A weekly pano project

[Will]

Hi,
I've started producing a weekly panorama with audio for my newspaper's website. The first two were done handheld, but the rest were done with the help of the NN5.

I'm still working out some bugs, but all comments and suggestions welcome of course.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/panoramas

thanks for looking!

-Will

[John Houghton]

Very good application of VR and informative soundtracks. Some of the panos are badly in need of levelling though: Below Broad St, Higland Bowl and Midtown Plaza. If you are using PTGui, it takes less than a minute to level a panorama using vertical line control points during the stitching, and you can level the final stitched image in the same way by starting a new project with it. See this levelling tutorial. Autopano Pro also provides a similar levelling feature.

John

[Will]

John,
Thanks for taking a look and the suggestions. You're absolutely right of course. It took me a while to discover the vertical control points. It was a revelation to see how much they helped Hopefully the more recent panos look better. I should go back and fix the earlier ones - especially the ones you mentioned.

thanks again,
will

[mskp]

Hi, Will!
Congratulations. A good idea and interesting use of the panoramas. I like the documentary style and the voiceover gives them a lot. I observe a few stitching problems, which can be for sure easily fixed, correcting the NPP point. If you have not the nadir shot I think it would be better to limit the tilt values, so the tripod will not be seen.
Again nice work and application of panography.
Regards, Martin

[Will]

Thanks Martin. I've tried different techniques regarding the nodal shot - sometimes including the tripod, sometimes limiting the tilt and sometimes getting rid of the tripod. The journalist in me says leave the tripod in. The photographer says don't show it
Sometimes the stitching comes together easily for me, other times I've struggled and run out of time to get it right. Hopefully I'll get better at it as I do more of them.

thanks again,
Will

[mskp]

Hi, Will!
I understand what you say about the nadir. It can be sometimes (almost always) very time consuming. An idea is maybe to create a tripod cap with information about the image you are showing. Starting by the copyright, story/details/statistics of the scene, date or any information you consider important to communicate and the Newspaper logo. In a way you also watermark your panorama with that.
Regards, Martin

[ti360]

pano pod casting. i love it! you get information without having to read a single text line. nice!
it took me a wile too in the beginning to set vertical and horizontal lines to level out panoramas. you will get better.
nice work! ti360.org