Swiss Panoramic Images + Urban Lines

Chris Fullmer

Wow I love them! Very beautiful Oli!

dale

30, hey a balmy Canadian winters day . Beautiful work Oli

sepo

That second view is from the platform on the Klein Mattahorn... You can see Italy and Cervinia ski area....beautiful...Zermatt is one of my most favourite ski destinations.

pilou

Remember this incredible free prog : autostitch

michaliszissiou

@unknownuser said:

That second view is from the platform on the Klein Mattahorn... You can see Italy and Cervinia ski area....beautiful...Zermatt is one of my most favourite ski destinations.

yes, I was expecting a comment from you.

olishea

Thanks Pilou, I have been using photomerge in photoshop and they require a lot of work to appear seamless. The swiss images took about 2 hours of post processing each to remove distortions while altering levels across the image. If the panoramic is made up of say 15 photographs, each one has a slightly different range of levels so I'm trying to homogenize the whole photograph as effectively as possible, this normally requires lots of level/curve adjustments and masking. Once I use a good fish eye lens on a dslr I should be achieving a much more uniform result, plus you can get automated rotating tripods.

Good to see you again Sid. What would you say is your absolute favourite destination? The whole time I was there it just felt like a surreal dream, it's like a postcard image everywhere you look! Plus the matterhorn is a fantastic navigation beacon. My brother and I are very experienced skiiers but we took along a friend who has only ever skied indoors at the snow dome!! When we stood at the top of that slope, the famous bump bash, he was almost in tears!! There were 4 foot moguls the whole way down, he ended up sliding down most of it on his chest!! ALL on camera!! "Guys, I don't think I can do this!" What an incredible slope though!

There were other skiers going back on the gondola it was so extreme, never seen so many people cack it!

sepo

Verbier, Zermatt and Hintertux Glacier....not sure which one I like more.

Michalis you know me too well

michaliszissiou

Very nice panoramas Oli.
But not in a equirectangular format.

olishea

@michaliszissiou said:

Very nice panoramas Oli.
But not in a equirectangular format.

I know, these are for the curved backgrounds. So, no distortion.

Michalis which is the best, most dynamic process for making equirectangular images? It seems there are several techniques. Do you really need a fisheye lens?

I've seen this:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/equirectangular/discuss/72057594138421542/

It seems the photographer uses wide angle lens with camera orientated portrait (to fit more height in).

@unknownuser said:

My lens is an ultra-wide angle (equivalent 16mm in 24x36 photography terms). The field of view if 97° along the length and 74° along the width. 4 shots would be enough for a 360° pano if the camera was oriented in landscape mode.

hardware requirements here:

http://www.binarycrumbs.com/2008/12/introduction-to-equirectangular.html

michaliszissiou

Oli,
you asked for some homework?
Here it comes. A very powerful app, an open source app. A cross platform app, actually.
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
No, you don't need a fisheye lenses. But it might help a lot.

The bigger problem is to produce hdri images. You need more than one take... for each shot. But, it's the only way for quality lighting.

olishea

@michaliszissiou said:

Oli,
you asked for some homework?
Here it comes. A very powerful app, an open source app. A cross platform app, actually.
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
No, you don't need a fisheye lenses. But it might help a lot.

The bigger problem is to produce hdri images. You need more than one take... for each shot. But, it's the only way for quality lighting.

Thanks I did actually try converting my existing panoramas using hugin but felt like I was hitting a brick wall. I am hoping to take 3 shots per image at different exposures, just need to figure out which is the best camera setup for me. Need a proper tripod too that mounts to the lens. Obviously the wider my lens the more I can fit in so less to process in the end.

michaliszissiou

@unknownuser said:

Thanks I did actually try converting my existing panoramas using hugin but felt like I was hitting a brick wall

Same here... but in the end I had something... making me to search the whole matter further.

Anyway, matterhorn looks like hell to me. Always impressive. Unbelievable.

olishea

haha yeah I got to the spherical wrapping part but it just didn't work.

I don't know if I can actually take 3 images per 8 pano shots, will be 24 shots in total whereas it looks like most photographers just use 8 raw images.

this appears to be most dynamic technique:

http://www.rosaurophotography.com/html/technical.html

EscapeArtist

Very nice. That is some clean stitching of the pano, most apps leave broken or blurry edges.

olishea

@escapeartist said:

Very nice. That is some clean stitching of the pano, most apps leave broken or blurry edges.

Thanks, lots and lots of clone stamping!!

Roger

An easy and accurate way to find a nodal point:
1 Put your camera on a tripod
2 Take two light stands and line them up in the middle of your frame with one behind the other.
3 Rotate your camera left and right until the light stands touch the edge of the frame.
4 If the light stands remain aligned, one behind the other, you have found the nodal point.
5 If one light stands pops out from behind the other you must move the camera back and forth relative to the rotation axis of the tripod until the light stands remain aligned.
6 To move the camera relative to the rotational axis of the tripod you need a pano head that lets you slide the camera back and forth while you search for the nodal point. You need to mark this sliding stage to show the nodal point of each of your prime lenses. (a prime lenses is a lens with only one focal length i.e. a non zoom lens.)
7 With telephoto lenses imaging subjects at a distance the correct nodal point will have little significance to your final image. With wide angle lenses imaging prominent foregrounds, you have to place the nodal point accurately or the images will not stitch.

Hope this helps and am glad to answer any questions.

olishea

Hi Roger and thank you for your help. This is the technical information I need, I still have lots to learn.

I am looking to buy the nodal ninja tripod below: Which of the two would be most practical for my needs?

I am looking at either NN4:

http://www.nodalninja.com/products/nn4/20/

Or the Ultimate M1:

http://www.nodalninja.com/products/ultimate-m1/23/

Also this camera:

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/80903/show.html

And this lens:

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/27901/show.html

michaliszissiou

A fish eye lenses.
Meanwhile, an equirectangular panorama is a 1x2 image. Your wonderful panoramas miss the upper and down information.
I still don't understand the geometry of this 'equirectangular' thing.

olishea

@michaliszissiou said:

Meanwhile, an equirectangular panorama is a 1x2 image. Your wonderful panoramas miss the upper and down information.
I still don't understand the geometry of this 'equirectangular' thing.

Yeah exactly, by orientating the camera portrait you achieve this up and down information....also you take a photo directly upwards and one directly downwards to complete the equirectangular image.

So you take 6 photos around, one up and one down. 8 wide-angle photos in total.

olishea

Read this page below Michalis:

http://www.rosaurophotography.com/html/technical3.html

Imagine the applications though, say you are designing a building for a new site.....No need to model the site for prelims, you can just take a spherical image for visualization rendering.