I have a client that has asked me to take some wide shots of the campus, she is not quite sure what she wants but its sounds like she doesn't want the full 360 degree photos but maybe a couple of photos stitched together.
I do have a bogen tripod head that enables the camera to rotate on the axis of the image sensor.
I think photoshop might have a photo merge but is there something else I should be using?
thanks,
Dave
Dave,
You need to rotate around the no parallax point of your lens, the camera needs to be level throughout the rotation. How you achieve this is up to you. RRS has some very nice gear for this purpose and there are home made nodal slide instructions out there.
If you do not have any close objects you may be able to hand hold and get enough shots for a stitch.
david debalko wrote:
I have a client that has asked me to take some wide shots of the campus, she is not quite sure what she wants but its sounds like she doesn't want the full 360 degree photos but maybe a couple of photos stitched together.
I do have a bogen tripod head that enables the camera to rotate on the axis of the image sensor.
I think photoshop might have a photo merge but is there something else I should be using?
thanks,
Dave
No, you don't need anything else and you don't need to even think about parallax error or lenses nodal points for stitched panoramas of a typical campus. Just shoot it on your pod at as close to level as you can - without moving the pod of course - and stitch it together in PS. PS isn't the best tool but it usually works fine.
Something like Autopano Giga can sometimes produce a little better results but usually only when there are more than 10 or 15 images. Here's my workflow with that: http://www.getdpi.com/forum/475258-post5777.html I do pretty much the same thing when stitching with CS5.5 except PS and not Autopano Giga is the stitching tool of course.
I do have a Manfrotto 303Plus Precision QTVR Panoramic Head, I bought it several years ago when another client asked about having the same thing, the job never happened and I forgot I had the head.
I photographed my living room 360 and stitched the photos together in photoshop, it worked.
When i see virtual tours on websites I get the impression of the panning through the photo, is that software or would that be the web designer's job to do?
There are several interactive formats such as QTVR for example. They work the same way that images and movies do. The data is placed on line with the mime-types set server and client, and the client app (browser or whatever) executes the appropriated code (most often a plug-in) in order to display/navigate it.
To assemble the data choose the media format you want to use and then search for a tool and/or tutorial to assist you. Maybe something like this: http://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/makepano.html I dunno if that one is any good or not as I didn't read it but you get the gist yeah?
When you see virtual tours on websites, they're usually stitched in PTGui or Autopano, and displayed using a player. QTVR in the old days, now more commonly with Flash or HTML. The two most common players are Pano2VR and KRPano. There are also various virtual tour software packages used in the real estate industry.
