Rich Gibson said:
Wow, that is impressive! You hardly notice ceiling distortion because of the excellent alignment of the walls and pictures.
I played with Pano tools and the early version of PTGUI. But it looks like that company that patented joining two hemispherical fisheye pictures has hounded him to stop public work on it. Sad.
Had a lot of fun and was curious if it warranted a forum of its own here at the cafe. Doesn't look like it, but hey, everything is fine; we can't be all things to everyone.
Rich :
Thanks for the compliment, but I'm still annoyed at my poor placement to better bisect the room for the two shots... I had a
very nice and pleasant senior member of the church giving me the tour, and I didn't want to be rude and keep shooting while he stood by. He was very supportive of my photography, however, and took me to some marvelous vantage points that the average visitor might not reach. He also took the time to explain a number of aspects of LDS that I was unfamiliar with, although I don't believe that I will be making a change in that direction.
.....
Some of the credit for the (relatively) clean stitch falls to Panorama Factory. One can specify the camera and lens used for photos (including a specific or estimated FL), and this seems to allow for better results. I heartily recommend the package (
http://www.panoramafactory.com/) for the photographer who wants to perform linear stitches (one row or column only) and who doesn't want to try and master another arcane art of software. It gets regular updates, is reasonably priced, and doesn't require me to study for another doctorate to understand it.
Panavue Image Assembler (
http://www.panavue.com) was extremely good, but it's not been recently updated, and needs some tending. However, PIA
will stitch together a matrix of photos, which PF will not; and additionally, will stitch together images of odd sizes, where PF needs to have equally sized images. PIA still gets very regular use from me.
As for a separate section on panoramic shots and software, I'm of two minds. I use these approaches as technical tools for my day-to-day work, so I'm probably a bit jaded by the constant efforts. OTOH, I wonder how many people have explored these tools in any depth ? It could be an area of interest as people's knowledge increases.
There used to be an extremely good site for discussion of these products at
http://www.panoguide.com/, but they seem to have dropped that aspect of the site. Pity, because I thought it was about the most objective of the review sites on this subject.
John P.