hello world :)

[Valentin Arfire]

Hi,
I am from Romania - now living in beautiful Barcelona.
I am a panorama photographer.

I have a lot of questions on general photography and collateral - so I will have to dig on issues like tripod using and differences between professional and amateur confronting the law - for instance.
I'll just look around first.

regards,
Valentin

 

[erik leeman]

Hi Valentin! Great to meet you here too!

I've only visited Barcelona once, and only for a few days, but oh how I would like to live and work there! Wonderful city, even for someone like me who wholeheartedly prefers nature and sparsely inhabited places : )
Romenia has a reputation of having a lot of the latter, so I'm very keen on visiting your country and, of course, meeting you in person again next year!

Kind regards,

Erik Leeman

 

[John Angulat]

Bun venit si...

...buna dimineata Valentin!
Welcome to the forum. As a newcomer myself, I hope you find it as enjoyable as I have.
We would love to see some samples of your images. Although I'm primarily a street photographer I have a particular fondness for panoramas!

Ciao,

 

[Asher Kelman]

Welcomee so much, Valentin,

Panoramas allow us not to just look, but more so to visit and extend our experience and answer questions of the scene. So we're excitred to be strenthened in this area.

Asher

 

[Valentin Arfire]

Romania is really nice and I'll do my best to arrange for a beautiful trip throughout some of it.

thanks for the warm welcome

 

[Valentin Arfire]

...buna dimineata Valentin!
Welcome to the forum. As a newcomer myself, I hope you find it as enjoyable as I have.
We would love to see some samples of your images. Although I'm primarily a street photographer I have a particular fondness for panoramas!

Ciao,

Bine v-am gasit John

I hope to find here in a civilized and interesting forum - from it many of us can be enriched.

the company www.europhoto.ro
my personal www.panorame.ro

there are a lot of panos I took from around and hopefully some day a travel site with the panos we took abroad will be published.

thank you

 

[Valentin Arfire]

Welcomee so much, Valentin,

Panoramas allow us not to just look, but more so to visit and extend our experience and answer questions of the scene. So we're excitred to be strenthened in this area.

Asher

Thank you for the welcome Asher,

I am taking panoramas for some two years and I still have lots to learn.
Without false modesty, the good panorama should be the next best thing out of actually being there.
By adding the huge resourses from the flash technology, one can imagine now the limitations are only connected to our immagination.

There are introduction forums as well as more advanced ones as well as professional.
There are simple technologies that can take modest panoramas with one-shot systems and very ellaborate gigapixel technologies, all opportunities for enthusiasts as well as pros.

I have started a topic for those interested.

I'm glad being here

 

[Asher Kelman]

Bine v-am gasit John

I hope to find here in a civilized and interesting forum - from it many of us can be enriched.

the company www.europhoto.ro
my personal www.panorame.ro

there are a lot of panos I took from around and hopefully some day a travel site with the panos we took abroad will be published.

thank you

Valentin,

I try not to be utterly effusive with praise. That shows no discipline! However, I just visited your website, here. This is an amazing experience, far beyond which I recall before. What you have done is chosen places that are so beautiful. Yes. for sure I'm a sucker for postcard perfection, even if it's contrived by a landscape architect! Each position I pass or pause is delightful. Every moment, another perfect composition.

Asher

BTW, I'm curious, what outputs can you have from the panorama when one pauses on a scene? Can one get really high resolution planar images from these?

Who makes this software? The interface is so clean and user friendly.

 

[erik leeman]

I have started a topic for those interested.

I'm sorry Valentin, where can I find your topic?

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Valentin,

I am very glad that you've joined OPF. Folks like Erik Leeman and you will help us learn and discover this exciting world of VR and 360/180 panos. I am a regular pano enthousiast myself but I have never attempted a 360/180 before. Also simply because I do not have a nodal tripod head yet. But the intention is there ;-).

Cheers,

PS: @Asher: I would recommend creating a new forum dedicated to panoramas/stitching in general and VR/360/180 specifically under the Photography Discussions group, what do you think?

 

[erik leeman]

Hey Cem, did you know you don't even really need a fancy (expensive) dedicated tripodhead?
A camera with a fisheye lens, a rubber band and a piece of string with a weight attatched to one end should be enough. Some people even manage with nothing more than a camera with a fisheye lens! Not me though : )

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hey Cem, did you know you don't even really need a fancy (expensive) dedicated tripodhead?
A camera with a fisheye lens, a rubber band and a piece of string with a weight attatched to one end should be enough. Some people even manage with nothing more than a camera with a fisheye lens! Not me though : )

Wow, you have my full attention! What do the rubber band and the weight do?

Cheers,

 

[erik leeman]

I've found the link to the inventor's webpage (Philippe Hurbain):

http://www.philohome.com/tripod/shooting.htm

Oops, this is Valentin's thread ; )

 

[Valentin Arfire]

Hi Valentin,

I am very glad that you've joined OPF. Folks like Erik Leeman and you will help us learn and discover this exciting world of VR and 360/180 panos. I am a regular pano enthousiast myself but I have never attempted a 360/180 before. Also simply because I do not have a nodal tripod head yet. But the intention is there ;-).

Cheers,

PS: @Asher: I would recommend creating a new forum dedicated to panoramas/stitching in general and VR/360/180 specifically under the Photography Discussions group, what do you think?

hi Cem - for some reason I misunderstood the social group pano-friends I made as a thread .

A group or even a thread seems welcome.

There a hundreds of well known pano-graphers, much more experienced than me, but I'll do my best and I'm sure Erik will.

Regarding the panoramic head I'd advice you first to make yourself one.
Then you'll have to discover the non-parralax point
And then you'll just stitch your first cylindrical panorama

Use your widest lens and you'll get a stunning result.

After that - since panoramic photography is highly addictive - you'll feel the need to accelerate the process. Nobody likes staying hours after hours in front of the computer while imagination is the limit of the pictures just waiting to be taken.

Probably the natural continuation will be a panoramic head - there are several commercial versions for all budgets but most important you'll probably decide regarding the lens you'll find appropriate for your camera - ie a fisheye lens.

http://www.europhoto.ro/valentin/timisoara/timisoara.html
this one I took handheld - camera on a monopode - the gear Canon 5D + Sigma 8mm/3.5 at about 2.5 m height.

Actually there are some delightful panoramas made by John Houghton without a panoramic head.

well I guess it is enough for tonight

regards,

 

[Valentin Arfire]

Valentin,

I try not to be utterly effusive with praise. That shows no discipline! However, I just visited your website, here. This is an amazing experience, far beyond which I recall before. What you have done is chosen places that are so beautiful. Yes. for sure I'm a sucker for postcard perfection, even if it's contrived by a landscape architect! Each position I pass or pause is delightful. Every moment, another perfect composition.

Asher

BTW, I'm curious, what outputs can you have from the panorama when one pauses on a scene? Can one get really high resolution planar images from these?

Who makes this software? The interface is so clean and user friendly.

Thank you Asher for the kind words.

ouch :"> the "Pensiunea Doina" panos belong to my associate and friend Dorin.

Of course we all do our best to take nice pictures and afterwards to exploit, put to good use and squeeze each pixel... he has more patience than me to spend 2 days on a panorama...

to answer your question
For instance a 6000x3000 pixel equirectangular panorama is acceptable for the internet; the smaller would dramatically decrease the immersive possibilities while enlarging the picture would unacceptably prolongue the time for download.
The dimension of the final panorama comes from the chosen lens: Sigma 8mm will do up to 7000x3500; Tokina 10-17 - 12000x6000 and Canon 24-70 at 24 mm something over 25000x12500 - these are lenses I work with, but one could choose any good lens and stitch together neighbouring pictures - even with a telephoto. The result is called a gigapixel and can be printed at large size. I took a planar panorama with bracketing of 88 images; the result was a 21000x4000 pixel almost rectangular planar panorama. Printing a 250 MB tif is also a challenge...

Finally the printing resolution dictates the necessary lenses.

regards,

 

[Asher Kelman]

....... Canon 24-70 at 24 mm something over 25000x12500 - these are lenses I work with, but one could choose any good lens and stitch together neighbouring pictures - even with a telephoto. The result is called a gigapixel and can be printed at large size. I took a planar panorama with bracketing of 88 images; the result was a 21000x4000 pixel almost rectangular planar panorama. Printing a 250 MB tif is also a challenge...

Hi Valentin, your handheld block building pano would not set me off on poetry but it's impressive for your technique.

I alreeady use a 50 mm lens for lots of Gigapixel pano's. Now with a 150 mm wide angle lens. I have an 8x10 camera instead! I do Spherical, cylindrical or planar stiches but not 360 degrees! Also I haven't untiil now used a viewer like yours as I didn't like the interfaces too much. Wht's the name of the one you use?

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

As to a Pano Forum, I'll set it up shortly. This is going to be most enjoyable!

Asher

 

[Valentin Arfire]

Hi Valentin, your handheld block building pano would not set me off on poetry but it's impressive for your technique.

I alreeady use a 50 mm lens for lots of Gigapixel pano's. Now with a 150 mm wide angle lens. I have an 8x10 camera instead! I do Spherical, cylindrical or planar stiches but not 360 degrees! Also I haven't untiil now used a viewer like yours as I didn't like the interfaces too much. Wht's the name of the one you use?

Asher

hello Asher

the best viewer is called devalVR - freeware from http://www.devalvr.com/ but unfortunately it runs only on windows, so I prefer using for the time being the flash. from Adobe since it has the same feel in other operating systems like Mac or Linux (I use Leopard 10.5.5 and Ubuntu 8.10).

for stitching there are open source stitching programs - like hugin and other like Autopano pro, PTGUI, to name only the windows ones; the resulting panorama (equirectangular, cylindrical, mercator or planar) go to a player.

regards,

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Valentin,

Now that this thread has matured, it's copied to the new Panorama Forum. There you can add more Panos and they'll be easy to locate. As the forum is new, it's been put on the top of the list, for now, to get more attention!

Asher

If you can link the Pan's to appear in OPF posts, that would be good. I'd suggest a flat jpg that when it was clicked on would bring up your pano.