Help with 360 panoramic pictures for house flash virtual tour?

[Chris Aidel]

Hi all, I wonder if somebody can help me out here with some advice. I would like to make a full 360 panoramic flash tour of my house (including ceilings and floors) with floor plans, hotspots, extra pictures, e.t.c...

The equipment I've got is a Sony Alpha 200 with 18-70mm lens. Softwares: PTGui , Photoshop CS5, Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited, Easypano Tourweaver 6 Trial, Pano2VR Trial, and I am thinking of buying the Flash Panorama Player http://flashpanoramas.com/player for making the flash tour as from what I've seen on the net after lot of research this is probably the best software used and preferred by most professionals.

I guess I won't need any of those stitching programs above when I buy the Flash Panorama Player? (as the FPP will stitch them in the flash movie)

Ok, I know I need a tripod, and something like a
MANFROTTO 056 3D HEAD, but what about the lenses?

Sorry, let me say first that I am doing this just to try it, and I don't want to spend lots of money for equipment. I know I can do it with normal shots, but what about if I attach something like this to my lens:

1. Bower VL6552N 0.65x Digital Super Wide-angle Panoramic Lens

http://www.overstock.com/Electronic...anoramic-Lens/4694315/product.html?cid=133635


2. 0.25x Fisheye Converter with Macro

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290487824014

Do you think this will improve my 18-70mm lens, when attached to it?

My worry is the small rooms and especially the toilet and bathroom... I can't see myself with the tripod in such a small place with my lens, or I guess I have to make a lot of pictures in the toilet and then stitch them with the FPP?

Here is an example with lots of images about 58 per room

http://tinyurl.com/2vgl96w

below is the picture folder:

http://tinyurl.com/3aa7u2n

This is made with Easypano software.

I guess the advantage with fewer and larger pictures is the time saving and quality of pictures as less of them means bigger and better quality when zooming in in the movie?... but slow loading of course.

So, guys could you please tell me what else do I need apart from the things listed below?

1. Sony Alpha 200 DSLR with 18-70mm lens
2. Tripod and MANFROTTO 056 3D HEAD (I have to buy these)
3. Flash Panorama Player http://flashpanoramas.com/player


Thanks for your time and help!

 

[Valentin Arfire]

hi Chris,

it's always a pleasure to see the interest in panorama photography has not vanished

Regarding the number of pictures - it's up to you on how many pictures you want to take and how detailed the panoramas can be: using regular zoom lenses you can create very good panoramas with something like 30-40 pictures in multi-row technique.
Of course when it comes with scenes that contain a lot of dinamic this won't do it because by the time you've finished one row the moving people/animals/vehicles are very far, so in the final panorama you'll have a sisiphic task to "paint" some areas - in short you will have much more work. Also spending a lot of time in taking the pictures you'll have to confront maybe major light changes.

I started the panoramic photography with Canon 350D, Nodal Ninja 3, Giottos (plastic tripod) and the kit lense; it required 3x12 pictures at 18 mm, manually point adding in hugin and in the end - after 2-3 days a good panorama.

Now I use 360Precision panohead, Canon 5D, two fish-eye (8 mm Sigma and 10-17 mm Tokina) and an L Canon 24-70/2,8 lense depending on the result size I'm making and I can finish a panorama starting a few minutes and then another half of an hour of post processing and for large panoramas more time - a few hours
8 mm Sigma on 5D will require 3 pictures and will result something like 6000x3000 pixel panorama
at 10 mm Tokina makes 7000x3500 pixels panorama
at 17 mm Tokina makes 12500x6250 pixels
rectilinear Canon at 24 mm makes about 18000x9000 pixels and at 70 mm (though I didn't succeed by now) about 1.4 Gpixel images
of course the computer requires memory and a good processor... or more

I recommend you - since you say you have and are familiar with easypano, contact miss Carolyn Zhang from them and ask them on the recommendations they have for your case; though FPP or KRPANO excede the results offered by easypano, they also require some skills such as XML programming and maybe it will be much easier for you to stick with what you know.

the Manfrotto solution is only partial good nevertheless they make sturdy tripods on which you can rely upon; for panoramic head I'd recommend you the products from Nodal Ninja which are reasonably affordable and they do have a good communication with the customers. You could also try - if you have access to a metal workshop - to do a diy panohead, for more sollutions see the following link
http://wiki.panotools.org/Heads#Self_made

the one you have suggested (MANFROTTO 056 3D HEAD) is not usable for panoramic photography because it won't permit you to take pictures around the non-parralax point

about stitching the panoramic images I recommend hugin - it is very good, open source and you will find a lot of examples to help you with the stitching; there are also included many planar projections that Asher just loves to see. I have used it for a year after which I passed on the PTGUI that is a professional stitcher.

you'll need pano2vr for transforming the equirectangular panorama into cubefaces if you intent to correct some things; also it makes all what easypano does plus some more things - you'll need time.

actually dear friend, you'll need patience and time with everything and the first results will come only quite late; if you tell me where you are from, I could recommend someone who lives near and who might be interested in some intensive workshops so your learning curce to be shorter and some natural mistakes in the beginners to be avoided. Anyway, be prepared to spend some time just in learning.

Now I prefer to publish the panoramas on 360cities.net portal, do a little geo-tagging, write some description and... hope they will be visited and raise interest in my work, also in attracting customers.

read this when have the chance
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=816

 

[Chris Aidel]

Hi Valentin, thanks for your long and detailed message it's very informative. I have to say, your panoramas are amazing, very good job and I wish I could do something similar. I only got the trial version of the easypano, and it's quite expensive to buy, so I will be looking for something cheaper.

So, you reckon I can do a good panorama of my house with my Sony Alpha 200 and 18-70mm lens, by making a lot of shots? as you said above "something like 30-40 pictures in multi-row technique"

I would like you to see this panorama and help me out of the way that it's working, look below:

http://www.edwardhalling.com/sample3/TourWeaver_sample.html

the panorama for every room consist of about 58 pictures see below

http://www.edwardhalling.com/sample3/sample3/scene/1

these images are cropped quite small (which isn't very good when zooming in)

everything is here: http://www.edwardhalling.com/sample3

So, how does that work? I thought you need to stitch all the pictures together to make one large image? I am confused?

Ok, perhaps the easiest way for me to understand is if you tell me how you would do it step by step with my equipment:

- Sony Alpha 200 with 18-70mm lens
- let say I've got Nodal Ninja 3 with tripod

... so what are the steps that you'll do it?

- Where to start taking pictures from inside the room and roughly how many, how does it work with floor and ceiling?

- Then what you do with all the pictures which software9s) next and how


Please Valentin, I need help from somebody professional like you.


I think that will be the best way for me to understand if we pretend, that you're me in this situation, but obviously with your knowledge ;-)


Many thanks!

 

[Valentin Arfire]

Chris
thank you for apreciation and the kind words

the camera you have can do the pictures reqired for panoramic images and, much before creating sophisticated virtual tours such as the one you kindly have suggested, you need to understand and create your own panoramas.

saying you have a NN3, you'll have to determine the non-parralax point for your combination of camera/lense so that the NPP (non parralax point) is determined for the position of the camera at 17 mm.
see this regarding the parralax http://www.panoguide.com/howto/panoramas/parallax.jsp

a little theory on cameras/lenses but I'm afraid the document is older than your camera
http://wiki.panotools.org/Entrance_Pupil_Database

read this
http://wiki.panotools.org/No-parallax_point

then this - which you'll mave to measure carefully on your panoramic head/camera/lense
http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm

and to confuse you more this
http://www.janrik.net/PanoPostings/NoParallaxPoint/TheoryOfTheNoParallaxPoint.pdf

here is your panohead manual
http://www.nodalninja.com/Manuals/NN3_USER_MANUAL.pdf

Seeing on the specifications of the Sony Alpha 200 with 18-70mm you have a 76 degrees maximum and knowing you need an overlap of minimum 20-25% I suggest you to make a complete circle out of 8 images (7 would also do, but I am not sure the disk with 7 stops it is in the regular offer of NN3). Probably you'll have to take pictures at horizontal, +/-45 degrees and one straight up and one straight down.

As for the stitching program you'll probably best use hugin; the result you'll create for spherical panoramas will be equirectangular projection.

If you have the condition to upload the pictures somewhere, I could give a try to see the lens parameters and maybe the results will appear faster thought you should be the one that needs to learn all.

So when you have a set of pictures with the panohead respecting the npp - taken from any of the rooms you said you want, upload them and I'll see them stitch in hugin; I'll send you the project and the lens parameters so in the future you can stitch your own panoramas.

Take the pictures with the same exposure, focus, iso etc. in raw mode with no compression

Regarding the virtual tours , if you don't have easypano, then I'd suggest you to learn xml and buy krpano - much more cheaper - that has some undoubted advantages compared to the other players
for more details see this page
http://www.panoramaphotographer.com/comparisons/web/

as personal remarks you'll have to make considerable effort to do panoramas and in a time you'll have to decide for the productivity of this enterprise - the fisheye lense is quite expensive.
best of luck

 

[Chris Aidel]

Hi Valentin, thanks again for your detailed and very helpful message. I don't have my camera at the moment as I give it to a friend for two weeks for his holiday as he hasn't got one at the moment.

Never mind, I'll do some shots another time. Ok I've read quite a lot, lots of things are unclear for me, but everything will come with the time. As you said fisheye lens is quite expensive, I had people suggesting some of the following lenses:

Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye Lens
Sigma 8mm f/3.5 EX DG Circular Fisheye Lens
Sigma 4.5mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Circular Fisheye Lens

the three above are quite expensive around £500 each

another photographer is suggesting 10.5mm, he said that what he uses, but I am not sure what kind of lens is that??? make, model...e.t.c...

and finally I think the best one which is close to the Sigma, but half the price is the:

Samyang 8mm f/3.5 Lens .... and I might be going for this one. What do you think?

Ok, TRIPOD? Do I just buy, any cheap one such as this here:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180574338957

whish is about £8 or shall I go for the more expensive one like MANFROTTO 190XDB which is about £60?

From the Flash comparison website, I couldn't work out which is better, they all seems to load the movie with similar time. I did, lots of researches and I've seen dozens of virtual tours and about 70% of them were using the Flash Panorama Player, then some are using the Pano2VR, and not so many are using the Krpano, but if you're suggesting it I might go for it.


Do you think is better if I measure the exact center of the room and position my tripod there?

Still bit confused with this nodal point (PARALLAX), but I guess if I level the NN3 properly, set the focus, exposure and white balance, then I can just start shooting one by one, by overlapping them with about 30%.


Will be waiting for your next response...


Kind Regards!

 

[Valentin Arfire]

dear Chris

you can start with little or no expenses at all;

I gave you a link to some diy panoramic heads; when you understand the idea of non-parralax point it will be easy to make one in your garrage or with the help of a friend. to shoot a few rooms in your home won't make any difference and if you decide it is important to follow this path, you can buy a panoramic head from the producers you will find best solving your needs. the same goes for the tripod - of course Manfrotto is a very good one but it is not the only one; I am sure you can use a cheap one that can keep say 2 kg, if it has central column and the posibility to adapt somehow a 2-3 kg extra weight it'll be sturdy and reliable - for the beginning.

there are people able to shoot panoramas with no tripod/panohead - the results are sometimes extraordinary and often there are places where the access with tripods is restricted - in such situations it is the only chance to take the pictures for the panoramas.

the Sigmas are good (I only have the 8 mm at 3.5; the previous one you may find cheaper it is useful but has large lensflare and is softer)
the nikkor 10.5 mm is good

for interior photos of your home you can maintain the light conditions constant for the duration you need to take the 40 images and so the fisheye lenses are a luxury - when you're prolific and need productivity maybe you'll consider buying one.
but besides taking a smaller number of photos, you'll be confronted with some problems you can't imagine now: color aberration correction - and only the good lenses have a "predictable" CA; purple fringe.

regarding the npp - treat it with extreme care
read and apply the excelent tutorial from John Houghton
http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm

this link is to the panoramas shot by this senior of panoramic photography, a true master
http://www.johnhpanos.com/sphericl.htm
some of the panoramas are taken handheld

 

[Chris Aidel]

Hi again Valentin, thanks for your help and support. I was asking you not about the Samyang 8mm f/3.5 Lens ? which is half of the Sigma price. Do you think is as good as the Sigma?

Ok, with my 18-70mm lens, do I have to Zoom IN to get more detail which means more shots???, or Zoom OUT for less shots, but lower quality I guess??? if you know what I mean?

is the example below any good for taking the shots?

The purple is the top row of shots, taking some of the ceiling and wall and carry on overlapping them, then the same with bottom row wall and floor and overlap? Hmm, something is wrong here, I think too many overlappings in both directions?

How does the stitching work? How can you take just one picture of the ceiling and be stitched to the others? This doesn't make sense, as I thought every next picture should have about 1 third of the previous one, so how can you stitch the ceiling if it's a completely separate picture???


My other question Valentin (I hope I'm not a pain?... please tell me if I am.) when the program starts to stitch the images, does it chop some parts of them? I mean, you know if for example I've got 12 pictures that will make the panorama of one room, and all those pictures are something like 5000x3000px, so I don't think the stitched image will be something like 60000px by whatever??? or is that right and then I can resize it to whatever size I want?

Ok, now have a look at the work of somebody like you. See the links below...


http://www.360imagery.co.uk/VT/aviva/eagle_court/start.html
http://www.360imagery.co.uk/VT/WBP/two_trinity_court/start.html
http://www.360imagery.co.uk/VT/mucklow/apexpark/index.html

very good panoramas, and that's what he said to me:

"I have a number of systems I deploy for aerial work - the most common is
panoramas from about 9 metres - like the opening images on the majority of
the examples (look down and you'll see how high each shot is - whilst still
removing my camera equipment out of shot)."


The thing with the 9m I couldn't understand? Obviously not the camera at 9m height?


Kind regards!

And once again thanks a lot for your time and help!

 

[Valentin Arfire]

hi Chris

regarding Samyang - I've heard only good about it, so if you have the version for your camera mount and the money, go for it. Maybe you can ask somebody who has both on personal experience and draw your own conclusions. After a while you'll get accustomed with any of them. In the end, the best solution would be to rent one for some tests.

at 70 mm you're likely to make very large panoramic images called gigapixel. It is a natural step in photography that you'll surely take one day, but definitely not the way to begin.

even at 18 mm, the resulting images will create after stitching very large panoramas, fit probably better for photographic quality prints - at least in term of resolution, so one step in your learning will be to resize the images to a third or a half of their initial dimension.

here is a 3d object with an example of a panoramic head home-made;
http://www.360bilder.de/eng/nodalpoint.html
I hope you understand how it works and what is supposed to do.


the equirectangular image - strictly and always 2:1 - can be even very small such as 1024x512 pixels - for telephones or applications running always in small windows.

the very large images - like the gigapixels are split in the end into a series of mosaics depending on the zoom level, so that the internet visitor may load just a little of the bandwidth when visiting the famous 18 Gpixel panorama from Prague, for instance. Maybe you are familiar with zoomify - it works the same.

the stitching is a complex process in which corresponding images are joined together but during the process it is happening more, among other things the correction of the "planarity" of the individual pictures projected like being in the center of a sphere. In order to do that your stitching software needs to know the parameters of the lens you are using as well as the position of each photo.

Unfortunately the stitching program in the beginning doesn't have any examples so you'll have to define some stitching points for every pair of pictures, then optimize, then move/add points until the maximum distance between the points is - say 3 pixels. At that moment you can say you have your lens parameters (and of course save them for the future projects, when it will probably work mostly on auto) while you will focus on getting more out of your photography.

so your example is right: only it is too much a 30% overlap; a 20-25% and with experience even 15% will be enough. Of course with ALL the neighbors ie 4 directions.

so for your camera I believe you'll make 3 rows of 12 photos, each oriented at 30 degrees (so together make the circles 360 degrees) plus one shot straight up - called zenith plus one shot down called nadir. I don't have your camera so I can only guess the number of photos - if lucky there are fewer.

regarding the high altitude photography I have heard of 4 systems
pole - probably the method most used, I have seen a pole high of some 27 meters - safely built on a truck;
kite photography - takes some guts to raise the camera in wind (and depending on wind) to 50-100 meters
helicopter - based on gas or batteries
zeppelins - balloons

Of course cameras can be manually handled and then aircraft are involved; the flying devices mentioned above are driven by remote control and the problem is that in panoramic photography, regardless of the flying direction , the camera must turn in predicted directions and take the shots.

Although I am fascinated by this I think in the near future I'll remain a humble terester photographer with pictures taken at about 2 meters offered by my tripod; for higher poles I recommend you the Agnos products from Italy.

I look forward in seeing your first results

to begin - download hugin and try to stitch 2-3 photos into a planar panorama with your camera set at 17 mm, all exposed with the same stop/time/iso/focus, totally manual - and see how it works.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hug...010.2/Hugin_2010.2.0_Windows_x32.zip/download

good luck

 

[Valentin Arfire]

to bend over the problems of stitching, an alternative would be to use the services of panomonkey - visit the site and watch the videos of my friend Jeffrey Martin and you'll understand more

http://www.panomonkey.com/

but only when payed you'll have the watermarks removed