My Autopano Pro forum

ARtjure wrote:

I'm Sascha and I'm currently working on a virtual tour for my library. I shoot several times and often i got very strange results(interconnected corners, white holes in the pictures or no stiching at all).


Now for the last shootin i wanted to make sure and used a wide angle lens and also made shoots with different speeds, since I'm shooting inside but also want to catch the view outside. I also shoot raw parallely, also to leave me all oportunities later(now).

But i have no idea how to go on now... the automatic functions don't do the job completely automatic, i understood should preprocess the images using HDR Tone mapping, but right now i would be soo thankful to get a bit of help.

If there are more questions about the lens, camera I can add this information, but I'm not sure if it fits the topic.

Hi Sascha!

Could you tell us your procedere more exactly? Do you use a nodal-adapter/head? Is it adjusted properly? Do you shoot spheres? Which lens, which crop, which overlap, how many shots at how many exposures (bracketed)? How do you tonemap?

best, Klaus

P.S.: you wrote "wideangle shots indoor" - what exactly does that mean? 360x180deg-Spheres? Planeprojected pictures of wide angles? Which angles?

Last edited by klausesser (2008-08-20 14:27:22)

Sounds like you need more memory in your PC.  How much RAM and free disk space do you have?  Where did you put the APP temp directory?

Tonemap/TuFuse -- I prefer Photomatix, but there are others, and there are free HDR programs.  TuFuse is an alternative, and IIRC, its free.  Tonemapping is different than fusing, everyone has their preferences, this is an art, not a science.  And some like tonemapping for exactly the same reason others don't like it.

ARtjure wrote:

I reduced the amount of images to about 50. Now i have unconnected Panos that i try to connect now.

The fastest way to follow could be to begin with ...only 2 images. Good RMS and perfect stitch? add some more. Following this route, no doubt you will learn to select the right images and not to use the useless ones, etc. A first goal could be to stitch a series of "not very dark nor very bright" images, because they are easier to manage. HDR would follow, in a second step.

Sincerely, I bielieve this will be faster.

Last edited by GURL (2008-08-20 16:54:18)

From your screenshot I see that you can delete many of those photos. If you used your lens set at 10mm you DO NOT need over 100 photos for each pano, even if you stand on the top of your head :]

One 360°x180° pano shot using a 10mm lens using bracketing should be about 20-30 photos maximum, probably 12.

I got this one... It's actually one of the few partial panos. Apart from the setting, what do u think of the result(I will add the rendr later)?

After adding CP and optimising, I straightened it, moved the center point and used cylindrical projection to gain some vertical space.

Now for a Test i render it with HDR(here comes the colour part of the question) and Crop it.

I start to thnk it was a bad idea to use the 10mm...but well, u learn..i think about shooting again with the panosauraus next month... but i want to finish it now...

ARtjure wrote:

I got this one... It's actually one of the few partial panos. Apart from the setting, what do u think of the result(I will add the rendr later)?

After adding CP and optimising, I straightened it, moved the center point and used cylindrical projection to gain some vertical space.

Now for a Test i render it with HDR(here comes the colour part of the question) and Crop it.

I start to thnk it was a bad idea to use the 10mm...but well, u learn..i think about shooting again with the panosauraus next month... but i want to finish it now...

use another workflow.
1) use the 40D´s bracketing-option and shoot -2/0/+2
2) use the mirror-up functionn before EVERY exposure - that avoids mirror shaking the camera and causing slight blurr.
3) use Photomatix or so BEFORE stitching in APP

APP will have to work on 1/3 of the amount of pictures - which naturally speeds up everything and it woudn´t have problems with too dark shots.

klausesser wrote:

DrSlony wrote:

One 360°x180° pano shot using a 10mm lens using bracketing should be about 20-30 photos maximum, probably 12.

how should he do that without a nodal-head? He said he didn´t use one . .
Using a 10mm inside a room can´t work well without a nodal-head/adaptor. Even when you shoot only horizontal.

Well if the room is big then parallax errors will be small, and if he doesn't have a panohead but uses any other technique (e.g. string method) to rotate more or less around the nodal point then parallax error likelihood is minimized :] But he did write that he uses a tripod which means he doesnt use the string method, I overlooked that.

Anyways his problem is, from what I see, WAY too many redundant images and unneccesarily saving to HDR.

ARtjure read this carefully because I see bad highlights in your pano: http://www.autopano.net/forum/t4165-ren … ot-working
If you do not need a .hdr image, then I suggest you do what klausesser said, or render the layers as normal images (tiff/png/jpg, but i recommend staying in the 16bit workflow so render to 16bit tiff files with no compression) and then tufuse/tonemap them. Also adjust your white balance (thats why I said stay in 16bit per channel mode) in an image editor once rendered and tufused/tonemapped/whatever.

ARtjure wrote:

Oksi, rendered... hmmm beautiful is something different, but i'd say it looks ok...  what do u think?

You should have used a WB on "Tungsten".

Better use RAW all the time.

klausesser wrote:

DrSlony wrote:

One 360°x180° pano shot using a 10mm lens using bracketing should be about 20-30 photos maximum, probably 12.

how should he do that without a nodal-head? He said he didn´t use one . .
Using a 10mm inside a room can´t work well without a nodal-head/adaptor. Even when you shoot only horizontal.

See http://www.hankkarl.com/SummerCamp/summer-camp.htm , its a 360x180 I took handheld with the string method.

Last edited by hankkarl (2008-08-22 02:09:52)

ad. P.S. 2 and 3: Ditto for linux :] A qtvr will work very well for both penguins and apples :]
ad. "That means you touched the camera several times": I recently shot a pano after midnight, it took over 4 hours to shoot that 1 pano and after some time when my camera and lens reached some certain temperature, i had great trouble with moisture forming on the lens literally 1 second after I wiped it off. Because of all the lens touching I ended up shooting the first photos at 18mm, others at 20mm and the last at 22mm, because my 18-55mm lens is at 55mm when it is extended all the way out, 18mm when it is extended about half way out, and about 25mm when it is all the way in (sort of like a swing). Luckilly even the 22mm photos had some overlap :] Anyone know any good anti-moisture liquid for lenses?

I'm afraid this might be impossible for a midnight pano that takes 4 hours... Well not impossible, but I'd need another tripod to hold the fan, and a set of batteries that can last that long. A liquid coating that prevents water buildup would be better, but untill I find one I will try your method somehow, thanks!

Or I could use a Dew Annihilator Ray Generator that I just made up to disintegrate all moisture before the lens. I like the version that runs on Linux because I can compile it myself so it disintegrates faster, and the Windows DARG keeps crashing, but the Macintosh version seems easiest, it only has 1 button.