It appears that your pano head may not be set up correctly so you may have parallax errors.

I feel that the issues with the doorframes are less to do with their verticality and more to do with their closeness and lack of features for auto-CP placement.

Use the Nodal Ninja suggested settings as a starting point - they suggest upper rail 86mm, lower rail 58mm for the D80 and Nikkor 10.5mm FE - they don't seem to have suggested settings for the D90 but I read that dimensions of D80 and D90 bodies are the same:
http://www.nodalninja.com/support/camerasettings.html

...and then try this tutorial - it sounds odd but it works quite well, don't use Smartblend for this testing:
http://www.easypano.com/forum/display_t … Position=1

It is important to make sure that the camera sensor plane is at 90 degrees to the upper rail, you must avoid having the camera tilted up or down compared to the upper rail.

Use manual focus, not auto-focus, and set focus manually at approx. 1m. and leave it there. FE lenses have massive depth of field so everything should be in focus.

Set the level once for the first shot of the pano and do not reset while shooting a pano.

Do test shots in a much better lit environment where there are lots of features in every shot to enable APP to find matching features and to set control points.

Some people suggest that when shooting a scene like your example, with a lot of white walls and ceiling, that it helps to create artificial/fake features by sticking Post-It notes or similar stuff to the walls to provide the stitcher with features it can match and then to edit these out in the stitched pano.

If you are using Autopano Giga, this feature does not exist in Autopano Pro, when you get everything set up well and achieve a very good stitch then save that as a template and apply it to later panos shot to the same pattern.

Last edited by mediavets (2010-04-26 12:01:01)

pgielen wrote:

Wait a minute, why is this showing different lens types for every pricture?

Look twice, it don't :

All source images show a 15 mm in the left side column. BTW, one could find the alignment between column titles and data not being the best possible...

pgielen wrote:

I know the problem is not in Autopano, since in PTGui the same problem occurs. Only, in Autopano, which is still my program of choice, I miss the ability to manually adjust the CP's if something like this goes wrong.

That's not quite the case one can edit CPs with APP/APG (but not place individual CPs), I did and got a better result than you did but not perfect - but the capability to place individal CPs is due in a future version of the software. It would not help in this case because there's nothing relevant to place CPs on anyway, as you have discovered when using PTGui.

Having a perfect template doesn't help much if you're using a Nodal Ninja. Even with rail stops, positioning the camera is a bit of trial and error because it is attached to the upper rail with only one screw. So it is possible that the sensor plane is not precisely 90 degrees to the upper rail. It is as precise as you can get with visual inspection only...

Pierre

Do try the template thing - I was sceptical, for much the same reasons, but I found it resulted in a better stitch.

And I'd be interested to hear whether using Post-its or similar helps the quality of the stitch.

You may like the new camera plate (CP-2) from NN too - it would appear that it should enable more precise mounting of the camera:
http://store.nodalninja.com/category_s/61.htm
http://www.nodalninja.com/images/CP2_qrg.pdf

Last edited by mediavets (2010-04-26 18:42:48)

mediavets wrote:

(but not place individual CPs)

It would not help in this case because there's nothing relevant to place CPs on anyway, as you have discovered when using PTGui.

well . . . . in a way you can place CPs . . It´s not fun, but it´s something . .

But you´re absolutely right: having not properly aligned head/camera it wouldn´t help.


best, Klaus

Last edited by klausesser (2010-04-26 20:00:16)

mediavets wrote:

I was puzzled because I can usually get a decent stitch shooting 6-around at -15 degrees and one up at +60 degrees.

Don't you mean 2 up at +60 degrees?

I have been experimenting with different settings and noticed that both the lower and the upper rail settings on my NN3 were incorrect. Actually, the rail stops were set for the D70s, not the D80 which does have the same dimensions as the D90 (I looked that up). It's a miracle APP could find CP's in nearby objects at all!

I also found the OSP for the lower rail, like described in the manual you mentioned above. The panohead looked like a perfect circle. But amazing enough, back in the real life situation in the doorway, the stitched panorama had more errors than the panorama I made just before that, with the D80 settings recommended by Nodal Ninja. That was almost perfect right away without manual intervention (2 small errors, easy to Photoshop out). So, I'll stick to those for now. 

I have ordered the CP2 plate and when it arrives, I'll give working with templates a try (if the APG trial version allows it). Thanks for your help!

Pierre

GURL wrote:

pgielen wrote:

My question is: how can I make Autopano Pro (I am using version 2.0.6) detect the correct control points, or even add them manually?

As discussed there http://www.autopano.net/forum/p61952-20 … -10#p61952 rather than using the Control Point Editor to take care of the control points I usually find than deleting the many useless (actually harmfull) links Autopano creates when using a template like the one you used) being faster and efficient.

Yes, that is true. I also wonder if I should set my default detection setting to Detect links one stack level (in stead of all stack levels). At least it makes detection considerably faster.

pgielen wrote:

mediavets wrote:

No, I mean one up. One is sufficient to cover the zenith.

In my experience, one may be not enough, especially if there are only a few features on the sides of the image. I have tried it today (and noticed that APP is better at detecting CP's on the sides than PTGui).

Yes, well, if choosing just one up shot you need to position it so you will get a good link between matching features on the up shot and the main row - so two up may well make that motre likley, but one is sufficient to cover the zenith.

pgielen wrote:

mediavets wrote:

Did you try my suggestion of shooting 6-around at -15 and 6-around at +50?

Not yet, but I will. Shooting a small bathroom or even a cupboard without having to spend hours Photoshopping sounds appealing :-) So what is the reason for shooting at +50 precisely? Why not +45 or +60?

If you look at how the images overlap - in the Pano Editor Ctrl-click on the number icons to display the edges of the images, you'll get a feel for where the overlaps, seams and possible stitching errors will be.

I didn't try +45, maybe that'll work as well or better, or maybe it won't give cover of the zenith. Try it? Check the quality of links with the Conrtol Point Editor vs. a set of the same scene with upper row of 6-around at +50, or +60.

I knew that +60 was producing stitching errors with 3-around and didn't feel that would change with 6 at this pitch.

So I just tried 6-around at +50 and that worked well.

A lot of this sort of thing is perfected by trial and error.

Whever anyone posts a set of images they are having trouble stitching I'll try to stitch them. I have learned a lot that way.

I'm grateful to you for posting your troublesome inage set because it forced me to experiment with different shooting patterns to resolve similar stitching probems with my own image sets that emerged when seeking to resolve yours.

Last edited by mediavets (2010-04-28 10:59:58)

mediavets wrote:

It works perfectly for me - having used the OSP calibration, which in fact is the same as NN suggestions for my camera - even in a very small shower room that's about 2metres x 2metres; and previously I'd never got such a good result with any other shooting pattern.

Just a quick note. Shot a panorama of my 1x1m toilet for testing (no, I will not show it here :-). It stitched perfectly in APP one go. Thanks for your advice.

Pierre

Last edited by pgielen (2010-05-02 18:34:17)