Just a question oli.
this lens is a fisheye ~10mm, But on a dx camera this means ~15mm right?
Welcome to the nikon club.
My favorite nikon lens is the 50mm f 1.4 , Classic.

Just a thought
Can you explain how a such vast resolution, having a so low quality GPU can serve us? In a 3d world I mean.
BTW Already an issue on using zbrush. (for a deferent reason, zb doesn't use GPU)

Indeed
@Roger @Gaieus
Thank you for your concern.

To model a room. My room for instance.
I can, but, render times will increase rapidly.
I'm laaaaaazzzzy.
The idea behind this is related to a new development of blender sculpting mode.
It's very important to sculpt having a preview of a place, as a background.
Sculpting is not just about construction. It's more about shapes that try to capture lighting. I mean, a flow of shapes, connected, coming from the surrounded place into the smaller details of sculpting. It's the final question about Scale. As we can imitate it in the 3d world. As possible it is, after all.
There isn't anything like an outline around a sculpt. Or around a building if I may say so. An idea, an obsession, when you have it, you can't communicate with your feelings otherwise.
So, we have blender sculpting now, with the ability to render (cycles) under a physically correct GI fast renderer. A GI renderer tends to "eat" carving, casted shadows, as hell.
This is so close to what is happening in real sculpting... I'm impressed.

Sorry for spoiling OLI's thread, but it may demonstrates why it's so important to have such surrounding environments. An easy access on such environments.
@Roger

@unknownuser said:

A vertical pano/HDRI showing seven floors of a Thai shop house.

This looks like a 3d render. !!!

Please allow me a post, to show how hdri equirectangular panorama can help me.
Not my panorama though... A free download.

Anyway, I tried with ipad. Lot of noise but some success.
A pure blender sculpt in my home, with some help of additional lighting (I admit it). But environment requirectangular panoramic worked. (some stretching still there, and lot of noise

Very nice panoramas, but I need equirectangular 1x2 panoramas. The worse is I need interiors. The worst is that I need hdris and mostly empty places.
I need them badly. Good luck to me.

@unknownuser said:

No, There are 6 photos taken every 60 degrees, then one photo up, and one to two photos down (nadir)

Yeah right, these are technics though. But the finished work shows always two 180º perfect shots, perfectly stitched. Theoretically speaking.

Oli they can be as many photos as you like. Any lenses can work. You have two perfectly round shots in the end that you'll try to stitch. Theoretically speaking...

OLI, let me translate it for you.
Buy the cheapest camera with a fisheye lenses.
But it has to be capable to work manually.
And learn how to stitch equirectangular panoramas. I did some progress on this (hugin).
But I have a d300 Nikon and a 17mm only wide lenses. (and some expensive lenses like 50mm 1.4, or some nice expensive zoom lenses)
A 17mm means equivalent to ~25mm under dSLR format. Not much for such panoramas.
Is there any cheap adaptor-lenses for use on ipad?
Indeed, only pain came from using my dSLR for such a purpose.

About equirectangular panoramas. I did some search and the only I can understand is that: basically there are two 180º wide square photos, stitched together. A 1x2 format.
Am I right?

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.

@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.

@Boofredlay

Good ones.

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.

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

@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.

Have you been in egypt during the summer?
Bigger stones there.

What about the great ancient theater. Tragedies-dramas performed during the day from dawn till afternoon. Trilogies.
Under the sun. The night isn't the appropriate hour for such meanings.
Wearing their huts (chinese like) and eating onions and garlics.
Indeed, the great dramas of Aeschylus Sophocles Euripides under the smell of ailoli ::

And something sad.
On a tomb of a dog.
"Here the stone says it holds the white dog from Melita, the most
faithful guardian of Eumelus; Bull they called him while he was yet
alive; but now his voice is prisoned in the silent pathways of night."

OLI

you missed the war.

Pheidia's famous masterpieces, a Zeus in Olympia and Athena in acropolis, made using ivory and gold pieces on a wooden structure.
We know just a little on these, mostly from some funny small statues - copies. Unfortunately.
No, the best we have is the small fragments of the two gigantic compositions on the two pediments of parthenon. And all the gigantic series of the famous reliefs.
It's possible that even the whole parthenon is made under his personal art directing. Basically is a gigantic construction to hold his beautiful sculpture.
He was also a very close friend to Pericles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidias
(Pheidias not Phidias, oh my)
Pheidias may did some bronze works, he may not... we don't know if a gigantic Athena in acropolis was his work for sure.
Parthenon, a gigantic modular construction. Precision is enormous.
Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Democracy was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although decoration of the Parthenon continued until 432 BC.
Compare these to the new acropolis museum of Bernard Tschumi ~1999-2007 . Mr Tschumi managed to achieve the opposite of parthenon, a monument of the "out of any scale", a real hubris. IMO. But gods are watching, this is the meaning of hubris.
See what happens in greece now...

Acropolis-Pathenon is basically a monument of Scale.
There isn't any outline around this building. Lines and shapes start from the seashore of Piraeus, through the hills of Attica and into the smaller detail of this building.
Under the cruel greek noon sun it captures the light and shadows. This enormous heavy building just flies.
Just imagine.
Make the drawings first (using what precise medium-tools?)
Go to the near mountain of Penteli, cut the curve the gigantic modules.
Bring them on the hill of acropolis.
Joint them together, final carving there and you have a monument of unsurpassed precision. 12 years of work.
Can we do it today?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon_(Nashville

A visit in the british museum is always a pleasure. I was sitting and looking these "elgin so called" marbles every day for two months.
Mouth opened. It's impossible for us to combine Euclid's geometry with something more fractal-chaotic.
A great abstract composition, but everyone believes that it's a wonderful naturalist work.
No other artist can curve the marble like Pheidias. You can recognize the great artist from miles away.
An endless combination of shapes, lights, shadows.

"the impression of mystery is felt before the "Three Fates" ... They are only three women seated, but they seem to be taking part in something of enormous import that we do not see."
(Rodin's quotes on Pheidias marbles)

@Pilou
and you have a new pretendant...
I don't, neither you. You have to try to sculpt under cycles previews in a sculptris like environment and see what I mean. It's called dynamic topology. C4d is far behind.
Out of topic but not completely. You see, to sculpt under a physically correct renderer is the equivalent of sculpting under the real light. Somehow.

@TIG
Well said.
But...

@unknownuser said:

They couldn't readily grasp how to use Sketchup if they appeared now: we couldn't readily carve a piece of granite into a perfectly symmetrical head if we traveled back in time...

Can we do it now? To make it look like symmetrical not just be symmetrical because of a mathematical use of some tools like SU.
Do you have some logical prove of it, maybe you have to visit athens, see how they're trying to reconstruct some missing parts of acropolis. They can't and they know it.
Don't be blind.
The essence of sculpting-curving is to do it under the sun, trying to capture light.
Yes! It's the light. And the shadows. There isn't any outline around a sculpted mesh. This exists only in our logic and our damaged imagination.
Only shapes that capture lights and shadows. This is the only truth after all. Logic just helps. But there's a deeper way. Our poor senses.

@ Mike Lucey
I really don't understand this question Mike. The samples are already in the british museum. They are also around the mediterranean territory.
Do we have the slightest idea how they made them? Do we know how to curve a doric column as in athens acropolis?
In the 19th century, great architectures like Ernst Ziller created some very beautiful buildings in athens. This man had in work the "descendants " of the ancient greeks technicians in marble carving. The sculptors from the island of Tinos. They created some wonderful neoclassic architecture. Much superior than neoclassicism in Europe. But just stand and have a look on a doric column they constructed. Then compare it to the acropolis columns. They used the exactly same marble (penteli mountain marble). Even a CnC machine won't save you from a complete disaster. We have to admit it. We simply don't know how ancient athenians did it. It's not magic. we just don't know how to do it.
My post is in some cryptic format. I admit it.
BTW I can't even explain why the new beta carving-sculpting tool of blender is far superior to the more-than-ever powerful zbrush app. It's created for me. Can't talk further.
(please visit my "blender sculpting" post)