Sunrise Vineyard Photos

solo

Now to do a spherical hdr is beyond me. I still have not exactly figured that one out. I think partially I just don't know exactly what is needed in the renderer.

Chris,

I take photos with an iPhone 4s, so I know nada about camera's, however I have rendered many spherical output renders and to me it looks like a series of images that seamlessly becomes one, so....I assume it's all about rotation.

That's all I got...If you need more help I will do a serious Google search and find an answer.

Again, awesome images and something that you can sell....seriously.

Pixero

Wonderful photos.

Roger

The trick to spherical panos and panos with a lot of foreground:
When you are going to merge multiple images, you are going to move your camera so the images overlap. You can get some pretty good handheld panoramas as long as you don't show much foreground. Once you start showing objects in the near foreground the whole process becomes a bit trickier. And the trick is to rotate the camera around the nodal point of the lens. Some people claim nodal point is not the right term, but I find it actually helps people visualize the problem. Most of us now how a lens inverts an image top to bottom and left to right. The nodal point is that point where the visual rays all cross over each other. And when you move your camera vertically or horizontally for a group of panorama shots the point of rotation and the nodal point must coincide. When you are just using a tripod or shooting a hand supported camera those two spots will almost never coincide. As a consequence foreground objects in your pano will be broken or distorted.

Above is a 275 degree pano of the cave district in Guadix, Spain. It is composed of about 12-15 separate photos and works fairly well without much distortion. The nodal point and point of rotation were not spot on but close. In the full size image you can make out some of the automotive license plates. Cave house in Castellejar, Spain
Here is a two photo pano I shot of a cave house I almost bought in Spain. Can you spot the problem? It is not real obvious because I did a little PhotoShop cheating, but it does illustrate the problem. Look at the spacing of the vertical staves of the near-foreground fence. See where the spacing goes bad. Because the nodal point of the lens and the point of rotation don't match a gab appeared in the fencing spacing and I tried to fudge in an extra stave. Mist people would attribute it to bad workmanship by the builder, but it is the laziness of the photographer.

So how do you correct the problem? You need a cradle for the camera that fits inside a gimbaled mount that allows a camera placement where the camera rotation point and the lens nodal point are coincident. Examples of this would be an armillary sphere or a compass binnacle on a boat. You can buy pano heads of varying quality that go from $75 to over $900. At the very top of the line is the GigaPan System that has a robot head that you preposition the lower left corner of your final image and the the upper right corner and then press the go button and the machine moves your camera in perfect increments and also trips the shutter. Click, click, click, click etc.

Roger

Here is the GigaPan system created for NASA by some of my Carnegie Mellon alums:
http://www.gigapan.com/cms/create-make

Out doors, far away, and not much foreground you can get away with handheld Panos. If your shooting professionally and the subject is indoors, close up, wide angle, and marginal lighting you will definitely want a Gigpan rig or something similar.

Roger

AND nice photos Chris. In a few weeks I am moving to Arizona's wine country. Bet you didn't know we had a wine country. It is to Arizona what Andalucia is to Spain. I am moving so far south I have to pass the border patrol check point just to see a doctor or buy groceries. Hasta la vista . . . . baby!

Chris Fullmer

Thanks Roger!

Yes, I like the gigpan technology. I've seen that before. I would love to get a good gimbal head, its been on my list for a while. I was planning on inventing "gigapan", then I discovered it already existed I was disappointed. But I still would love to do some HDR pano's.

I guess what I'm mostly confused about is how to "close" the sky and ground. The sky seems like a straight upwards shot could be good enough if the software can process it into the pano. But downwards, with the tripod feet, seems tricky.

But does that even matter for HDR backgrounds for rendering? I always assume they need perfect spherical panos where the sky and ground have to meet perfectly, but maybe that's not the case. Solo, is that necessary?

Roger, you're not doing much to deter me from my belief that you are in fact the inspiration behind the "Dos Equis" spokesman, the most interesting man in the world.

david_h

@chris fullmer said:

Thanks everyone!

HDR is just a way of merging different exposures of the same image. So to shoot HDR, you have to shoot a few identical pictures, changing only the exposure. Many people tend to take 3 photos. 1 underexposed (looks dark), one regular exposure, and one overexposed (looks too light). Then you use software to merge them into an HDR file. Most HDR images look bad by default. But they open up a LOT of processing potential because they have color data for the bright areas and the dark areas of an image, something regular photos do not capture well.

So the images above were merged together into an HDR file, then I processed that to bring out the color and luminance, and exported a jpeg - and that is what you see above. But I still have the plain hdr file.

Now to do a spherical hdr is beyond me. I still have not exactly figured that one out. I think partially I just don't know exactly what is needed in the renderer.

thanks Chris. . .I totally understood that.

Actually if you said "bracketing" I woulda gotten it. Back in my day. . .when I shot on glass plates under a cover with a pan of flash powder. . .that's the term we used

solo

The Most Interesting Man In The World

"Stay thirsty, my friend."

"His words carry a weight that would break a less interesting man's jaw."

"He's a lover, not a fighter; but he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas."

"He is the life of parties he has never attended."

"His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man's entire body."

"He can speak French... in Russian."

"He once punched a magician. That's right. You heard me."

"If he were to punch you in the face, you would have to fight off the strong urge to thank him."

"If he patted you on the back, you would put it on your resume."

"He once taught a dog to bark... in Spanish."

"He bowls overhand."

"Sharks have a week dedicated to him."

"He lives vicariously... through himself."

"He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels."

"When in Rome, they do as he does."

"He is: The Most Interesting Man in the World."

And he even slightly resembles him.

Chris, You know what how about a test? I do not believe it has to be seamless as one can rotate as needed, however I do think the sun needs to be roughly in the center.

We use HDR in many ways, some is just to give light to a render, sometimes to give light and backgrounds, even adding a physical sun in the spot where the sun in in the HDR to give sharper shadows and then there is the image being used as the actual scene where you drop your model onto an infinite plane with a shadow catcher. Now the latter will require a more precise HDR spherical image with nothing in the foreground and lots of open space for one to place ones model.

Roger

See:
http://www.pauldebevec.com/Probes/

You can use panos for simple backgrounds and you can also use them as lighting simulators. And, you could probably use one background and mix it with another HDR used to set the subject lighting although the two would need similar qualities if you wanted the effect to be convincing. Since the tripod feet are unlikely to be in a final render and they are unlikely to have much effect on your lighting I would not worry about them. If somehow they did effect your final image, a little photoshop prior to combining your images should get rid of the problem.

I really enjoy the most interesting man in the world thing, but the world is just an illusion so perhaps a Buddhist Rene Descartes would have said, "I imagine, therefore I am."

Chris Fullmer

Well, what I know I can do is make a cylindrical true HDR pano that might ignore the sky and the ground a little. So I'm not sure what that means for your render if you try to look upwards. The perfect top won't align. And the exact straight down wouldn't either.

I've looked at doing this for years now, and somehow I always get caught up on this same issue. So once I get one made, I'll send it to you Pete and Roger. You guys can hopefully tell me what was right or wrong about it. I won't get to this imediately though I don't think. Its pretty gloomy out right now.

solo

@unknownuser said:

I won't get to this imediately though I don't think. Its pretty gloomy out right now.

could be good as gloomy means muted shadows

Starling75

This is interesting..
http://www.hdrlabs.com/tutorials/downloads_files/How_To_Shoot_Chrome_Ball.pdf
http://www.ruffstuffcg.com/journal/making-mirrored-ball-and-panoramic-hdr-images-part-1.html

bmike

nice shots! how do you like photomatix? i haven't spent any $$ on hdr software yet. need to save up for lightroom.

here are a few quick and dirty handheld panos, shot raw. i used hugin to stitch them together:

west side market, cleveland, ohio by mbeganyi, on Flickr

cle-pano by mbeganyi, on Flickr
(i have another version of both with a bit more PP done... that bridge scene would have helped to shoot multiple exposures, but these were done with a 4 year old running around...)

i have tried a few sterogrpahic projections, but the subject matter caused me trouble (on a bridge...).
here's a good flickr tutorial:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jftphotography/505670753/

would love to shoot site photos for modeling and do a spherical - but haven't stepped up to getting a tripod head yet. would be nice, but i need to get some better camera equipment first...

Chris Fullmer

So I've done lots of regular panoramas, using photoshop to stitch them together. I've shot lots of HDR images. I think I just don't get the rendering process or workflow. So in the renderer, you use an hdr 360 pano for the lighting, and then do you use that same image for the background? Or is it a nice looking processed jpeg that you use for the background plate?

Or do you normally not even render with a background image and does the model just get added to video footage in post or something?

I just feel like there are some workflow issues I don't understand, or maybe there are so many different ways to do it I'm having a hard time understanding it all. Anyhow, for now I'll just try to make a 360 cylindrical full hdr pano. That I can do.

Chris Fullmer

@David_H - The reason I didn't call it "bracketing" is because that is much fancier photographer jargon than I'm comfortable with

david_h

Jargon . . .MOI???

I wouldn't know an F-stop from F Troop. . . .

Roger

@unknownuser said:

Jargon . . .MOI???

I wouldn't know an F-stop from F Troop. . . .

But I do and promise that after this house purchase lunacy of mine I will create a tutorial on the subject of panoramas and HDRIs.

Roger

Solo, you forgot one thing about the most interesting man.

He uses the women's bathroom so lesser men will not peek and feel inferior.

bmike

chris, this isn't directed at you, as i like to play around with hdr a bit too (nowhere near as nice as some of your results...), but i found it funny (and i'm not a photographer at all...)

Chris Fullmer

Wow, that's remarkably accurate!

I'm directly above the "T" in Time. In the HDR hole for a little, in the flickr, photoshop world, just past gearfaggotry (though I'm too poor to really enter into that), and I'm currently wishing I could get to the one exposure per motive. It really is accurate.