Hi Judy,

I only got my new Samyang 8mm and have been using AP Giga/Panotour for about a week. My intention is to shoot cityscapes, buildings/houses interiors and also landscapes. I have already a couple of clients who showed interest about VR tour images so I'm trying to have a good understanding and control the whole process, from camera/lens/tripodhead setup to processing of the images with AP & PT.

I believe Nikon APS-C cameras have a multiplier factor of 1,5x, while Canon's have 1,6x. This could make a small difference in the number of images needed, but I think you're right to say that 6 images around will provide ample overlap for AP Giga to handle the stitching well.

If I undesrtand your approach you shoot aobut 9 images in total, 4 or 6 images at -10º + 2 up at +60º + 1 handheld image for the nadir.

With the 6 images at -10º, do you get to see the tripod feet in the bottom part of the images? My reasoning for doing 6 images at +15º is that I wouldn't get the tripod in my images and the zenith will be covered. Then I only need a single shot for the nadir which I can do either handheld (if my shutter speed is good enough) of two at -60º to be able to get rid of the tripod in post processing.

However, after seeing your impressive VR tours I think I will try your settings. The images in your website are amazing. Did you just use AP Giga & Panotour Pro for those? 

Your website looks great and everything loads quick and nicely. At the moment my website is based in Wordpress and I find it a bit too difficult to set up and also a bit slow, but it could just be my lack of knowledge and experience.

Thanks for your feedback,

Alfonso

Special fx wrote:

Hi Judy-A - Love your web site!

Very new to panoramic photography... I have Just purchased a new VR Drive II, still in the box. My new Nikon D4 should be arriving in the next week or so. Which fisheye lens would you recommend for a full frame Nikon fx camera.

This is far beyond my area of expertise, but I have looked into it.

How deep are your pockets?

You probably couldn’t go wrong with the Nikon 16mm f/2.8D, for low light. However, you’d be paying for autofocus and auto exposure which are not very useful in panorama photography.

For a third of the price you could buy a manual Samyang 8mm f/3.5. The newest version has electronic contacts that allow lens settings to be written to image EXIF. The identical lens is also branded under Rokinon, Bower and others. For an FX sensor, have the lens hood shaved off or do it yourself.

http://www.kolor.com/forum/t7939-samyang

If you plan to carry your gear for any distance, pay attention to weight.

Some pano photographers use Sigma, Tokina and Sunex lenses. I suggest you search the forum at www.Panoguide.com and then post for up-to-date information.

Judy

Judy-A wrote:

Hi Alfonso,

Thank you for your kind comments on my panoramas.

alsal wrote:

If I undesrtand your approach you shoot aobut 9 images in total, 4 or 6 images at -10º + 2 up at +60º + 1 handheld image for the nadir.

Yes, that’s correct. When I started making panoramas, I thought that taking as few pictures as possible was a worthy goal, but I soon learned that a few extra shots make stitching easier. When batch-processing a set of images, processing 9 images takes only a few seconds longer than processing 6 images.

In landscape photography the sky usually has no useful targets for control points (clouds and treetops move). When the sun is in the photo I take extra shots to patch lens flares. My shots angled at –10˚ show the tripod legs and the outer edge of the pano bracket rotator. The nadir area is then well-aligned to accept a defished nadir image in post-processing.

I never add hand-held nadir images to APG because it will throw the entire pano out of alignment. (PTGUI has a way of excluding the control points on nadir images from optimization, but the stitching is still too imperfect for my taste.)

I shoot at fully manual settings, RAW, bracketed. For landscapes with normal dynamic range, I then select the single best exposure. When there is a wider dynamic range, I use images from all the brackets. All images in a set are processed with the same settings.

Software I use, in this order:
1. Capture NX2 batch processing to correct CA and output from RAW to 16-TIFF at 3 or 4 incremental EVs (exposure value settings)
2. Photomatix batch processing to tonemap all images in a set, output to 16-bit TIFFs
3. Autopano Giga to stitch the tonemapped images (nadir image not included), output to PSB with images.
4. Photoshop to patch lens flares, moving clouds, apply tone curves, sharpening, save as 16-bit TIFF
5. Capture NX2 to defish the single tonemapped nadir image
6. Pano 2VR to patch the nadir, output to equirectangular 16-bit TIFF
7. Pano 2VR to build skin, apply logo patch, output to SWF and multi-resolution tiles
8. Dreamweaver to build and edit my website

I see a few stitching errors in your panoramas. You might want to look at this tutorial to check your pano bracket settings to make sure they’re accurate.

http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm

You should also check the placement of control points in APG when buildings have repeating patterns.

Images from a fisheye lens will require CA (chromatic aberration) correction before stitching. I use Capture NX2 for this. You can find some good hints here.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutori … ctions.htm

Judy

Hello, in batch process he give me back .hdr file not .tiff... the .hdr generate black file to autopano..i would like to ask how to save batch in 16 bit tiff. Thanks so much

Last edited by Marknot (2012-03-14 17:14:10)