I'm thinking about buying the Canon EOS 40D which comes with a 17-85mm lens. This will replace my very old Fujifilm FinePix 6900Z which I'm getting very frustrated with lately, simply because I have to take roughly 170 photos just to get a complete 360X180 panoramic. I have so many problems doing it this way it's unbelievable plus it only has a 16Mb SM card so I find myself uploading about 60 photos to my computers before I start the next layer...

I like this camera (EOS 40D) and have read some really good reviews, but, do you think it's a good choice for creating 360X180 panoramas?
Also, I'd like to produce these 360X180 panoramas with fewer photos taken. I read somewhere you can have fisheye lens and take them in only 2 - 3 photos?? Would that lose out on quality compared to how I'm currently doing it?

Anyway, is this camera good in your opinion or would I be better off purchasing something else? And what lenses should I buy to make my life a lot easier doing these panoramas

Appreciate any help for a complete newbie with tons of enthusiasm!!

Cpt

For panorama I HIGHLY recommend a Pentax k10d.

Yes, the less photos the poorer the quality.

I bought my k10d with 2 lenses, i chose a 18-55mm and a 50-200mm. When I shoot panos with the 18mm I shoote every 40° horizontally and vertically, which means 27 photos, + zenith and nadir. I shoot zenith and nadir differently depending on my surroundings, but typically 2 for nadir and 4 for zenith (nadir 90° down, once horizontally and once vertically, zenith about 60° up from 4 sides). Nice, high res panos.

If you also buy a fisheye, you may be able to shoot in as little as 2 shots, but then they're good only for displaying on screen in a browser because of low resolution. The advantage of using a fisheye is you can capture moving things like people very close to the lens, and the sky isnt a problem.

And trust me, I had a Fujifilm Finepix 5600s for 2 or 3 years, I know the pain :]

Yes - i recommend the 40D camera highly for panoramas! Because of it´s 14bit RAW and it´s live-preview.
The 14bit because of very good dynanic and clean results and the live-preview for using the camera on booms and remote release.
But i don´t recommend the lens! It produces lots of CA and distortions. But sharpnes isn´t bad. I use it for portraits in SW - here it´s absolutely ok.
But for panos you have to do a lot of correction first!

My suggestion: look for an old manual Nikon lens. I often use a 20, a 35 and a 85mm lens - no CAs, no distortion. No need to process the files for reducing CAs and distortions.
And VERY good resolution/sharpness at around f8 and 11.

best, Klaus

here a Nikon 85mm

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Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. Coco Chanel

Canon 40D with canon 10-20 efs lens will get you a 360 pano in 12+Z+N (14) shots far less work & amazing quality even at high ISO.

Canon 40D is a fine camera.

WRT lenses it all depends what your goal is.

If you are mainly interested in sphericals (360x180) for display fullscreen on computer or on-line then most people seem to feel that a pano image resolution of 6000x3000 is more than sufficient and a reasonable balance/compromise between resolution, image quality and file size. If 'fewer photos' is also a key criterion then your best bet for a cropped sensor DSLR might well be the Sigma 8mm f3.5 FE and a pano head such as the Nodal Ninja 3 or 5, or Agno's TCPshort or RingT8S.

In which case is it worth spending more for the Canon 40D rather than the upcoming Canon 450D?

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Andrew Stephens
Nikon D40, Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye, Sigma 8mm f3.5 fisheye, Nikkor 18-55/50/35mm lenses, Nodal Ninja 5 Lite, Nodal Ninja 4 with R-D16, Agno's MrotatorTCS short.
Nikon P5100, CP5000, CP995, FC-E8, WC-E63,WC-E68, TC-E2, Kaidan Kiwi 995, Bophoto pano bracket, Agno's MrotatorA.
Merlin/Orion robotic pano head + Papywizard on Nokia 770/N800/N810 and Windows 8/XP/2K.

Thanks for all your advice. So much to take in

Canon 40D plus Sigma 10-20.

And yes, Sigma now have the 4.5mm fisheye available for cropped sensors.



Andy

Offtopic: I really like the wave created by the hills and the fence!

IIRC, the new 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS is reported to be better than the 17-85. Its not as sharp as the 17-55 f/2.8, and doesn't have USM, but it is a very affordable lens.

Hi digipano, at what degrees do you take those 12 shots. I have had bad experiences with multiple setups, and each one has its own flaws.

regards,
Ayman

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http://www.al-riyadh.org/English

Hi Ayman,
I shoot as follows:
-30(camera pointed down) 6 shots at 60° (sometimes I do -15° when I don't need nadir)
+30(camera pointed up) 6 shots at 60°
1 shot zenith
1 shot nadir (total 3 nadir shots for patching)

If you are having bad results then there can be many reasons as listed below.

1. nodal point calibration is not accurate (100% accuracy can never be achieved but you should minimize it)
2. APP can have problem with less overlap in certain cases.
3. Does you image have featureless or plain area (Hard for APP) then you need some manual work.
4. Your pano head while rotating might be creating some difference thus causing errors
5. If you are consistently having the same problems & the above 4 cannot solve your issue then I would say that you need bit more learning about shooting panorama & stitching with APP.

APP is quite good with its stitching but if the user have not fed the correct images with the right parameters then APP will fail bcoz its SIFT alogarithm depends upon these values.

What specific problems are you having?

Thank you digipano for your prompt answer. I was successful last night in stitching a panorama without any apparent errors "finally" I think I was having a mix between hardware and software options selection problems, but got that sorted out. I will have to work a little more to make my pano head setup more accurate as someone pointed out to me it was not very accurate.
I tried many different set ups for the shoot. But the one I got correctly yesterday has the same setup as yours but with 8 shots instead of 6. Is 6 enough giving it would only produce 19% overlap? 8 shots would give 39% which is more than enough. I guess the overlap depends on the amount of details the scene has.

you can view these links for more information of what problems I was having:
http://www.panoguide.com/forums/tipsntricks/5091/
http://www.autopano.net/forum/t4067-why-is-this-iamge-set-hard-to-stitch-well

Regards,
Ayman

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http://www.al-riyadh.org/English

Hi Ayman,
You have already got some excellent advice by others & glad that you are able to now stitch it perfectly.

19% overlap is surely good enough in most cases, there are times when people have stitched images just with 5-10% overlap with PTGui.

This higher overlap requirement is actually meant for SIFT based programs only as they mostly use the center 50% area of the image to find CP, so 6 shots @ -30 should get you perfect results provided you have other parameters in control. 5 yrs ago I used to do a 360 with 24-70 sigma@24mm & only 5% overlap & it stitched perfectly with pixel peeing details using PTGui.

You can use most of the lenses to do 360 but you would need 1st your hardware calibration for lens+camera & number of shots shooting combination then depending upon the software you use you will need to set certain options in the settings.

Overlap does depend on the amount of details in the so called "featureless" floors & walls but truth is that these floors & walls are seldom featureless, they do have some texture or joints & other patterns but the SIFT alogarithm of APP is not able to detect these low contrast details, the developers of APP are aware of this issue & working on the new v2 of APP which should address this problem, then you will be able to work with lesser overlap.

Mediavets reported
From the VRWave.com Panoramic Photography lens database:
http://www.vrwave.com/panoramic/photogr … abase.html

Suggestions/recommendation for Canon EFS 10-20mm wide angle lens are :
1. Min. shots: N, 6 images every 60° at -30° pitch, 6 images every 60° at +30°, Z. Output resolution: 11600 x 5800 pixels - Canon 20D (8mpx)
2. Recommended: N, 4 images every 90° at -60° pitch, 8 images every 45° at 0° pitch, 4 images every 90° at +60° pitch, no zenith image required
3. Alternative: N, 8 images every 45° at -30° pitch, 8 images every 45° at +30° pitch, Z

These 3 suggestions are bcoz different software will have different overlap requirements & the test for any software would be to stitch a low contrast scene with less details & minimum shots from a particular lens.

would this overlap be enough with APP? I should give it a test and see how the stitch goes.


regards,
Ayman

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http://www.al-riyadh.org/English

Hi Ayman,
Your pano head is already accurate but some parallax problem appear, like in your Khobar2 test between pictures 0617 & 0618. But 3 pix on 1293 width is only 0.2%.

I'm not sure how accurate is calculation with www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm. 8 mm nodal point shift seems too high, you can try to improve your pano head by moving camera of 2 or 3 mm.

I generally try to get 25-30% overlapping in my pano for APP (focale is 26mm to 45mm equivalent35). APP don't put CPs much on the pictures edges. I think it's better as my wide-angle zoom has some complex distortion.

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Marco, Paris
Canon EOS 40D, EF-S 10-22, EF 24-105 LIS, EF 70-200 LIS - Canon G9 (wide-converter)
DxO v7.5, Autopano Pro 2.6, PS CS5 and time

Yes I work with this setup & it works fine,
Meanwhile I have downloaded your images set1 set 2 set3, will try stitching it & post the results if you need.

Thank you Marco for pointing that out, I am going to try to fix that and see how accurate my setup becomes. 8 mm does sound high, I will try to limit my trials to 2-3 mm at the beginning and see how that goes.

-

Thanks digipano for your interest, you can have a go at it if you like, I have re-rendered set 3 and got a correct stitch which is 8@-30 + 8@+30 + Z. I dont need to test the other 2 since this one works fine with me. I am going to try to fix the small parallax errors I have and then try 6@-30 + 6@+30 + Z. I will post that in other thread when I do it.

-

regards
Ayman

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http://www.al-riyadh.org/English

8@-30 will get your tripod legs too in the frame, you would need a separate nadir shot & shooting at night with multiple shadows is a problem.

true. I can fix some of that with multiple nadirs and some PS work .

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http://www.al-riyadh.org/English

May I ask for some Sigma 10-20 mm source images ? (reduced JPEG would be enough...) <== Edit: I downloaded and stitched ayman 10-20 mm source images previously but forgot them...

This is because, as far as I know, this is the widest planar lens available (well, I know of Nikon 14-24 mm FF which V-FOV is 104°, but ...) and because, for the Merlin/Orion motorized tracking mount (to be used as a panohead), I'm trying to devise a method to find out APP templates (the new APP templates feature, that is) for shooting 360x180° panos using a rectilinear lenses.

If possible, this will result in a calculator like this one http://www.frankvanderpol.nl/fov_pan_calc.htm being available to compute yaw and pitch values from the focal length and sensor size and to produce some "template files" to be used with the associated Papywizard driving software...

Here is an example I stitched from a series I shot using a "kit zoom" @28mm equivalent:

Equirectangular view of source images


Bottom cube face


Another cube face

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Georges