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Q & A
Thread:
Non spherical panos

Re: Non spherical panos Posted: 1 Feb 2010 at 20:11 GMT	go to thread
OK, so I made a few attempts and I must be missing something because I'm getting a less than 360-degree spherical pano. That is the resulting JPEG is warped. I tried the different settings and equirectagular (for spherical panos) yields the least warped large JPEGs. A QT Mov isn't warped and when you pan, it looks natural, other than a lot of black space since I wasn't attempting to wrap around 360. I tried all the other options under Panorama Settings tab, in the popup window. Flat looked distorted in a different way. Here is the pano JPG. picasaweb.google.com/wco811/SamplePanos#543336970...
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Q & A
Thread:
Zenith and Nadir

Re: Zenith and Nadir Posted: 26 Jan 2010 at 18:47 GMT	go to thread
mediavets said: wco81 said: as it's taking 3 bracketed shots each location? May I suggest you start with single shot per position panos. You seem to be trying to run before you crawl. Andrew I will certainly think about it. Just thought I would try it out and just set up in a place near my house. It certainly takes a long time to process the HDR and stitch so PTGUI is chewing up CPU for a long time, processing that many shots. Next week, I'm going to Spain and want to try to take pictures of some plazas. Problem is these are sure to be crowded so people moving all the time. I realize it would be much easier to use a fisheye but want to wait a couple of months to see what the DSLR landscape looks like. So maybe I could try it at night or at twilight, in the hope that these places will be less crowded. But then there are other sets of problems under those conditions too.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Zenith and Nadir

Re: Zenith and Nadir Posted: 26 Jan 2010 at 18:34 GMT	go to thread
Smooth said: wco81 said: Just the LX3, no converter, for now. I did it as an HDR so we're talking 108 shots for 3 rows (12 shots around, 3 exposures per shot) and 6 shots for the zenith and nadir. I'm not even sure where it located the zenith. The nadir had a brick pattern so it tried to put it right in the middle of the brick, including the picture of the pano head. OK, the PTGUI UI is sometimes hard to follow. Mousing over some of those buttons didn't display any labels. I'll give it another try. Clicking the "tabs" will show you every image you have imported. You simply have to go through them one by one. Multi row stitching is much harder then fisheye and at 24mm you are bound to get an image without features and this will make it hard for PTGui to add automatic control points (this is where a pre-made template helps). If you get stuck, upload the images and I or some others will try and help with the panorama. Regards, Smooth www.smooth360.info Thanks for the offer. I don't have online storage, certainly not for 108-114 shots but I may have to make some arrangements. I tried to upload the completed pano here but I keep hitting the file size limits and this weeks a little hectic or else I would put it up. I also saved it as a QT movie file and it looks okay but on rotation, you get jaggies and a moire like pattern. For instance, a tree with just a lot of branches close together looks dithered as you pan by it. Would a better NPP have helped that? (I'm assuming the NPP discussion is about getting better overall stitching results, not zenith and nadirs per se). Other thing too is that my camera and tripod are light. And on some of the shots, I may have introduced vibration while activating the shutter. It's bright daylight so maybe not too bad, but all this discussion of millimeters makes me wonder. A gust of wind or maybe even the shutter itself introduces enough vibration as it's taking 3 bracketed shots each location?
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Zenith and Nadir

Re: Zenith and Nadir Posted: 26 Jan 2010 at 18:08 GMT updated: 26 Jan 2010 at 18:22 GMT	go to thread
You can cycle through the images with the number tabs. When you find an image out of position drag it to it's appropriate position as close as you can and re-run the "Assign Control Points" this should solve the issue. If not, you will need to add control points manually and then Optimise. John Houghton has tutorials on this online at www.johnhpanos.com What camera/lens were you shooting this with? Regards, Smooth www.smooth360.info Just the LX3, no converter, for now. I did it as an HDR so we're talking 108 shots for 3 rows (12 shots around, 3 exposures per shot) and 6 shots for the zenith and nadir. I'm not even sure where it located the zenith. The nadir had a brick pattern so it tried to put it right in the middle of the brick, including the picture of the pano head. OK, the PTGUI UI is sometimes hard to follow. Mousing over some of those buttons didn't display any labels. I'll give it another try.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Zenith and Nadir

Re: Zenith and Nadir Posted: 26 Jan 2010 at 14:34 GMT	go to thread
So I did one over the weekend (first sunlight in over 2 weeks) and I figured the zenith and nadir were just afterthoughts. After shooting 3 rows around (+ and - 30 degrees), I just rotated 90 degrees up to shoot the sky and 90 degrees down to shoot the floor. PTGUI stuck the nadir in the middle of the panorama and not even sure where the zenith shots (bracketed for HDR) went. What's going on? Do I need to find the NPP for PTGUI to add correctly? I rotated the zenith/nadir files right (clockwise), otherwise they came up as landscape in PTGUI.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Non spherical panos

Re: Non spherical panos Posted: 24 Jan 2010 at 23:07 GMT	go to thread
No I used the NN3 and rotated, 30 degrees each time, for a total of 60 degrees (-30, 0, +30). I also took shots at 0, 30, 60 on the vertical. So a total of 9 shots. But I used the lens zoomed in, to get closer to the building. However, not one these 9 shots had much if any overlap. The 30-degree rotations worked for my wide angle, not for the lens zoomed in at 2.5x.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Non spherical panos

Re: Non spherical panos Posted: 24 Jan 2010 at 15:56 GMT	go to thread
OK, I did try taking some test shots of tall buildings, zooming in so that I get closeups of details. But in the zoomed up state, I used the same rotations as in the wide angle state so there were little overlaps. Got to try again.
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
Non spherical panos

Non spherical panos Posted: 23 Jan 2010 at 22:29 GMT	go to thread
Say you want to take picture of the big facade of a building, like a cathedral but you can only get unobstructed views from close by. So you want to take maybe 6 shots and stitch them together with PTGUI. Their FAQ says to use the NPP. So would it make sense to use the pano head in this case and just rotate a couple of times and tilt up and down, either 2 or 3 rows? As opposed to taking handheld shots? And for this kind of application, is there an advantage in using landscape as opposed to the portrait orientation used for spherical panos?
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Forum:
Q & A
Thread:
HDR Panos with PTGUI

HDR Panos with PTGUI Posted: 23 Jan 2010 at 22:23 GMT	go to thread
I thought best way might be to take RAW and JPG, then process them through something like Photomatix, then feed the resulting HDR files into PTGUI. But apparently PTGUI can handle the bracketed shots and let you stitch and tone-map at once. Has anyone compared the results of these different work flows? The PTGUI tutorial on HDR panos says exposure doesn't matter as long as you bracket and set it on manual: www.ptgui.com/hdrtutorial.html And the nice thing about HDR is that you don't have to worry much about 'proper' exposure, since bracketing ensures that everything will be exposed properly anyway! So instead of trying to determine a universal exposure to use throughout the shots, you just set it on manual and let it bracket? How many EVs, 1, 2, or 3?
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