VR with Mamiya ZD

A while ago I evaluated the user of the Mamiya ZD wich the 24mm lens (link) over the Canon 1Ds Sigma 8mm combo.

Facts 1Ds with Sigma 8mm:
3 or 4 images (4.062 x 2.704 pixel), fisheye
Resulting in a 5.000 x 2.500 equirectangular image.
Pro:
Full 360x180 degree coverage with 3 images.
Can be shot using monopod.
Con:
Lower resolution and image quality due to fisheye

Facts Mamiya ZD with ULD Sekor 24mm:
6 fullframe fishey images with 4.008 x 5.336 pixel each results

Resulting in a 16.500 x 5.200 equirectangular image.
Pro:
Crisp result, high resolution and quality image.
Con:
Requires shooting using tripod.
Does not cover zenith and nadir. Requires a sturdy panorama head with this gear, maybe Nodalninja 5, to shot up and down.

Sample: Stitched with PTGui 8.0.2 and converted to Flash with Pano2VR 2.2 beta4. Crop and Touchup Photoshop CS3.

Link to VR (flash based) version

Sydney 16:9 Walkabout (II)

Part 2 of the bw walkabout. Some more verticals will follow.

Lunapark at night

At the last night in Sydney we did one more outing to a rather touristic spot, Luna Park (Wikipedia link) at Milsons Point nearby the Harbor Bridge (Wikipedia link). I let the Mamyia ZD run versus the LX3 and challenged them with this blue hour/night condition. Here the results of the Panasonic Lumix LX3. Quite convincing results, little noise for this small camera at night, specifically the dynamic bw mode, which I hardly touched in PS. ZD results will follow.

Sydney 16:9 Walkabout

Exploring the city centre of Sydney with the Panasonic LX3 and looking for my favorite subjects: Walls, old facades, decay, doors, signs.

Panoramic backlog

I do regular harddisk housekeeping and backing up my files, both raw and processed, and always during these exercise I come across unprocessed or "unseen" images. So while copying some more images to the safe (?) DVD I stumble upon the handheld LX panos from September made in Neustadt (Germany). Yes, handheld panoramas are possible, even with wide angle lenses (in this case 24mm), it takes some practive and might not be perfect though. The buildings in the old town of Neustadt are not perfectly straight either, but the manual shooting increased slightly the obliqueness.
Just realized, this blog turns 100 ! Nice occasion and dedicated to my home place ! I am happy to be persistent enough to write more or less regularly and enlight readers with my panoramic endeavors and experiments.

16:9 Walkabout

Occasionally it is my pleasure to go around with a simple (or rather small) camera and enjoy lightweight and tourist-alike snapping away. The Panasonic is a perfect companion if you want to leave your DSLR stuff at home. And the dynamic bw mode with some curve adjustment is just nice to enjoy simple digital photography from time to time.

GIGAPAN Chinese Garden

Another GIGAPAN made with the modified gigapan systems head and the Panasonic Lumix FZ28. 96 images stitched with PTGui to a 14.200 x 17.300 pixel image (245MP). Not sure if it reveals much more details than 4 Canon 1Ds images stitched together. Maybe I will compare for this sake.

See the complete GIGAPAN here (link)

Panorama Tripod a shoestring II

To follow up on the description of the simple mini panorama tripod, here some results:
LX3 @24mm (ISO80), F5, 1/250s (Shot in 16:9 format by mistake), 30 degree between the 7 images covering roughly 180 degree.
Resulting in a 10.300 x 3.600 pixel image. (below smaller jpg version)
LX3 @60mm (ISO80), F5, 1/250s (Shot in 16:9 format by mistake), 20 degree between the 17 images covering roughly 180 degree.
Resulting in a 19.000 x 3.800 pixel image. (below smaller jpg version and 100% crop)

Conclusion:
I am happy with the results for a 270g (tripod only, LX3 comes at another 275g) light tripod that fits into my daily bag.
It needs some finetuning for the nodal point for closer subjects, I used the pre-made holes in the L-shape bracket. All you need is a drilling machine.

Panorama Tripod a shoestring

Occasionally I bring only a small camera along on shirt trips. The Panasonic LX3 or FZ28 deliver pretty good quality RAW images without carrying my 1Ds or ZD. Sometimes I create handheld panoramas and wish I had a tripod with a panoramahead at hand. I tried to create the lightest and smallest pano-tripod with parts I have in my repository.
Lets take table tripod (0$, came for free with another small camera), a L-shape bracket from the DIY-shop, 2 tripod screws and a Novoflex Panohead (for about 100$) from Ebay.
Yes, it is not perfect, it is not perfectly mounted over the nodal point, but with the FZ28 starting at 28mm it is pretty OK. Will upload some result files later.
The whole set can be disassembled and fits into my notebook bag and comes along any short business trips. And I even can do night panoramas now.

Panasonic LX3 Review

I am not very good in reviewing cameras in a professional and technical exact fashion. I know how to choose a good camera with the features I need and usually check a couple of online reviews before deciding to buy. There are myriad of testsites, but let me tell you 95% of them are crap, they just try to get you on the site with links to online shops selling the camera, sometimes you find the same text on several of these "test portals"..rubbish. Two I regularly visit is dpreview.com (link) and luminous-landscape.com (link), the latter one is pretty independent, has less reviews, but feels more serious than the standard review approach in dpreview, anyway judege by yourself.

I want the highlight the Panasonic LX3 review (link) which confirms that this is a real great camera and belong into the pocket of any photographer who wants to do crips shots out there while not carrying around a DSLR ! I wonder whats the big deal about the Leica D-Lux 4, which is the exact same camera whith a red dot and a 200S$ difference in price.

Lumix FZ28 goes gigapan

Managed to mount a Panasonic Lumix FZ28 on the gigapan head with the help of a little homemade support bracket from the DIY shop. Not the final version, but a start.

GIGAPAN Tips and Tricks (Part 2)

This topic does not apply specifically to images created with the Gigapan system, but to all stitching practice in general. The gigapan gives you more control over the process than for example handheld shot panoramas or using a panohead without dents.

I am a perfectionist when it comes to stitching images. I dislike (creating or printing) panoramas where you can see obvious seams or moving subjects that show up half (usually referred to as ghosts).

Preconditions:
a) All images are shot with same camera settings (whitebalance, aperture, speed). Optional usage of RAW.
b) The more overlap the better (to some extend only!). I recommend somewhere 30..45%. This you set during the Gigapan Setup (FOV setting) or manually while shooting with non-gigapan gear.
c) The more images (or the higher the cameras resolution) you want to stitch the longer it will take, resp. require more memory in order to get results in a realistic timeframe. I am not sure what are the limitations of running Gigapan Stitcher under Windows 32.
d) Set the "Kepp projected images" option in the Gigapan Stitcher Options screen (see Img.1)

Img.1

Retouch/Post Processing:
With plenty of overlap I created the 2 images (detail crop img.2) of the same spot with the scene itself changing. The stitcher cannot take care of moving subjects like people or cars. You can se the result in img. 3 (upper part). To remove the ghost appearance you load the warped images with the overlapping scenes from the data/projected folder (applies only to gigapan stitcher) into Photoshop. If you use PTGui save the resulting panorama file either as image with all layers or save the layers as separate files. Now you copy and paste parts of the scene to repair from the warped images into the stitched "big" file (use 50% transparency to match the non-moving subjects like flagpole, etc.) and use the layer tools to reveal or hide the parts to repair. I find this as a very efficient and fast way to repair the ghosts and its way better than cloning and stamping subjects, background patterns or copy-n-paste-mirror-resize bodyparts. See he result in img.3 or goto gigapan.org (link) to see the fullsize version.

Tips for Photoshop:
(Big panoramas require lots of memory for a decent working speed.)
- Use Windows 64 with lot of real memory (not always an option due to availability)
- Terminate any other non-essential programs or services.
- Switch off the copy to clipboard function (see PS options/settings).
- Assign 75..80% of memory to PS (see PS options/settings).
- Reduce the PS history to 2 or max 3, worst case to 1 (see PS options/settings).
- Do a regular EDIT/PURGE/ALL to relief memory (seems to work for me).
- Be patient.

Img.2

Img.3

Here the links to the highres versions of the german panoramas at gigapan.org (select link !):

Bad Duerkheim (link)

Speyer, Kaiserstatuen (link)

Speyer, Dom (link)

handheld panorama

While playing with the bw mode I also did some panorama. Handheld, 24mm, 7 images. Stitched in PTGui resulting in 10.000 x 3.000 pixel

monochrome Digital

Professional DSLR dont have a monochrome (or any other special effect) mode. If you convert you really want to do that in PS with the maximum of control and flexibility. The monochrome mode you find in consumer camera is pure crap and you use it one time only (after buying the camera and playing with all menus!).
But the LX3 is the first camera that changed my opeinion about this. The (dynamic) bw mode is really coming close to "real" bw and its fun to use it. The below samples are all shot in ISO100, 16:9, JPG fine and dynamic bw mode.