New Nodal Ninja 3 MkII user. North Wales Panoramas

[photosbykev]

Hi I thought I would offer up some images for advice from the panoramic experts on the site. It is a brand new area for me as I tend to specialise in wildlife and nature photography. However seeing some of the panoramas being produced has given me a push to try my hand at them.

All of the images located here http://www.photosbykev.com/wordpress...phy/panoramic/ are taken with the NN3 MkII supporting a Canon Eos 40D and 17-40mm or 10-22mm lens fitted with grad ND filters and/or polarising filters to balance out the ground/sky exposure. I tend to shoot bracketed images to maximise the dynamic range of the images. Process them in Photomatrix and then stitch in Panorama Factory v5 and then upload to my site using the Zoomify export option in Photoshop CS3. This allows me to show the full resolution of the >1Gb images without significant risk of image theft.

Any thoughts would be more than welcomed as I have a lot to learn in this genre of photography.

ps After taking receipt of the NN3 MkII I was immediately impressed by the engineering design and mechanical build quality, it has been a real pleasure to use )

regards
Kev Lewis

[Terrywoodenpic]

Excellent shots. I am particularly impressed with the stitching of the sea in the first shot.
This often creates considerable problems of continuity.
Very well done.
I can see you getting deeper into this branch of photography.

[photosbykev]

Thank you Terry, I knew in advance that the breaking waves would be an issue so I tried to time each shot to keep the wave crests in a similar position and I took plenty of spare images

[nick fan]

Kev,

Nice work. any way to open the panos in larger window or full screen?


nick

[photosbykev]

Kev,

Nice work. any way to open the panos in larger window or full screen?


nick

only if I increase the size of the java/flash applet Nick. Currently it is set for 500 pixels x 500 pixels because that suits my site layout. I have tried other panoramic viewer applets but they load the full image at the start and the image needs to be relatively low resolution and heavily compressed to keep the download times short. The current applet is using over 1,500 tiled images of varying resolutions so as you zoom into the image the higher resolution tiles are loaded. Doing it this way reduces the download times significantly for the viewer and maximises the detail visible in the images. It does distract slightly not being able to see the full pano and it doesn't allow a continuous rotation of 360 degree panos.

[John Houghton]

Kev, To me, "panorama" and "zoomify" are a contradiction in terms. The essence of a panorama is the wide view, and I find the blinkered view from zoomify tedious to explore, though not without interest. It's ok if what you want to do is impress with technique; but like Nick, I wanted to see much more of the panoramas at a decent size. Panorama Factory is not the best of stitchers, and zooming in does tend to reveal some stitching errors. Once one has been noticed, it's hard to resist the temptation to hunt for more! As a beginner in this field, you've made an excellent start, but I suggest you try one of the popular Panorama Tools based stitchers (e.g. PTAssembler, PTGui or Hugin), and maybe reconsider how you display your images on the web.

John

[photosbykev]

Kev, To me, "panorama" and "zoomify" are a contradiction in terms. The essence of a panorama is the wide view, and I find the blinkered view from zoomify tedious to explore, though not without interest. It's ok if what you want to do is impress with technique; but like Nick, I wanted to see much more of the panoramas at a decent size. Panorama Factory is not the best of stitchers, and zooming in does tend to reveal some stitching errors. Once one has been noticed, it's hard to resist the temptation to hunt for more! As a beginner in this field, you've made an excellent start, but I suggest you try one of the popular Panorama Tools based stitchers (e.g. PTAssembler, PTGui or Hugin), and maybe reconsider how you display your images on the web.

John

I fully understand where you are coming from Can you recommend a suitable java? based applet for displaying panoramas that have differing FoVs rather than complete 360 ones?

[John Houghton]

I'm afraid I don't have any particular experience of java applets for panorama display. I know Ken Warner has been developing one at http://www.pancyl.com . How far that might go in meeting your needs I don't know, but you would find him very helpful if you had any special requirements.

John

[photosbykev]

I'm afraid I don't have any particular experience of java applets for panorama display. I know Ken Warner has been developing one at http://www.pancyl.com . How far that might go in meeting your needs I don't know, but you would find him very helpful if you had any special requirements.

John

Thank you for the response John I found one that works inside wordpress which I use for my website but I will check out Ken's site as it maybe better than the one I've chosen. Perhaps you could relook at the main link http://www.photosbykev.com/wordpress...phy/panoramic/ and check out the viewer option which I have added to each of the panorama images. Each of the viewer images are 3000 pixels wide and about 500kb, just click on the image once it is loaded and move the mouse left or right to scan through the image.

[John Houghton]

Kev, the alternative viewer is somewhat more convenient, but it's still a small square window on my widescreen monitor. It cannot convey an impression of a majestic panoramic view. I would far rather just have the whole image straghtforwardly displayed in the browser, and rely on window scrolling if and when necessary. But that's just me.

John

[photosbykev]

Kev, the alternative viewer is somewhat more convenient, but it's still a small square window on my widescreen monitor. It cannot convey an impression of a majestic panoramic view. I would far rather just have the whole image straghtforwardly displayed in the browser, and rely on window scrolling if and when necessary. But that's just me.

John

Sounds like I need to a add a straight popup window to display the full image in another window. Thanks for the input John

[photosbykev]

I'm afraid I don't have any particular experience of java applets for panorama display. I know Ken Warner has been developing one at http://www.pancyl.com . How far that might go in meeting your needs I don't know, but you would find him very helpful if you had any special requirements.

John

I've had a play with this applet and been in touch with Ken about it it works very nicely http://www.photosbykev.com/java/panotest2.html

[John Houghton]

Yes, I think that's a lot more acceptable than your previous versions.

John

[pgielen]

ICan you recommend a suitable java? based applet for displaying panoramas that have differing FoVs rather than complete 360 ones?

Take a look at Pure Player by Immervision: http://www.immervision.com/en/multim...ts_tools_9.php.

Pierre

[photosbykev]

Final version testing of the panorama applets out there at the moment, this one is flash based http://www.photosbykev.com/panoramas...churchbay.html . I will settle on one applet for my website after I get any feedback. Is it worth going this large for instance??

The image file is 2Mb so it will take a while to load. Right click for Full screen viewing Esc key to return to normal window