360 Panorama
- Thread starter manumuskin
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That IS very nice Al. On a little ridge too, right?
I'll upload a photo of a place you might like to do someday. I was at this place on the Batsto a few weeks ago....you may have been there.
Bob
Yes this is a ridge that separates the Kirby Savannah from more normal pine/oak woods to the west of it.I have aerial surveyed this area and it appears to have been like this for at least 80 years but the ridge appears to me to have been blown sand that dropped when the wind hit the tyreeline and made a dune that borders the oleder woods.This area was obviously bare at one time and there are some signs of old dwellings next to the sreek so I assume this was a field that lost it's topsoil andbecame a desert that eventually reseeded with almost exclusively pitch and virginia pine.A lot of lichen in some areas and wire grass in others.Some really old gnarled oaks closer to the creek near the man sign.
Yes this is a ridge that separates the Kirby Savannah from more normal pine/oak woods to the west of it.I have aerial surveyed this area and it appears to have been like this for at least 80 years but the ridge appears to me to have been blown sand that dropped when the wind hit the tyreeline and made a dune that borders the oleder woods.This area was obviously bare at one time and there are some signs of old dwellings next to the sreek so I assume this was a field that lost it's topsoil andbecame a desert that eventually reseeded with almost exclusively pitch and virginia pine.A lot of lichen in some areas and wire grass in others.Some really old gnarled oaks closer to the creek near the man sign.
Thanks Gibby,Thanks Al. I was trying to grasp how hard this is. Your down playing your abilities and knowledge.
Really just learning.Learned about drives from Whip who has telescopes and used to be into astronomy.Wiothout a drive your object of interest will move out of your filed of view really quickly.You can actually watch the moon move once you zoom in on it.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=a15d2981-07cd-4db2-90b6-5d041e6b63bc
as you can see there are mistakes in this one too.I have three more to post and am going to crop the mistakes out of those which I am sure there will be some.I am going out to make another pano and try to remedy this now.I am going to have to map out the ground with sticks and see if I can get rid of the black hole.
Al
as you can see there are mistakes in this one too.I have three more to post and am going to crop the mistakes out of those which I am sure there will be some.I am going out to make another pano and try to remedy this now.I am going to have to map out the ground with sticks and see if I can get rid of the black hole.
Al
Okay I just took an experiment pano of my yard.It was a success! almost anyway.I mapped out the ground while i had the tripod will up.I had to take five shots straight down just like i do with the tripod up and then had to crop my bare feet out on the computer and then i took three overlapping shots to get rid of the tripod handle,this all was a success but I have one suare/triangle shaped hole in one spot and that is my fault.I was in a hurry to get back in the house to see if this worked and I grabbed the camera to swivel it to the next shot just before the shutter snapped and in this exact spot on the finished jpeg I notice a hole so it must have been me throwing the camera off.The remaining three panos I am going to post i will crop the errors out of but after that hopefully I will get things right.You may notice some strategically placed sticks straight down for awhile(my ground map) but once I get used to the routine these should disappear.
Al
Al
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=2aea1750-98f9-4f6f-b4a5-568a6cd3ce95
This pano has reminded me why you should not shoot panos or ideed even take single sots in the woods in bright sunlight.I set my exposure for the shade since to visible side of the chimneys were shaded and of course anywhere in direct sunlight washed out.Also i think I laid into the color saturation a bit heavy,oh well,live and learn.
These are Potters Cabins.I do not know anything about Potter other then the legend he was murdered and i think this was bunk made up by the counsellors at Camp hollybrook to scare us kids to death when they would walk us out here after dark to challenge Potters Ghost.That was in the 70's and there was a piano in the cabin then and magazines scattered about the place.later on in 82 when I was driving I stopped on Port Cumberland road and walked back to the place i hadn't seen in ten years.The cabin was still standing but the piano was gone.I found two Readers Digests from World War 2 era still in excellent condition which iIsnatched,wish I knes where they were now.The cabin later disappeared in the late 80's,I heard punks burnt it down but I doubt this.I see no evidence of fire damage and all but the ground logs are gone.I think someone came in and salvaged the cedar.There are some logs left with nails in tact and a large old bottle dump out back.All in all a very neat location to explore and at the head of navigation for canoes on the creek and just south of the settlement of fries Mills and probably once part of it.
This pano has reminded me why you should not shoot panos or ideed even take single sots in the woods in bright sunlight.I set my exposure for the shade since to visible side of the chimneys were shaded and of course anywhere in direct sunlight washed out.Also i think I laid into the color saturation a bit heavy,oh well,live and learn.
These are Potters Cabins.I do not know anything about Potter other then the legend he was murdered and i think this was bunk made up by the counsellors at Camp hollybrook to scare us kids to death when they would walk us out here after dark to challenge Potters Ghost.That was in the 70's and there was a piano in the cabin then and magazines scattered about the place.later on in 82 when I was driving I stopped on Port Cumberland road and walked back to the place i hadn't seen in ten years.The cabin was still standing but the piano was gone.I found two Readers Digests from World War 2 era still in excellent condition which iIsnatched,wish I knes where they were now.The cabin later disappeared in the late 80's,I heard punks burnt it down but I doubt this.I see no evidence of fire damage and all but the ground logs are gone.I think someone came in and salvaged the cedar.There are some logs left with nails in tact and a large old bottle dump out back.All in all a very neat location to explore and at the head of navigation for canoes on the creek and just south of the settlement of fries Mills and probably once part of it.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=9abb154c-4dc2-4420-bbdb-d1cf133845b1
Now I'm about disgusted.The black triangles are back and the stitching is all screwed up.I wouldn't even post this but the chimney came out good and I thought youse might like to see it.The breeze was picking up but not enough to shake the tripod but one problem is it takes about 15 minutes for me to shoot a pano.50 some exposures with timer set on ten seconds to allow shake to subside every time I adjust the bearing so on a sunny/cloudy day the sun was going in and out constantle,more out then in but I wonder if the changing light conditions screwed with the exposures and make it hard on the automatic stitcher? I could get a pay program where I could stitch manually and I did download a trial version of one of these but it was so technical I just gave up and went back to ICE figuring I could learn it's limitations and work within them but it is appearing very limited indeed.
Al
Now I'm about disgusted.The black triangles are back and the stitching is all screwed up.I wouldn't even post this but the chimney came out good and I thought youse might like to see it.The breeze was picking up but not enough to shake the tripod but one problem is it takes about 15 minutes for me to shoot a pano.50 some exposures with timer set on ten seconds to allow shake to subside every time I adjust the bearing so on a sunny/cloudy day the sun was going in and out constantle,more out then in but I wonder if the changing light conditions screwed with the exposures and make it hard on the automatic stitcher? I could get a pay program where I could stitch manually and I did download a trial version of one of these but it was so technical I just gave up and went back to ICE figuring I could learn it's limitations and work within them but it is appearing very limited indeed.
Al
Ok I refuse to post the last one "manumuskin trestle" It is a freak show.For one ICE has a hard time handling large one color areas,in this case a large blue sky.At Tulpe a few weeks ago it was a hot humid white sky it couldn't handle.Also it split the tracks into a Y which was kind of cool and kind of not and it blacked out areas of the stream which may have been because being a fast moving tidal river at that point it probably couldn't match it up due to ever changing ripples and the fact with my little powershot
handheld it takes several exposures to go all the way acorss the river whereas if I had a wide angle fish eye it would take the whole creek at one shot.So I have learned stay out of the woods in bright sunlight.Forget the sky if it has no definition,if it's splattered with clouds or has total cloud cover with good definition go for it,no beautiful wide blue skies for ICE.If your getting great low angle sunlight in one direction this means your pointing into it in the other direction.If you hug up to a wall of trees and set exposure for the sun the tree wall will be a black wall or vice versa and the sunlighted area is a washout.The ground mapping was a good idea,the sun was a bad idea.I will leave these sorry panos up a few days because the chimneys are cool.I will be going back in winter when the wisteria dies back and on a cloudy day,this way you'll be able to see manumuskin creek through the foliage also.
Al
handheld it takes several exposures to go all the way acorss the river whereas if I had a wide angle fish eye it would take the whole creek at one shot.So I have learned stay out of the woods in bright sunlight.Forget the sky if it has no definition,if it's splattered with clouds or has total cloud cover with good definition go for it,no beautiful wide blue skies for ICE.If your getting great low angle sunlight in one direction this means your pointing into it in the other direction.If you hug up to a wall of trees and set exposure for the sun the tree wall will be a black wall or vice versa and the sunlighted area is a washout.The ground mapping was a good idea,the sun was a bad idea.I will leave these sorry panos up a few days because the chimneys are cool.I will be going back in winter when the wisteria dies back and on a cloudy day,this way you'll be able to see manumuskin creek through the foliage also.
Al
Okay I wasted an entire day with this new propram Hugin that i downloaded.Itis a great program but like all great programs very involved.One thing it claims it can do is take a pano shot on auto settings and adjust all the exposures to the one you pick to anchor it to.It does do a good job of getting all he exposures the same but it entirely screws up the stitch when I shoot in auto so doing a good job on the exposure and white balance is moot if it can't stitch it.I am going to go back to shooting manual and avoiding sunny days in the woods with high contrast but am going to hunker down and learn this program.It will allow me to manually adjust control points to make the stitcher do the job right wether it wants to or not.Lotta work but it should pay off.Also I found a well written page on not only how to use the major features of Hugin but also how to use Hugin and GIMP to make myself a cover for the tripod.I can actually understand this guy when he writes.he doesn't geek out on an amatuer like me.I can no will go back to using the tripod for the ground shots as well because no matter how careful I am when I freehand the ground shots I get black holes no matter how well I map it out before hand.I already have an idea for my cover.I think it will look real cool if I can figure out the process of actually filling in the circle which he doesn't really go into other then I need to get better at using GIMP.Here is the tutorial http://greeennotebook.com/2011/04/how-to-create-a-360-x-180-degree-panorama/#Sizing
Al
Al
Sometimes I drive myself to fits but after I bang my head on the floor I back up take a few deep breaths,have a little cry and then gop back in swingin.Drying my eyes right now
I'd love to be able to take panos like those.One problem I can't see a solution to is big sky sots.If there are no control points as in a wide blue sky I do not see how to make a program sitch those shots wereas if I had a big fish eye lens like these guys have then their one shot stretches from horizon to horizon and solves that problem.If there are many clouds these can give you control points but clouds move.If you use high clouds like cirrus or far away clouds along the horizon this isn't bad but low lying clouds overhead are bad. I need to be fast but avoid camera shake.I also learned that if I stop my aperture down instead of up I'll get more detail throughout the pano but this will force me to drop shutter speed which will also mean i need to leave the timer on long to stop shake which increases time between shots.This is why I like stones.They don't move
Al
Al
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=6852d117-e1e6-4da4-87d1-45d3f6812730
The above link represents success! I had a tip from my friend Whip who told me to not to extend the legs of the tripod thereby making a smaller footprint and not as much ground to cover handheld.It is a pain working so close to the ground but not as much as I imagined.I still shoot the same for the zenith and the next 40 degree row of shots down and then the horizontals but when i get to the lower 40 degree angle row I adjust and make sure the tripod legs do not show and I mark just past these with the purty stones you see,imported straight from lakes Superior,Michigan and Huron and Guy I promise they were never used in any way to mark a property boundary. So I shoot along the stones keeping the legs out and when I get to the tripod handle the real pain in the caudal extremity in this whole endeavor I shoot around it instead of shooting it and trying to crop it out later which always screws me up.Even masking it in Hugin did not work.So I shoots around it setting an extra stone out where the end of it appears to be in my LCD screen so when I start shooting hand held first I shoot everything inside the circle/triangle created by the three stones and then I shoot out further in an arc from left to right where the handle was including everything out to and beyond that extra stone.I then put these shots in ICE,cross my fingers and wait five minutes to see if it worked.I did the same pano six times after talking to Whip till i got it right.The stone map and removing the tripod from my shot was my idea but lowering the whole thing closer to the ground made this so much easier.Thanks Whip!I then reloaded everything in Gimps batch processor and touched it up and redid the jpeg and uploaded to photosynth.I shouldn't have shot in sunlight but it was all experimenting with the nadir and I couldn't wait for clouds.It still doesn't look too bad.
Al
The above link represents success! I had a tip from my friend Whip who told me to not to extend the legs of the tripod thereby making a smaller footprint and not as much ground to cover handheld.It is a pain working so close to the ground but not as much as I imagined.I still shoot the same for the zenith and the next 40 degree row of shots down and then the horizontals but when i get to the lower 40 degree angle row I adjust and make sure the tripod legs do not show and I mark just past these with the purty stones you see,imported straight from lakes Superior,Michigan and Huron and Guy I promise they were never used in any way to mark a property boundary
. So I shoot along the stones keeping the legs out and when I get to the tripod handle the real pain in the caudal extremity in this whole endeavor I shoot around it instead of shooting it and trying to crop it out later which always screws me up.Even masking it in Hugin did not work.So I shoots around it setting an extra stone out where the end of it appears to be in my LCD screen so when I start shooting hand held first I shoot everything inside the circle/triangle created by the three stones and then I shoot out further in an arc from left to right where the handle was including everything out to and beyond that extra stone.I then put these shots in ICE,cross my fingers and wait five minutes to see if it worked.I did the same pano six times after talking to Whip till i got it right.The stone map and removing the tripod from my shot was my idea but lowering the whole thing closer to the ground made this so much easier.Thanks Whip!I then reloaded everything in Gimps batch processor and touched it up and redid the jpeg and uploaded to photosynth.I shouldn't have shot in sunlight but it was all experimenting with the nadir and I couldn't wait for clouds.It still doesn't look too bad.Al
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=e99e653a-3742-4092-affb-33a16d9ea9fc
this is a pine grove in Belleplain. I had intended to shoot in overcast and of course as soon as I started shooting the sun came out of what looked to me very thick clouds and I already had my EV ballance and shutter speed set.You have to shoot on manual while doing these panos.Of course you can notice the ever present black areas down bottom.Thgis is not from me missing spots,if you look closely you'll notice the stick next to the blackout has been put in twice.I tried getting rid of two different shots to get rid of this but it just got worse.Apparently you can make too many shots as well as too few.Back to the drawing board to find a new shooting system for my nadir shots.I have actually beaten in my brow ridge over this and my neandertal kin will no longer recognize me.
Al
this is a pine grove in Belleplain. I had intended to shoot in overcast and of course as soon as I started shooting the sun came out of what looked to me very thick clouds and I already had my EV ballance and shutter speed set.You have to shoot on manual while doing these panos.Of course you can notice the ever present black areas down bottom.Thgis is not from me missing spots,if you look closely you'll notice the stick next to the blackout has been put in twice.I tried getting rid of two different shots to get rid of this but it just got worse.Apparently you can make too many shots as well as too few.Back to the drawing board to find a new shooting system for my nadir shots.I have actually beaten in my brow ridge over this and my neandertal kin will no longer recognize me.
Al
Guy
The sun popping out on me really washed the tops of the trees out.I'd of set the EV for sunny and set a fast shutter speed if I'd of known that was going to happen before I started.Also I am still having trouble covering every inch of ground.I am having a brainstorm but I don't know if it will work or not.What do you think of attaching the camera to a long pole,setting the timer in ten seconds and holding the camera say seven feet off the ground and getting the whole area in one shot over the nadir? Now I have been trying to hold the camera up high with my arm but my feet always wind up in the shots and I have to cut tem out which may also be resulting in errors around the nadir.If I have a long pole i can get up high enough to get the whole area one shot and get my feet far enough away they won't be in the shot or if they are cutting them out won't effect the whole pano because I'll be out in area already covered by the other shots.Do you think this idea has any merit?I'd have to hold the camera still which may be hard on a pole,especially with the slow shutter speeds I'm using to allow enough light to get in because of the f8 aperture I'm using to increase my depth of field.
Al
The sun popping out on me really washed the tops of the trees out.I'd of set the EV for sunny and set a fast shutter speed if I'd of known that was going to happen before I started.Also I am still having trouble covering every inch of ground.I am having a brainstorm but I don't know if it will work or not.What do you think of attaching the camera to a long pole,setting the timer in ten seconds and holding the camera say seven feet off the ground and getting the whole area in one shot over the nadir? Now I have been trying to hold the camera up high with my arm but my feet always wind up in the shots and I have to cut tem out which may also be resulting in errors around the nadir.If I have a long pole i can get up high enough to get the whole area one shot and get my feet far enough away they won't be in the shot or if they are cutting them out won't effect the whole pano because I'll be out in area already covered by the other shots.Do you think this idea has any merit?I'd have to hold the camera still which may be hard on a pole,especially with the slow shutter speeds I'm using to allow enough light to get in because of the f8 aperture I'm using to increase my depth of field.
Al