extra zenith shot is quite trivial, I prefer to have it in any case as it stitches better.
Example of handheld 4 around,plus zenith and nadir, using Samyang 8mm and A580:
www.360cities.net/image/glasgow-george-square-chr...
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Forum:
Q & A
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Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
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Re: Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
Posted: 12 Feb 2011 at 13:31 GMT
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NEX-5, alpha mount adapter, and Samyang 8mm will allow 4 around (plus zenith and nadir). If I needed a compact setup, this is what I'd go for. It should be good for 10k by 5k equirect.
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Forum:
Q & A
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Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
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Re: Compact camera/lens for lightweight travel
Posted: 12 Feb 2011 at 2:15 GMT
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I use the Samyang 8mm on a Sony APS-C camera, 4 around + zenith + nadir. The NEX-5 has an APS-C sized sensor.
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Forum:
Tips & Tricks
Thread:
SaladoPlayer - open source flash panorama viewer
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Re: SaladoPlayer - open source flash panorama viewer
Posted: 24 Nov 2010 at 0:46 GMT
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Great! Much better than the original PanoSalado (hadn't tried PanoSalado2). The examples and the noobie guide allowed me to simply drop in my pano in just a few minutes. The panning is much smoother than before, and the new modules look like they have lots of potential. Good luck with its development, I look forward to being able to construct virtual tours with it.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
360° panorama with rectilinear lens
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Re: 360° panorama with rectilinear lens
Posted: 17 May 2010 at 17:04 GMT
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I started out doing panos with a 17mm rectilinear on 1.5 crop, 10+10+10+1+1=32 images. Could have gotten away with 10+6+6+1+1=24. An 8mm fisheye is must simpler with 4+1+1=6  .
With a 10mm rectilinear lens on a 1.5 crop camera, you could get away with 6 around at 0 degree pitch, 3 around at +45 degree pitch, 3 around at -45 degree pitch, and a separate nadir, for a total of 13 images. There's a region of small overlap at 60 degrees yaw, 45 degree pitch (and 120 degrees and 240 degree yaw) which might cause problems if the sensor is slightly smaller than 1.5 crop (or the lens is slightly longer than 10mm), you'll have to try and see.
Might be easier to do 6+4+4+nadir=15, or 6+4+4+zenith+nadir+16.
You can play around with different shooting patterns using Hugin or similar, just make up some coloured dummy source files and lay them out in the preview.
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Forum:
Galleries
Thread:
Inverness street scenes
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Re: Why nadir & zenith ?
Posted: 25 Apr 2010 at 21:43 GMT
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It spoils the effect if you have an incomplete zenith or nadir, detracts from the immersive aspect. I try to find a place to take a pano where the zenith, sometimes the nadir, is interesting. With conventional photography, you can crop away unnecessary parts of the image. It's one of the challenges of pano making to try to make the pano work as a whole.
But photography in general isn't usually about common day sights, it is the photographer's job to decide where to stand, where to point the lens, and when to press the shutter and hopefully present an uncommon and interesting view of the world. The basic principles apply to taking panos IMHO.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Creating Rectangular faces instead of CubeFaces?
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Re: Creating Rectangular faces instead of CubeFaces?
Posted: 21 Mar 2010 at 13:16 GMT
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The spreadsheet should be simple to use, just enter the dimensions of the room, your prefered output size of the pano. The settings you need for the angle of view and cubeface sizes should be automatically calculated and displayed in the output section. In order to have the cube faces an integer number of pixels, the output sizes are adjusted compared to the prefered input size.
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Forum:
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Creating Rectangular faces instead of CubeFaces?
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Re: Creating Rectangular faces instead of CubeFaces?
Posted: 20 Mar 2010 at 15:42 GMT
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Very simple trigonometry. You just need to draw your box with the length, width and height, and then consider the cross-sections which will be rectangles with the respective side lengths. From the centre of the room, you can work out the angles to the edges of the room from these rectangles.
E.g. Get a piece of paper and follow these steps:
Your room is x metres wide, y metres deep, and z metres high. You have two opposite walls which are x times z in dimension, and the two other walls are y times z. Your floor is x times y, as is your ceiling. You need to figure out the angles of view to the edges of the room if the viewer is in the middle of the room.
Consider looking at the ceiling and working out the angle of view between the top front edge and top right edge of your box. Draw a cross-section of your room looking from the side, i.e. the wall which is y times z. From the viewpoint in the middle of the room, you can draw lines to the top corners of the rectangle. This forms an isosceles triangle, the top side is length y and the height is z/2. The angle between the two equal length sides will be given by 2*arctan(y/z).
The angle of view of the ceiling from top left to top right edges of the room will be similarly 2*arctan(x/z) by considering the front cross-section (wall which is x times z). Now you can use Hugin or similar to output a face of your room with these angles of view. Just import your equirect pano, rotate the pano so that the centre is facing directly up, set the output horizontal and vertical angle of view to those calculated above, and then set the output resolution. To get the same angular resolution on all 6 faces, the output sizes should be proportional to the wall sizes.
I've uploaded a spreadsheet to dkloi.net/RectangleCalc.ods in OpenOffice format. I think it works but I make no guarantees.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Strategies for Nadir shot
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Re: Strategies for Nadir shot
Posted: 15 Dec 2009 at 0:14 GMT
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I use Hugin to stitch in the nadir, which is usually taken handheld. Generally I have no problems with getting a reasonable stitch.
I load in the nadir shot just like the others.
I crop it to avoid my feet.
I assign it a diiferent lens to the other shots, this allows me to optimise its angle of view, barrel, and image shift.
I make sure that the rest of my pano is all sorted, aligned and optimised before locking them in place and then separately optimising the nadir shot.
I put a selection of alignment points around the edge of the cropped area of the nadir. Then it is simply a matter of optimising the nadir shot position, angle of view, barrel, and image shift. I usually only need to use the b parameter for the barrel distortion optimisation. Hugin may warn you that some of the optimised parameters are very large, but this can be the case if your shot wasn't near the position of others.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Multiple row imaging to create large format, hi-res images
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Re: Multiple row imaging to create large format, hi-res images
Posted: 30 Jul 2009 at 16:15 GMT
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Depends on the scene. For scenes where the parallax error between individual frames is small, then you don't really need a specialised panoramic head or rotator. A pano head and rotator does make it easier to tile up the scene though. I've been using the Nodal Ninja 3 for a variety of panoramic (partial and full) images. The NN5 is recommended for larger cameras/lenses.
Largest pano I've done was about 500MP (manually shot) and was about 80K x 6K pixels, this was done using a simple ball head.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Easiest way to get nadir
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Re: Easiest way to get nadir
Posted: 29 Jul 2009 at 17:18 GMT
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I do the same thing in Hugin. I simply load in the nadir (handheld or done by offset tripod) and simply treat it just like the other shots, albeit with widely different lens parameters (x-y offset etc). Sometime a few extra control lines are useful to make sure certain lines are straight but apart from that, it's usually not a problem. I guess the viewpoint correction feature in PTGUI is simply making use of the x-y offset parameter in the lens model?
Cheers,
Daniel.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Choosing your panoramas
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Re: Choosing your panoramas
Posted: 29 Jul 2009 at 17:13 GMT
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Sometimes a pano you shoot later on is simply better and it's a waste of time stitching the previous one. This is especially true when waiting for good light. I do a series of panos, begin before the time I expect the light to be best and then continue through the "golden hour". Things like clouds and lighting conditions makes it less than deterministic.
Another case where you may not stitch is when there are moving elements and one series is worse than another. With crowds and long exposure, it's a crap shoot whether you manage to a full set of frames with all the right elements in place. I sometimes have to take multiple shots in each direction to get a set which makes a good pano. One has to then know which ones to pick to stitch together.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Best lens for a Sony a350?
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Re: Best lens for a Sony a350?
Posted: 9 Jul 2009 at 19:06 GMT
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I'm using an A700 with the Sigma 10mm/2.8 fisheye. I'm finding that it's a very good combination. If I could afford it, I'd get an A900 and the Sony 16mm/2.8 fisheye or shave the Sigma 10mm. The Sigma 8mm/3.5 is hard to find in alpha mount (though they supposedly exist). The Sigma 4.5mm is also an option though the resolution would be much smaller than when using the 10mm. Tokina have recently announced they'd start making APS-C lenses for alpha mount so you may want to wait and see of the 10-17mm fisheye zoom makes it.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Looking for someone to build Pano
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Re: Looking for someone to build Pano
Posted: 27 May 2009 at 16:09 GMT
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I agree generally with the other posts suggesting you hire a panorama photographer to take the photos and create it for you, it's the most straightforward way. However, if you think you will be doing this on a regular basis, say for each job or for multiple domes to exhibit various styles, then it may pay for you to learn the process yourself. In a controlled environment and with proper equipment and tools, it's not too difficult to produce small to medium sized panos with a little practice and a modicum of advice. It may be trickier if you're using HDR techniques though.
It's then a balance between the cost of hiring someone else to do panos versus the cost of your time to learn and make the panos and the extra equipment.
Cheers,
Daniel.
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