=> St. Mary Square in Ireland
Here’s another première — and the reason why it’s been so quiet here, lately: Panoramics. Having played around with panoramic photography for quite a while I never got it quite right.
I mean, I’ve had a panoramic tripod head for a good while now, but using it together with a wide angle lens resulted in a rather involved, lengthy process to put the final panoramic image together (it took me several days for just one panorama). Plus you don’t always want to be lugging all this gear around…
Anyway, what changed all this was this article which presents a technique that only requires 4 pictures to be taken (with a fisheye lens) to get a decent 360°x180° view of basically everything. Together with the insane 25 megapixel resolution of my camera and some suitable software (which just does work significantly better, more reliable and faster than the free Hugin) I can get a 8200×4100 pixel panorama without a tripod and in no time at all!
So I’ve spent the past two weeks dipping my toes in panoramic waters, and I’ve created quite a few lately. Watch this space as I post more images and talk a bit more about the actual technique (in case you’re interested). Ultimately, of course, I’d like to monetise my growing experience in the area, just like with my regular photography.
Well, you will be able to achieve the same results with Hugin, but I never managed to set up the control point detectors correctly to work well with my fisheye lens.
Also, I never seemed to be able to get the view point correction going (that’s the technique used here to not have my shadow in the picture, more on that later).
Anyway, when I put the pictures into PTGui, it just works with minimal amount of intervention and in no time at also. Also, the control point editor is much easier to use.
That’s really amazing! Since ptgui is also based on libpano, will Hugin solve the problem in a reasonable amount of time if you only use four input pictures?