marek.garamszegi wrote:

- Must I have perfect setting for parallax errors ? (YES ! Especially when using Ultrawide and wide lenses ! With longer focals will paralax error goes away - i think >100mm at 35mm camera)

you should do so. it reduces possible problems while stitching. no difference because of focals - only that with longer focals you have more overlapping images so more possible parallax cases are occuring. And because of object. if your nearest object like a tree is 200m away than parallax are less problem. I even had once an parallax because of a standing lamp was 50cm away from tripod and I did not place my 8mm fisheye in perfect NPP...

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- May I photo to RAW ? (I think YES - Because You can later change exposure, White balance, and if RAW converter can correct lens distrosions correct it in them)

YES. YES.... you can do create +-3EV sets with your RAWs and than use external stacker or tonemapper or even the stacking & tonemapping inside autopano.

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- May I put raw files ito APG ? (It is posssible, but I think NO, if user have licence for camera-brand RAW converter like Capture NX)

it can be done. but be aware that these RAWs are decrawed automatically by autopano and converted to tiffs. so this is a question of personal taste. latest autopano 3 beta2 does have possibillity for the first time that this conversion process can be influenced. But I assume finally with your standalone raw converter you've more possibillities, more settings to tweak etc... I would always try to use both ways for each project and decide from case to case which results are more pleasent for this project.

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- Sharpen pictures ? May I sharpen pictures before I put in APG ? Did sharpening affect CP detection ?

YES it does effect. same with extreme tonemapped images. the result finally in worst case is that autopano fails to achieve usable results.
and if you create some tours with panotour or krpano be aware that these tools do their own sharpening additional.
so theres also no absolute rule you've to follow... so sharpening before stitching yes its possible, but use it with caution. better to sharpen the final pano. If in case of gigapixels... sharpening the pano will fail because of PS  memory/pixel size limitations, so here sharpening the sourceimages is the only way...

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- Correct lens distorsion before I put into APG when I am usig normal (non-fisheye lens) ? - I think I have lot of problems because of geometry my Sigma 10-20
at 10mm setting. Maybe I am working wrong with "Lens distorsion correction" options in APG.

if you do the lens disortion correction before autopano than dont forget to disable all the disortion correcction option inside autopano...
which way is better I cant say...

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- ISO - (I think everytime lowest ISO as is possible because of quality of pictures, but I have problem in low-light situations making photo of nadir in indoor photos sometimes i go hi-iso way because of nadir, for me its big deal.)

one iso settings for all images, no auto - iso/WB/EV/shutter speek/ etc. all manual. ever. you can use your cams EV program to take 3-5 images on each image possitions. you can use the Magic Lantern OS for a canon camera to enhance the HDRI settings, you can use the promote control device for canon or nikons to add very easily up to +9EV steps in up to 45 brackets.

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- Backeting and Tonemapping  - do it before APG ? (My experience is to tonemap pictures before I put to APG, because I am working with only one layer and 3 times smaller count of pictures and work in APG is easyest - specially selecting pictures in editor for CP Editor or in Layer Edit - but when workng with exposure layers, You have more options to select what pictures is projected to panorama and You can very easily finetune how panorama looks finally)

I use enfusegui, oloneo, photomatix and still it depends from case to case if I do it externally or if I let do it autopano. with increasing images I tend to use external workflow (win7 64bit with 16gig RAM and 1GB RAM GPU) my personal limit is around 800 source images. more I use external programms only. with less images I test it with both and decide based on results I can achieve.

marek.garamszegi wrote:

- Methods for taking nadir photo - (I have no idea, because I am using Gigapan head and from gigapan it is not possible to shoot nadir, beause lot of scene is gigapan head. I doing it propably in wrongest way - taking nadir in hand from most same position as I can do.)

some hads have nodal adaptors. I use a merlin and a ballhead and a tripod. Cam is looking to horizon, I place an object like stone or so in my nadir point, I turn the merlin on my ballhead 90" so cam is looking now to bottom. than I rais e my center column x cm (x = the height from ballhead angle up to NPP entrance pupil point of my cam). now the cams NPP is in same height than before the cam was looking to horizon. Finally I move my tripod so the cam is exactly above the stone placed... mostly one image, to be save I do 2 nadir images. processing the images: 2 ways: alpha mask deleting all tripod parts in your nadir shots. load the images with your normal iamges before detection of pano. you also can load the unedited nadir shots an use the masking tool insode autopano 3 series.

Liebe Gruesse,
Georg

Last edited by gkaefer (2012-11-04 19:34:24)

My personal note: Everytime shoot to RAW ! Especially if You have good batch RAW converter like Nikon Capture NX.