Panorama upload and display site

[Stephane Desnault]

I do a lot of 360 panoramas, and up to now they were fairly difficult to upload to panorama websites. I just discovered a new site, where the only thing you have to upload is the spherical 2x1 rendering, and the site itself will take care of everything: Vignettes, immersive view, etc... The way geolocation is handled is really cool: You can put all your panos on Google map.
The owner selects the photographers allowed on the site himself, and, so far, I haven't seen any really bad panos. The site url is  www.360cities.net .
If you search for "desnault", you'll find my pictures. Any feedback appreciated!

[OldRoy]

I do a lot of 360 panoramas, and up to now they were fairly difficult to upload to panorama websites. I just discovered a new site, where the only thing you have to upload is the spherical 2x1 rendering, and the site itself will take care of everything: Vignettes, immersive view, etc... The way geolocation is handled is really cool: You can put all your panos on Google map.
The owner selects the photographers allowed on the site himself, and, so far, I haven't seen any really bad panos. The site url is  www.360cities.net .
If you search for "desnault", you'll find my pictures. Any feedback appreciated!

Hi Stephane
As a fellow exponent of the frequently disdained VR pano (but there again maybe it's just mine!) I appreciate the pointer to this interesting site. You have some nice work there but I'm puzzled why you would have uploaded some panos which don't have the nadir patched yet! I also spotted a couple of slightly out stitches in the nadir patches of one or two examples. FWIW I have found that using the "viewpoint correction" technique (PTGui) has pretty much eliminated this problem for me.

I like the way you have used the overexposure in some of the examples posted. I usually shoot the interiors for HDR processing (using Enfuse) but your approach makes a virtue out of the problem in some situations.
BTW what hardware and software are you using?

I may post a couple of panos myself (will add to this thread) - what size equis are you uploading, they look quite high resolution? And do you have any concerns about possible misuse of the panos on the site?
Roy

[Stephane Desnault]

Hi Roy,

Thanks for the feedback. The 15 panos I uploaded span quite some time in my "career" as a VR maker, and Nadir patching wasn't always a priority. I'm more careful now.

Answering your questions:
I uploaded 8192x4096 equis.

Some panos were shot with a Nikon D80 + a Sigma 10-20 lens, the more recent one with a D3 + 14-24 Nikkor. Both lenses are absolutely brilliant for panos, though, comparing with reviews everywhere, I probably got lucky with a stellar Sigma that works incredibly well with my D80: It's as sharp as a razor. I've used the Manfrotto 303SPH, the NN3 and the NN5 for pano heads.

For software, I'm using the following workflow:

1/
Routinely shoot bracketed if I have the slightest suspicion it can be useful - Pixels are free as Jeff says (well... within limits. Bracketing 9 RAW exposures for 12 pics per pano on the D3 means you're eating up 8GB cards like candy... and it's not free candy!). Of course, everything in manual, focussed at the hyperfocal, yada, yada... you know the drill.

2/
Use DXO as a deRAWtizer - it's actually mandatory with the 14-24 to correct distortion, as it's not linear at all and can confuse the hell out of my stitching software. This echoes the findings of Arnaud Frisch, who declared the 14-24 "unusable" for his own work - seems he's not using DXO.

Usually at this stage I decide if I want HDR or not. If I do, I'll convert the exposures I need to JPEG, converting only for distorsion. If I'm not doing HDR, I'll also correct my chosen serie for color and contrast in DXO, often using the "DXO lighting" feature, that does wonders.

3/
If using HDR, I send the files through Photomatix. I used to do HDR+tonemapping, i.e. real "heavy handed" HDR, and today I'm more often using Blend-Adjust, which is actually the same algorithms as Enfuse (the Photomatix and Enfuse teams did some testing and validating work together as I understood it).

4/
I then stitch to equi using Autodesk Stitcher (formerly Realviz). The GUI is very professional, and I like being able to convert my panoramas to any format. One thing to know about Stitcher: Stitching to equi is of great quality. Stitching to any other format is... well, let's remain polite and say, "not of the same quality". So, the correct workflow is always: Stitch to equi, THEN convert to your format of choice.

5/
Final adjustments, contrats, colorcast, masking, whatever, are done in PS CS4 or Lightroom. Nadir Fixing is usually done on a cubic rendition in PS CS4.

6/
I then convert back to whatever VR format is required using Realviz/Autodesk Stitcher.