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PANORAMAS AND MEGenesisApart from Panavision, Vistavision etc at the movie theatres back in 1950s, I guess it was the Surround Theatre at DisneyLand I saw in 1982 that really blew my mind about 360 deg presentation. In 1998 I bought one of the first digital cameras, a Kodak 240, and in 2000 I bought Panorama 2000 software [actually in a box back then] from ArcSoft and started to experiment with panos, albeit not even to the extent of 180 deg. In 2008 I upgraded to a new Kodak ZD710 and to ArcSoft Panorama Maker 4 [PM4], and now able to make fully seamless panos, even at 360 deg So I am talking of a fairly small investment of about $300 for a camera and $50 for software and a few tips on how to combine the two. I am sort of aware of very expensive "pano head cameras" that apparently take one exposure at 360 deg, and I think I have Googled to some of these images, but these tips are confined to the low budget "non geek" who simply wants to make neat panos.
The reason my results were not so good with the Kodak 240 was that the first digital cameras were basically "Point & Shoot", ie automatic, and as you will see below it is vital to have full manual control of the camera. Secondly the software has greatly improved since 2000. That is to say I have used PM4 on some old images from the Kodak 240 and "seaming & ghosting" has all but vanished. But there is no substitute for taking the images manually in the first place, and IMHO there is no better way to describe that than by reference to the notes supplied with PM4, which you can find here [opens in a separate window] You will note the comment "* Your camera model may not include this feature or option" was in fact the reason my P&S Kodak 240 did not always provide seamless panos. These instructions from ArcSoft essentially apply to all software systems as they refer to basic physical aspects of seamlessly joining two or more separate images. As for most modern cameras the Kodak ZD710 has a [limited to 3 images only] built in stiching facility and indeed it does employ all these rules, eg exposure is frozen upon the first image.
For mine, the main issue with wide panos and the web is that screens are 4:3 [and a bit wider now on laptops] but a 360 deg pano is about 12:1 so if shown full size to fill a screen [as it normally is] then it will be maximum 100 high and the whole effect is lost. Scroll bars can solve that to some extent but the thrill of seeing a 360 deg pano "doing the circuit" several times with "no start nor end to be seen" is lost. The first attempt I found [back in 2000] to display in a "rotating engine" was: this site [opens in a separate window], using PTViewer engine. A recent breakthrough came in a jalbum skin called artepanorama: this skin [opens in a separate window] IMHO this engine is far better then the earlier models and is the one used at this site, and I would recommend this skin to anyone wishing to make their own album of panos
The purpose of this site is to simply allow people to View panos, country by country, and make their own decision as to what is to their liking and what might not be. However it may be instructive to view and discuss some panos, so I have put a Mini-Frame right here.
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The default pano is one of mine, and you will notice a change in the sky as we get to the 360 deg join. Why so? The answer is that I did my best pointing the tripod N, S, E & W to get an average type exposure setting [by manually changing the digital facsimilies of "shutter speed" & "F Stop"]. To my eyes the result was a little dark and I tried a Global "Image Enhance" in Paint Shop Pro, which is my trusted Image Editor. My bad, the colours etc overall improved but at the expense of the tell-tale change at both ends of image. It seems people have different ideas on what constitutes a "full 360 deg pano", eg if the intended purpose is to print it then there will normally be some overlap and a slight misalignment when viewed as above. For example look at Shravanabelagola_Panorama_650x where it seems the ends are "correctly trimmed" but not quite level. It would seem this pano was made as a "horizontal" rather than a "360" But in this pano pachnes-second-summitx it looks like it was made as a 360 as it is almost impossible to see any seams at all.
But the mystery to me is the one I mention above Friday Flats Ski School, Thredbo Australia which was apparently taken back in the late 1990s and has 100% perfect "stiching", so I am thinking this was probably taken on film and either stiched in a Photo Lab or used some type of pano head camera [film or digital?]. It would be interesting to know. I think we can be sure this one Panorama_EXT_13HRx was taken with a "pano head" as it was taken from a plane. There was a slight overlap at both ends [ie intended for printing] and I have removed them for the purpose of this exercise, and yes the 360 lines up perfectly as one would expect. The fact you can see the join is same reason at default example, ie I applied PSP Enhance. I hasten to add that the original would be perfect for printing, and the "enhance" was simply to "morph" it to a different form of presentation. In any event such methods as for these last two panos will be beyond the budget of most of us. But life is not only about 360s and this pano matterhorn_front_pano1x is a good example. In this case I have truncated the "follow up" repeat of the image as is used to repeat the full 360s, whereas in this hotel_panorama_800x format the ends join even though it is plain there was no attempt to make it a full 360. The jury is still out as to which format I might settle on to show panos less than 360. The other aspect of this last pano is the bump in the sea, about mid point of pano. As mentioned in the tips by ArcSoft and from my own bitter experience, stiching software can become very confused with wave motion, where the size of a wave dominates over fixed items in a possible foreground and "semi fixed" items such as clouds. A more expensive stiching program which I trialed for 30 days had an option to possibly overcome that problem, so it is worth experimenting with different options, but for me ArcSoft seems to have constantly improved their product, while keeping to a reasonable price. I am sure there will be lots of "free" software on the web for stiching but as we know, at the end of the day, there are no free lunches so IMHO if you are about to spend some time making magnificent panos, don't sell yourself short and "sink the ship for a h'penny of tar".
Similar joyous eye candy is possible by combining these moving panos with a short movie, zooming in on the very location of the pano. As an example here is Wonga Beach [w/Google] which opens in a separate window. The method used here is:
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