>FromParis - Technical documentation and tutorials : panoramas, spherical 360°/180° Quicktime VR, hardware, software

panoramas

images bank

screensavers

technical

> home > technical >

Links

About this technical section

for new updates

	I hope the little informations of this section will enable you to begin with creating panoramic images and spherical Quicktime VR or maybe better understand the process involved.
	Vidéo : create a complete Quicktime VR 360°-180° in 10 minutes How to create a Quicktime VR step by step, from the shots to the stiching part A smaller hole on the nadir = less work in Photoshop Tilt your camera for less work in Photoshop after: Nikon D70 + Nikon 10.5mm + Nodal Ninja 3 + Stitcher Unlimited (or PTGUI) Quicktime VR 360°-180° with 3 shots : Nikon 10.5mm on a Canon 5D Create a good quality Quicktime VR with only 3 pictures and a strange couple camera/lens Spherical head 360Precision /PTMac /PhotoshopCS2 /CubicConverter Easy and quick workflow to create a spherical QuicktimeVR Basic informations to understand & create Quicktime VR 360°-180° Basic informations and tutorial Manfrotto 304 VR : a cool "do-it-yourself" Quicktime VR head From the 303SPH Manfrotto to a head with new functionalities All the technical chapters in one (and long) page

A smaller hole on the nadir = less work in Photoshop
Nikon D70 + Nikon 10.5mm + Nodal Ninja 3 + Stitcher Unlimited (or PTGUI) + Nikon Capture / NX

With a 10.5mm Nikon lens, the size of the "hole" on the nadir, when creating a Quicktime VR, can be significantly reduce, and then reducing the amount of work in Photoshop. To do this, you simply need to tilt your camera when shooting the last 6 shots row until you can see the panoramic head in the lower part of the photo (-10°, -15°...). The size of the circle to edit will then depend on the size of the panoramic head used.

Click to open the original Quicktime VR (1)

Click to open the orginal Quicktime VR brut (2)

Quality
There is almost no quality difference in the overlapping area with the zenith if you shot your pictures with a closed enough aperture, choose FINE or RAW as your saving parameters and with an angle allowing a good overlap.The following details are from a 'normal' render (0°) and a render with tilted images (-15°) of 10.000x5.000 pixels/Smartblend.

Horizon
The current available softwares (Stitcher, PTGui) allow to align a panorama with a single click.

Exemple
You can find here the final fullscreen Quicktime VR file and all the composing images 6+1+1/-15° (ZIP 21 MB)
Note: The nodal point of my images is ~~not really~~... not at all perfect :-)

Paris - Quicktime VR : Eiffel tower, pont d'Iena, river Seine

Pont d'Iena , tour Eiffel, Seine

Set d'images - ZIP 23 MB

Quicktime VR : fullscreen

Softwares
The stitching can be done with Stitcher Unlimited (http://stitcher.realviz.com), PTGUI 5.x (http://ptgui.com)..., etc
You can see here the four steps to create this panorama with Stitcher : from the loading of the 'fisheye' images, the automatic stitching and aligment, to the final render of the panorama (using smart blending option)


[1] Loading fiseye images	[2] Automatic stitching	[3] Aligment

Result	[4] Rendering parameters	Final render

Nadir patching
The correction of the nadir can be done easier and quicker now. It's possible, if it doesn't have a lot of details, to use only the "patch" tool without using the 8th photo (often taken handheld). For more information, watch the video about the realisation of a Quicktime VR : Open the video in a new window - Dowload the video (ZIP 32 MB)

Hardware
For all these tests, I used a Nodal Ninja 3 (http://nodalninja.com) panoramic head because it has a very small base.
(Thanks to Bill Bailey for his help)


	Horizontale screw	Nodal Ninja 3 + Nikon D70
	Pro • Not expensive (introductory Price $159.95 / normal $199.95) • Light, small, compact & easily transportable (free NN3 case) • very small 'click stop' base: 5 cm (see above ) Cons • Does not support Nikon D2X, Canon Mark II, DS, 1Ds, or similar sized larger DSLR’s

Wish to participate ?

If you have corrections, information, links and documentation you would like to submit relating to this topic: contact me

Faq - Copyrights and Uses - Contact - About

All photographs are copyright "Eric Rougier / FromParis.com". Please, do not to use without written authorization.
Help for some night shots, ice creams, pizzas, carring tripod, supporting me and english web translation : Cecile Brand
The pyramid of the Louvre museum: Leoh Ming Pei, architect. "La Géode": Adrien Fainsilber, architect.
The "Grande Arche": Otto van Spreckelsen, architect. Bibliotheque Nationale de France: Dominique Perrault, architect.
Lighting of the Eiffel Tower is copyright "Société Nouvelle d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel".
Some history texts are licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Zoomify™ is a trademark of Zoomify Inc. QuickTime ™ and QuicktimeVR ™ are trademarks of Apple Computer.