Spherical panoramas !

I found a new way of having fun !

...that is, photographycally speaking, of course :smile: !

I started doing "spherical panoramas", by shooting several images -with a wide-angle- and stitching them into a 360 x 180 degree image !

It's quite fun, although it takes a bit of time -and practice- to use the different softwares you need to build these :tongue: !

Unfortunately, almost none of the usual photo forums can show *MOV files, so for the beginning i uploaded them in a "specialized" site:

Go have a look at http://www.panoguide.com/gallery/179/ and http://www.panoguide.com/gallery/180/ where i put two of my panoramas !

With your mouse you can move -from within the image- up, down, turn round, and even zoom in and out ! The thing is quite fascinating :smile: !

I wish some of you guys start playing with this, so we could share some tips...

As usual, any comment, advice etc... are welcome !

Cheers,
J-P.

 

Hi Sandi ! I usually use Panorama Factory for my "normal" panos (one row only. I tried to use PTGui and found it was giving quite good results, but i used it only whenever i was doing multi-raw things !

When i started spherical panoramas, about 2 weeks ago, i tried PTGui but wasn't pleased with the results, so i bought Realwiz Stitcher, and NOW it works almost 100 % ! ...of course, i have a lot to learn because 360x180 panos need a lot of care and processing !

I ordered a Panosaurus pano head and i use my Sigma 10-20 mm.

For building the spherical thing (or cubical as they call it), i use Pano2QTVR... but in between the equirectangulat image created by Realwiz Stitcher and the "final product" made by Pano2QTVR, there's quite some Photoshop fiddling...

...but it's real fun, even though i know that it won't last long: i guess i'm going to shoot a few more of these and go back to "normal" photography !

Cheers,
J-P.

 

Hi Gale !

I found WHY the second URL doesn't work: i don't know why, but the next word just after the URL, "where", got attached to it, so it produces a "404" error !

For now, click on the link and when you get to the error page, just delete the "where" in the address bar ! ...that should do...

I'll ask Patrick to do something about it :wink: !

Cheers,
J-P.

 

Thanks Dave ! That's what i call an EXPRESS SERVICE !!!

...i love this site (and even the people in it :wink: ) !

 
J-P.

 

Hi Dave !

I'm sorry not to be able to answer your question... i guess it should be possible, as some programs run the panoramas (though not the spherical ones) automatically, so if you can "tell" the electronic picture frame to run this program, maybe it would work ?!?

I guess the best is to ask at Max Lyon's Panoramas Forums ( http://www.tawbaware.com/forum2/index.php?sid=e986a5e6777ab6e74c207a79f076ad1a ) or at Panoguide Forums ( http://www.panoguide.com/forums/ ), there are some very knowledgeable -and very kind- people over there...

Cheers,
J-P.

 

Thanks everybody for the kind words !

...in fact, there's nothing really "artistic" in these panoramas: you just have to find the NODAL POINT of your lens, buy a pano head (in my case the Panosaurus, $75.95), have a PP program like Photoshop, plus a stitching program dedicated to multi-row images, like PTGui (or Stitcher Express $113.- that i bought after having had problem with PTGui), and Pano2QTVR, wich works so well as a "free" program, that i gladly paid the $38.- for the "pro" version, to help the guys who built such a great software, to finalize the job !

Else, you only have to carefully level the pano head, shoot 6 images at -30 degrees odf elevation (and rotating the head 45 degrees each time), then repeating the 6 shots, but at + 30 degrees, then shooting one image of the "zenit" and another one of the "nadir" ! ...that all... the rest is done by the computer !

Cheers,
J-P.