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Nope, I just don't need any more.

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Hi,

I've spent an extremely fustrating time trying to master 360 degree Virtual Tour panoramic photography. Countless hours testing and retesting and driving Valentin Arfire crazy with long PM's at all times of the day! It had gotten to the point this week where I said, enough is enough, I give up. I'll sell all the equipment I have and buy something that I can use for my day to day photography. A total of about £850 on the 2nd hand market (spoiler alert: I worked out the problem, it was software based not hardware and am not selling anything!).

A large fraction of that money was given to me to buy a lens by an incredible annonymous individual on this forum. I could hardly take the money and pay off a credit card fee with it, the money would need to go towards photographic equipment. So I sat down and tried to work out what I would buy with £850.

Recently I've pared my equipment down drastically, for financial and streamlining purposes. I'm a wedding photographer by profession and I use a pair of battered old Canon 5D's, with 16-35L, 50mm and 85mm lenses. Four speedlites and two battered strobes. That's it apart from little stuff like radio slaves, remote releases, battery packs, a polarizer, etc. I have pretty much the last tripod I will ever need, a Gitzo 2542L and an RRS BH-40 head which is a pleasure to use. I have a ThinkTank UD60 which fits all my gear and laptop whether on a plane or during a wedding. I've got a small crumpler which is my walk around bag. I have a lensbaby if that counts.

For a full time pro it's not a lot of gear. It's a tiny amount of gear to be honest! I sat and thought for hours. I couldn't think of how I would spend £850 on equipment. I don't need any other lenses for what I do. Period. I don't want to upgrade my bodies to any single camera on the market today. I don't need more lights and I don't need any gadgets.

How pathetic is that, a photographer not wanting or needing more gear? Do I have to give back my CPS card? :)

Since then I've sorted out my problems and have mused on what I could have bought. I wouldn't mind the manfrotto stick together light stands, I have a motley collection, none of which are the same and most are bent and rather knackered. I wouldn't mind the new Alien Bee VML battery packs for weddings but these days using dual speedlite rigs I can live without them. I don't know if it's strange but it would feel weird to sell a full pano rig and 8mm fisheye lens for some light stands or a battery pack. Even so, it's significant expense without any real need to be honest.

I'm glad I don't have to sell, buying and selling is a mugs game in general but it was a real eye opener that after all these years, I have the least gear I've ever had as a pro and I can't for the life of me work out what on earth I'd do with £850 to spend on equipment. A good feeling that is...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi,

I'm glad I don't have to sell, buying and selling is a mugs game in general but it was a real eye opener that after all these years, I have the least gear I've ever had as a pro and I can't for the life of me work out what on earth I'd do with £850 to spend on equipment. A good feeling that is...

Ben,

Your major camera gear is in your head!

When I was in medical school, I was frustrated that there were so many barbiturate drugs. Others learned every single one. My mentor told me "Unless you're an anesthesiologist, you just need two, one short term and one long acting, never use more and learn how to use them well!"

So I followed that advice with every drug class. With my cameras I used one 35mm lens for 10 years and then one 50 mm lens for another 10 years before getting other lenses.

I have the lenses needed for the job. Yes, I do have two luxury lens, the 50mm 1.2L and the 24mm T/S. II but 95% of my pro work has been done with 3 lenses: the 24-105L, the 70-200 2.8L IS and the 2 5D bodies. My 1DII is hardly used. So I can see that I could manage perfectly well with just two lenses.

Now I also have set ups for panos and a slew of LF lenses, but that's my fun.

Asher
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Yup, SNS-HDR changes the dimensions and specifically the ratio of an image so that if you HDR an already stitched pano it will stop being equirectangular and that will cause a vortex at the zenith. I've now started HDR'ing the single frames (as you had originally suggested!) and as the stitching work is done after the frame has been distorted by SNS-HDR, it compensates and the problem goes away!

There is a long thread here detailing the problem, the workarounds and the final solution: http://www.nodalninja.com/forum/showthread.php?4457-Smearing-top-of-360-pano-s.
 
Yup, SNS-HDR changes the dimensions and specifically the ratio of an image so that if you HDR an already stitched pano it will stop being equirectangular and that will cause a vortex at the zenith. I've now started HDR'ing the single frames (as you had originally suggested!) and as the stitching work is done after the frame has been distorted by SNS-HDR, it compensates and the problem goes away!

Apparently SNS-HDR detected a small non-alignment between the bracketed 360x180 degree equirectangular panos. With automatic alignment activated it may need to crop marginally, and as a result lose the exact 2:1 aspect ratio of an equirectangular projection. Switching off the alignment option in SNS-HDR will probably re-introduce unsharpness (that's why the alignment was applied in the first place).

That is one of the reasons that I suggested to apply SNS-HDR on the bracketed tiles before stitching. An added benefit, besides much faster SNS-HDR tonemapping per tile, is the possibility to locally influence things like Whitebalance and average brightness. The subsequent stitcher blending between tiles will even out the differences when going from tile to tile.

I'm glad that you now have a workable solution again.

Cheers,
Bart
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
There shouldn't have been misalignment with 3 identical stitches outputted from PTGUI as an HDR bracket (the sitching is identical) should there? As for speed it's actually slower doing it with seperate frames in my experience but then if I do go in for this professionally then I need a computer upgrade anyway. I'm running on a Core 2 Duo 2.2ghz Dual core processor, does SNS-HDR benefit from quad core at all?
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Well just how many weeks later...?

Quad core processor upgrade (2nd hand Core 2 2.83ghz Quad with 12mb cache) and Nvidia Quadro video card (albeit the cheapest one) on the way. All your fault Bart!

Oh and a Takumar Super 50mm f1.4, in my defense it only cost me $70 and I did try my very hardest to make the Canon one I own do the job.

But I don't need anymore gear, honest guv! :)
 
Well just how many weeks later...?

Quad core processor upgrade (2nd hand Core 2 2.83ghz Quad with 12mb cache) and Nvidia Quadro video card (albeit the cheapest one) on the way. All your fault Bart!

I only confess to a minor role in complicity ... ;-)

Does it help with the faster processing?

Cheers,
Bart
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
First image out of that old radioactive Takumar Super 50mm f1.4 lens. In my defense although I had said I don't need any new equipment, the lens was only $70 including shipping, I'm sure that makes it ok! :) It has a wonderfully old rendition, far more in line with what I got with my Mamiya 645 C/N lenses than the clinical rendition of modern designs. It also flares like a bleep bleep and is rather ethereal (the picture below had a huge contrast adjustment!). In part I believe due to the yellow cast caused by the radiation. I like!

dad&carmelle.jpg

My dad and my daughter @f1.4.​
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Thank you Ben. I say this because I found that the more gear I carry, the less creative I am. I spend most of my time trying to decide which camera or lens to use instead of looking at the composition, the light, the colors, and the subject itself!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ben,

It's brave to choose just one lens. The advantage a one optic extension of our mind by intuition and reflex! The 50mm is a great choice; makes a great portrait lens or a landscape lens with several overlaps. Most of our work can be done with this one lens, except of course wildlife outside of migration of buffalo, elephant and wilderbeast!

Asher,
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
I had a look at my recent weddings, more shot with the 50mm than any other lens. Almost my entire site www.timelessjewishart.com was shot with a 50mm of some kind (exception of three pictures) and all the stitching is to a 50mm FOV. It's just a focal length that really works for me. Not that I am blind to the work of other focal lengths, my next used lens is a 16-35!

I was explaining this to a student of mine. 50mm makes composition harder and easier. Harder in that you don't have the 'wow' perspective of a wide angle or a telephoto but because of that you need to make the composition work, you can't let the perspective do any of the work for you. Because of that, when the composition works, it works very very well indeed. It's a very satisfying focal length to work with for that reason. No pretensions, no tricks, just pure composition.

Just to show that I can make wide angle sing too.. :)

Both at 16mm.

talmud.jpg


and

fav1.jpg
 
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