jeradg wrote:And back to the original topic... Is there any way to spread out the images and increase the width within APP?
jeradg wrote:This is probably true. Should I leave the same focus setting throughout the shoot or change it based on distance from objects/walls?
I actually checked the coverage/overlap of the pictures with objects to ensure approx 1/3 - with the standard. When I first started, using the fisheye, I was shooting 4 (every 90°), which is probably a large part of the problem. I stuck with shooting 4 horizontal, 1 zenith, 1 nadir because I was getting well stitched results in APP. I would then delete the nadir because it had the tripod in it (and I would be cropping anyways).
All true. Luckily, we have defined top quality results as making a best effort with our in-house production of a tour that we can have continued control over as our facilities change. 5 months @ <10 hrs/week = a lot of progress and even more learning. The overall project cost including my pay is still less than we were quoted by some companies, all of which would require travel expenses since there are no tour companies local. Despite all my issues, which you now see are numerous, my results have still been better than some "professional" companies.
The camera is one we already had, and the fisheye lens was suggested online as being ideal for ease of use and indoor panotours. My boss found the actual lens, and I found PTP/APP. I think I have identified many of my shooting problems through this one thread, and wish the discourse could have happened 4 months ago. I think that 4 months ago I wouldn't have been able to find the settings on the camera to change or known enough about everything to understand it all.
mediavets wrote:jeradg wrote:This is probably true. Should I leave the same focus setting throughout the shoot or change it based on distance from objects/walls?
You should not change the focus during the shoot. Fisheye lenses have massive Depth Of Field - in other words everything from 1metre to infinity will be in focus if you have set the focus correctly. This is one of the advanatges of using fishey elnse for shooting panos rather than non-fisheye lense which have much shallower DOF.
Take some test shots to find the focus setting where an object about 1 meter from the camera is in sharp focus and that should be fine for all panos. The markings on the focus ring may be inaccurate so you need to take test shots.
Set the camera to manual focus and use the focus ring on the lens to focus.
With a fisheye lens it's essential that you have the camera/lens set at the No Parallax Point (NPP) - especially when shooting indoors with parts of the scene close to the camera - to achieve a good stitch. Are you confident that you have your camera/lens set at the NPP?
I'm not familar with the in-built HDR functionality of the D5100, but I suggest you don't use it until you are getting cosnistent results without it just using a single manually set exposure for all the images in the shoot. Let's learn to crawl before we try to run! Your challenge with a fully manual lens like yours will be to determine that manual exposure which is an appropriate compromise for the varying light levels around the scene; set the aperture at say f8 and then take some test shots to establish a suitable hutter speed.I actually checked the coverage/overlap of the pictures with objects to ensure approx 1/3 - with the standard. When I first started, using the fisheye, I was shooting 4 (every 90°), which is probably a large part of the problem. I stuck with shooting 4 horizontal, 1 zenith, 1 nadir because I was getting well stitched results in APP. I would then delete the nadir because it had the tripod in it (and I would be cropping anyways).
4-around is not enough with your fisheye on the D5100 - to start with I recommend that you try 6-around at zero pitch (that 60 degree separations on the yaw axis) and forget about zenith and nadir for now if you don't need 180 degree VFOV for your project. Once you are getting consistent resukts then we can consider alternative shooting patterns to at least cover the zenith; you can always 'hide' the nadir using the PTP crop tool or by placing a nadir patch image or a logo over the nadir area.All true. Luckily, we have defined top quality results as making a best effort with our in-house production of a tour that we can have continued control over as our facilities change. 5 months @ <10 hrs/week = a lot of progress and even more learning. The overall project cost including my pay is still less than we were quoted by some companies, all of which would require travel expenses since there are no tour companies local. Despite all my issues, which you now see are numerous, my results have still been better than some "professional" companies.
And of course your training costs are minimal because you are getting all this free consultancy via the fourm!
As a matter of interest where are you located? A knowledge of location sometimes influences the answers and advice one offers.The camera is one we already had, and the fisheye lens was suggested online as being ideal for ease of use and indoor panotours. My boss found the actual lens, and I found PTP/APP. I think I have identified many of my shooting problems through this one thread, and wish the discourse could have happened 4 months ago. I think that 4 months ago I wouldn't have been able to find the settings on the camera to change or known enough about everything to understand it all.
Have you really spent 4 months and made so little progress? Perhaps you should have sought assitance before now.
I can't agree that the fully manual fisheye lens you have is the easiest to use for a novice photographer. Had you chosen the Smyang version of your lens with the AE chip, or the excellenty Nikkor 10.5mm fishey then I think you would probably have made better progress.
jeradg wrote:Part of the problem is that APP and PTP were so easy to use I thought my results were better than they were. At the same time, I have always been impressed by the quality of tours created by people like Klaus (I would say yours, but I'm not certain I've seen one).
Additionally, there is a lot of information out on the internet, but the large majority of it is in bits and pieces and covers only a very shallow level of information on any given topic. For instance, we read fisheye would be easiest, but we ended up with a fully manual one, which has obviously turned out to not be the easiest.
I am fairly certain I have the camera set on the NPP. I have the golden ring of the lens aligned to where it is not moving as I spin the camera 360 degrees (as the NN3II instructions say to). I haven't had a problem getting the fisheye images to align in APP even when taking only 4 shots for 360.
I was using the HDR function on the camera recently because I previously had attempted using the bracketing function on the camera and manually adjusting shutter speed. The multiple types/brightnesses of indoor lights and the brightness of the sun through the windows (at all times of the day when it is sunny) made single exposures give undesired results.
Free forum help is the best. UI, forum activity, and results are why I chose APP/PTP. It's too bad I'm about to graduate from law school and they never offered me a photography class... This has been a much more enjoyable project than writing papers.
I am in Oklahoma.
... and in response to your settings post: how were you able to set the camera to D5100? Only 5000, 5200 are available in my APP. Previously, someone (on here) had told me to set APP to 5000.
Also, I see you have it set to 9mm? I had also read online to start with the maximum aperture (indoors), but you suggest starting at 8; I will play with it some. I have already been using circular crop and panorama layout in that way (see I did something right).
Edit: ^^ aperture settings answer: http://www.shortcourses.com/use/using1-10.html "For maximum depth of field, with the entire scene sharp from near to far, you need a small aperture"
hankkarl wrote:I think there may be a vocabulary issue here:
1. Distortion - example is straight lines become curved They may be sharp or blurry.
2. Out of Focus, or soft focus - lines may be straight, but are blurry.
At f/5 there are going to be some areas that are out of focus. If you autofocus on the center, it shouldn't surprise you that the edges are out of focus.
Try shooting at f/11 on a crop sensor or f/16 on a FF. Better yet, find the apreture that gives you the largest depfth of field with acceptable difraction. see http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Lens-Aperture-%28F-Stop%29
On a FF body with 8mm lens, set f/16 with a focal distance of 0.48 feet (ie 6 inches or about .33 meters) outdoors, less indoors. IIRC This will focus to infinity. Or learn about hyperfocal distance. And use the calculator at http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
Don't shoot jpg or auto-hdr. Shoot RAW, use AEB two stops appart (3 stops on some cameras).And use photomatix or APG exposure fusion to blend.
And as others have said, use manual everything. Keep it the same thoughout the entire shoot. And you may have to go beyond 6 stops if you're in a dark room with windows to a sunny day outside.
jeradg wrote:Edit: how can I eliminate the effect of the light bleeding onto the ceiling tiles? I have been doing it in photoshop after stitching.
jeradg wrote:Here is what I got... This is from the f8, 1/5 shutter, ~3m focus, D5100 setting, 9mm focal length, spherical projection, maximum projection........
jeradg wrote:I went and shot 6 @ 60 intervals with f5.6 and 1/10 shutter (at 4 test focuses) and 6 @ 60 intervals at f8 and 1/5 shutter (w/4 test focuses)... (samples posted)
The HDR camera function did a decent job of exposing shadows - see the better of the 2 large room images I posted on page 1 of this thread.
I am using the most recent version of APP. I was using 2.6.2 because the notes from 2.6.3 seemed irrelevant. 2.6.2 didn't have D5100, only D5000.
I will post results when completed in APP..
jeradg wrote:Here is what I got... This is from the f8, 1/5 shutter, ~3m focus, D5100 setting, 9mm focal length, spherical projection, maximum projection........
jeradg wrote:Settings
mediavets wrote:jeradg wrote:I went and shot 6 @ 60 intervals with f5.6 and 1/10 shutter (at 4 test focuses) and 6 @ 60 intervals at f8 and 1/5 shutter (w/4 test focuses)... (samples posted)
The HDR camera function did a decent job of exposing shadows - see the better of the 2 large room images I posted on page 1 of this thread.
I am using the most recent version of APP. I was using 2.6.2 because the notes from 2.6.3 seemed irrelevant. 2.6.2 didn't have D5100, only D5000.
I will post results when completed in APP..
Wow you are difficult to mentor/coach...
I said:
"Right now you are trying to get to grips with that fisheye lens.
So check you have that camera/lens at the NPP, that you have the focus set to produce a sharp focus at 1 meter, set the aperture at f8, then chose an evenly well lit scene with lots of detail for the stitcher set a manual white balance, and manual exposure, and shoot a single row at zero pitch, 6-around, with 60 degree yaw separations and see how you get on."
That scene doesn't look evenly well lit with lots of detail to me. Did you set a manual white balance. If yopu are shooting RAW what softare are you using for RAW consversion? I know the experts always shoot RAW but as a novice I feel it's just adding complexity to your workflow right now and that you may be better off shooting JPEG initially unless you are very confident that you can do a better job with your RAW conversion software than the camera can do.
You are trying to develop decent shooting technique and workflow right now - so please do as as I suggest rather than follow your own whims if you want me to bother to continue with this.
If you have no evenly well lit interior spaces then shoot outdoors.
You're on a hiding to nothing if you start trying to shoot the most challenging sort of scenes with having first developed good technique and an effective workflow. You are trying to sprint when you can barely crawl.
You may have felt that tyhe v. 2.6.3 release notes didn't offer anything you needed, but it's generally always worth upgrading because there are often relevant changes and bug fixes made 'under the hood' which do not get spelled out in detail. In your case explicit support for the Nikon D5100!
jeradg wrote:Klaus had previously explained that I should rotate the images prior to adding them to APP, but I have not figured out an efficient way to do this with RAW yet.
klausesser wrote:jeradg wrote:Settings
use detection "low" or "standard" and check "force every image . . . ".
Can you make a screenshot of the cp-window?
best, KLaus
btw.: better use RAW - you can edit the white-balance. The color aof the light is ugly.
klausesser wrote:jeradg wrote:Settings
use detection "low" or "standard" and check "force every image . . . ".
Can you make a screenshot of the cp-window?
best, KLaus
btw.: better use RAW - you can edit the white-balance. The color aof the light is ugly.
jeradg wrote:klausesser wrote:jeradg wrote:Settings
use detection "low" or "standard" and check "force every image . . . ".
Can you make a screenshot of the cp-window?
best, KLaus
btw.: better use RAW - you can edit the white-balance. The color aof the light is ugly.
Here are the strong, standard and low, and the CP editor.
I am still working on figuring out which white balance to use (multiple adjustments so far today). I have been editing the colors in photoshop after in the meantime. Either way, the lighting color isn't the best, even in reality.
jeradg wrote:I suppose I don't know what "evenly well-lit" means, and I thought the flooring, numbers, and wood of the lockers were detail.
The trash can/lockers are at about 1m, and I shot there because it is the most evenly lit place in the building (everywhere else has multiple types of lighting).
I did shoot these in jpeg because I know RAW is more difficult. Previously when shooting RAW I was putting those directly into APP. Klaus had previously explained that I should rotate the images prior to adding them to APP, but I have not figured out an efficient way to do this with RAW yet.
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