Shot a couple of spherical panos recently for a friend.
Nikon D-300, fixed color balance, manual exposure changing shutter speed, lowest iso, pano head on solid sticks. lens was Nikon 10.5 fisheye. Camera angled down about 15 degrees for 9 shot rotation with good ovwrlap. 4 shot rotation for the top.
Converted raw to 16 bit tiffs; all synched.
Aligned and stitched with PTGUI.
No matter what I do or how I do it, I find I need to make a number of small adjustments for joins that visibly miss. Alignment top and bottom of each pano is a problem. Normally I solve these issues by exporting a layered panorama, which can usually be fixed by careful masking adjustments.
I wanted to do this one with HDR, which I rarely use. PTGUI will not export HDR'd layers; you have to work with a completed panorama. HDRing the selects in PSCS5 produces spectacularly mismatched images. I can find no way to set Photoshop to use the same settings for each image.
If you have done anything remotely along these lines, I would appreciate any useful thoughts on this process. How can I improve my work?
Sorry, but the picture is of a collector and his treasures; he does not want it posted for any reason.
Actually, I don't think parallax is the problem. I'm using a pano head and am pivoting on the focal point of the lens, It is a fisheye, which I am told has a variable focus depending on where you are, Don't know if that is correct, but when I spin it, items near and far do not move or change relationship.
Pt GUI says only "good" with max point disparity of 14.63. I have added a number of vertical t1 points, without which doors lean in peculiar ways.
9 around for two reasons: more overlap and to have important components in one piece where possible. I find I need three up to cover completely.
If anyone is interested, I reran my last two panos and got significantly better results. Same images, but more manual intervention.
I added some control points, added a number of vertical t1 points and allowed the program to be more aggressive in warping. At a guess, a 60-75% improvement in warping, although it is still necessary to save as individual images and remask in spots.
I did some premasking in PTGUI, which was useful, although the function could be improved. Fisheye images reform into an hourglass shape; masking them after warping would remove the corners, which are a problem area. If the automatic masking could be a controlled soft edge, some joint problems would be minimized.
There several thoughtful videos on YouTube that offer good guidance.
