Forum

Topic: Special-effects Gigapans / HDR Workflow

Hello. does anyone have any tips for HDR workflow? right now what i am trying is creating 3 gigapan images 1 High, 1 Mid and 1 Low ex. Then i batch crop them in CS5 but for some reason i can’t get finish the last step of combining them as a HDR. I have tried both Cs5 and Photomatix Pro but they both fail. Could it be that the image size is to big?

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Galileo iOS Iphone Robotic Mount

Just found out about this kickstarter project http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/449163977/g… Seems promising, very cool for stop motion timelapse. They mention it being good for 360 degree spherical photography, but as the control is through the base of the phone connecting to the device, that puts the lens out to one side, not rotating though its entrance pupil. Also, the camera in the iphone is really just a toy. I very much like the concept of using a phone to control a panoramic robot, it would be super nice if the Gigapan unit could be controlled via wifi or usb from another device. What does the future hold?

Jason

Topic: General Gigapanning / new camera or not, from 6mp to 24mp

Mark,

You will certainly see a difference going to 24 megapixels. I strongly recommend doing it. The only downside is that you will fill up your memory cards a lot faster. ;-) I would recommend you use a 16G or 32G card, especially if you choose to use RAW format. Also, you should put a zoom tele on your shopping list if you don’t already have one. As I told Tim above, 300mm or more will give you great results with the 24 megapixel sensor.

Dave

Topic: General Gigapanning / new camera or not, from 6mp to 24mp

Tim,

I am using a T2i and have mated it with a 75-300mm Canon zoom that I bought years ago when I was using a Canon XTi. This was not too expensive and is marvelous for nature photography outside of GigaPan use. It is very light. Today the equivalent is the 70-300mm that you can get for $427 at Amazon. You could also look at Sigma or other less expensive lenses, but you really want to be 300mm or more.

The D60 is a semi-pro level camera, but of 2002 vintage with only 6.5 megapixels. Perhaps you inverted the letters, because the 60D is the current next step up from the Rebel family. Your T2i has 18 megapixels and so does the 60D. You will not see any difference in GigaPan photos taken with either one as they have the same sensor. All the feature differences between the two don’t contribute to better GigaPans. BTW, they both have Canon’s Auto Lighting Optimizer feature that can mess up exposures during a GigaPan shoot. Disable this. The problem it causes is a darkening of the sky at the transition to the horizon where there are darker objects. This is on by default and does not disable when you switch to manual.

Search for user ‘mrpiv’ to see my recent larger GigaPans that use this combination of lens and camera, like Goosenecks, Spider Rock, Tempe ASU 360, Sedona Oak Creek.

Dave

Topic: General Gigapanning / gigapan

Hi all. I have project for giga photo panorama theory. I need to learn for this: What is gigapan? What technology is behind? How to make giga pan from shooting to uploading on web. If you have some links of materials where i can research please write.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Tips & Tricks - Stitching with missed images and using auto focus

Remember that, if you have editing software and some time, about 8/9 of the missing image is available on other images. (The standard overlap is about 1/3 top, bottom and sides. If you imagine a 3×3 grid inside your missing image, all but the middle tile will be covered by other images.)

Topic: General Gigapanning / Tips & Tricks - Stitching with missed images and using auto focus

I got this email request and thought I’d post the answers publicly since this is a common issue…
___________________________

I’m writting to you, because I saw that your’d answered a question very well, so I think you know a lot about Gigapaning.

I’m new in this and I’m having some problems that I will aprecciate your help.

First of all I want to know what can I do in the Stitch Software to create the Gigapan image without the missing photos caused for the use of Autofocus?

Then, I would like to recieve some opinion of what I’ve to do in the case of a stadium full of people, when I shoot to the people is better to have the camera in Autofocus, and when I shoot to the sky put the camera in manual focus?

I’ll aprecciate any kind of advice, thanks for your time.
—

Answers…

Dealing with missed images can be quite a hassle I’m finding the best solution is prevention – it is worth the effort in the field to make sure you don’t miss any images (See tips below).

To deal with missed images in the stitcher:
Once you have identified the image that is missing, you can load the image adjacent to it again. It will load at the end of the image list and you drag it to the location you want to use. You can select or mouse over an image to figure out what the file name is. Lately I have been trying very hard to not miss any images because it can make the difference between a quick stitch and hours of annoying work.

A few tricks:

• Always make sure you write down the number of rows/columns when shooting a gigapan. Knowing what size you are trying to reach when you are missing images in the stitcher can save you tons of time.

• Listen to your camera and try to hear when it doesn’t shoot a picture. If you miss one go back and fix it. If you aren’t sure, go back and make sure you got the shot. If you shoot a duplicate image, delete one of them. The cleaner you keep the initial image set the better.

• If you miss a shot, load the previous shot on the camera. Move the gigapan back an image and look through the camera viewfinder and match the shot on the camera with where the camera is. Remember that the gigapan will take the shot it is currently on when you unpause it, so move forward one shot before starting the gigapan again to avoid duplicates. Delete any shots that didn’t look right, were out of focus or repeats. The more you can do in the field the better.

• Change whether the gigapan shoots rows or columns first. To do areas with tons of sky or landscapes with some stuff up close on autofocus, shoot rows from top down. Do the top rows where everything is sky on manual, Do the bottom rows on autosfocus. For example this was done like that: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/75518

• Get to know what your camera will fail on. Keep an eye out for trouble areas and listen to make sure it shoots. Turn off the auto focus if you are coming to a trouble area.

• Usually the camera focuses better if its set to focus using all points in the image but sometimes it might work better with just the center focus point. experiment to see.

• If the camera can almost focus but fails some times, go into the gigapan settings and have it do a longer shutter press

• For shooting people or scenes that are changing a lot, have the gigapan shoot as fast as possible so you get by moving sections quickly.

Topic: General Gigapanning / new camera or not, from 6mp to 24mp

I’m no expert on cameras but I’ve been having the same questions. My impression is that once you have a decent camera the lens makes all the difference. (Although in your case going from 6mp to a new 24mp camera will probably make a huge difference). But in general, once you have a decent DSLR the lens is a huge factor. For example I keep trying to improve the size and quality of my gigapans. I recently upgraded from a canon T2i to a D60 which is the next DSLR up the food chain. The images on the D60 are insanely good. But if you take the huge lens that came with the camera and stick it on my T2i, those images are insanely good too. The D60 does do some things better but in terms of image quality it all seems driven by the lens.

Unfortunately for gigapaning, to go from the cheaper sub $400 200mm lenses to something better is going to cost you $1500 which is more than a lot of new cameras. But as I said if you have a decent camera I’m pretty sure that the lens is what’s going to make the difference.

Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

Topic: Embedding / Customize Control Interface

Hey! Im interesed too!

Any idea?

Topic: General Gigapanning / What's in your bag?

For the sake of the noobies that are just taking up GigaPanning, I thought it might be worthwhile for some of us that have been doing this for a while to “open our bags” and share their contents.

What do you carry beyond the imager, camera, batteries and tripod to make your Gigapan outings successful? It would also be useful to chime in with brands/types of tripods, batteries, etc.

Topic: Special-effects Gigapans / Continuous Pan/Tilt

It is possible to get a gigapan to pan or tilt and shoot a timelapse. I have achieved this before by artificially calibrating the system such that I only move the gigapan one pan or tilt increment when the system asks you to align the top of your view screen, then the bottom of your view screen. The machine indicates 0.1 degrees field of view. Then I create a pano and set the appropriate exposure length etc.

This sort achieves a panning time lapse. I believe there may be some limits on the amount of columns or rows but it does the job.

The obvious limitation is that it can only pan or tilt still but shoots images in an appropriate sequence to create a timelapse video.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / astro use of Epic Pro?

I have been interested in this. This could be a very valuable potential improvement. I read on another post that the minimum tilt increment is 0.04 degrees which is almost acceptable for astro photography however the pan increment is only 0.1 degrees which may be problematic.

It might be theoretically possible to angle the head of your gigapan so that only tilting is required in which case you could do the astro photography now come to think of it.

I also posted on another thread that it is possible to trick the gigapan field of view calibration to get the minimum pan or tilt increment. This may actually work.

Combining these two techniques may get you close to doing astro photography. Someone who knows more about it might be able to comment.

I know the movement of the stars is on some kind of arc so moving in one axis only won’t be the right answer but it may allow longer photo shutter speeds than not using the gigapan.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / astro use of Epic Pro?

This will be a very very interesting use for the Epic Pro!!!

Topic: General Gigapanning / What lenses do you guys use?

70-200 has a very good aperture on 200mm, if you’re talking about the L one..
Very good for quick shooting or night panoramas.

Also curious why would you say that Hassan

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Replacing a Gigapan

Unfortunately, replacing an individual GigaPan on the website has never been possible. The best one can do right now is upload an improved version and link in the description back to the original. I’ve made it a personal policy not to remove older versions of my GigaPans if someone else has commented or made snapshots on them, but whether you choose to do the same is up to you. If I have a GigaPan that’s been updated but where the deprecated version hasn’t been commented upon or snapshotted I tend to simply make them private rather than outright deleting them. This could come in handy later on if I want to document how my stitching or shooting technique has improved.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Replacing a Gigapan

and is it possible to replace my gigapan and keep the comments?

Topic: General Gigapanning / Zoom Options

Wow, those are some beautiful photos!

I finally got out and tested the T3i quickly. Definitely would like to get a 300mm lens if possible.

Thanks for your help!

Topic: General Gigapanning / PRINTING giant digital photographs, panoramas

Should anyone need professional gallery quality giga panorama print for a good price, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I have done prints for galleries, murals, etc. in USA and EU. Can take projects from any stage – from raw file stitching to ready-for-output panoramas. Printing can be done on media rolls up to 10ft wide. No project too big or too small: 10in x 40in, or 10ft x 40ft – can do it all.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Image size when shooting

hey david, i am doing all my pictures in raw first, then go into nikon nx (if i would have lightroom i would use this) make the corrections (if there are any ;-) ) and export the pics as tiff and stitch the gigapan ….works better than jpg and gets sharper images markus

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Website Fixes

Rofl. Ron, I’m working on the list, will be posting it soon.

Topic: General Gigapanning / delete snapshot

There is a little ‘comment’ box under each snapshot which opens up when you put the mouse pointer over it.

‘Delete’ is one of the options in that box.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Website Fixes

Keep dreamin’ big guy! We’ve got better things to do than edit your metadata.

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Voltage

No information regarding this issue?
I´ve found a thread in the older forum but as I own the latest Epic100 I don´t know if the info refers to it also because the post is about the older one.
Here´s the link:
http://forum.gigapan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=69…

Thanks and regards,
Martin

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Website Fixes

Great to see the new fixes to the website today – I’m particularly pleased to see that Most Popular Galleries now does what it should. :-)

Please update us with a full list of fixes, Angelko. I don’t think you ever got around to it after the last round of updates. :-(

[Update: Okay, my favorite update is officially the addition of “Geology” to the categories list. :-) Of course, it also means I’m going to end up spending many hours editing the categories of my 900+ GigaPans and 80+ Galleries. :-( Hmmm, maybe I can put Berti and Edi on that task…]

Topic: General Gigapanning / Finally found a good battery carrier

Ever since I’ve been gigapanning, I’ve been in search of the “perfect” AA battery carrier. I always carry 3 or 4 loaded battery trays, but on longer shoots I’ll carry several additional sets of eneloops.

I just got a couple of these from Amazon, and they meet all of my requirements: multiples of 6 batteries, durable, usable one-handed, ability to distinguish spent cells from fresh, protect both ends of the batteries, batteries can’t fall out.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004YG7JXW/ref…