Topic: world´s largest spherical indoor panorama (Read 12071 times)

julian kalmar · « **on:** December 04, 2008, 11:36:14 am »

This image have been the most complicate thing I erver did with my camera. And as far as I know, there is no other one who ever made a fully spherical indoor panorama in Gigapixel resolution (1,3 Gigapixel).
The problem with this is the lack of depth of field. To avoid this, I used focus blending. Each "critical" image, I made two to three times with different focusing points, and combined them with CombineZM before the stitch.
The lightconditions alsow presented a big challange: 2 sec. for the floo, between 1 and 1/4 sec. for the altar region, between 1/2 and 1/60 sec. for the window regions, and between 1/2 and 2 sec. for the wall and the ceiling.
Because I didn´t whant the typical HDR effect, I decided to blend the single images manually in PS. The good thing with this was, that it wasn´t necessary to shoot the completely church 6 times with different exposure vallues, which would have been necessary for a good HDR pano.
And because of the long exposure vallues this would have been impossible due to time factor.
The bad thing was, arranging all the single images so, that you don´t see anything of all this different exposures really has been a huge work. ( And it really needs a lot of concentration to make all critical images with the related exposurevallues to achiev good light transitions.
I made this about 1 1/2 years ago. The problem was, that with QTVR it´s not possible to show this image in full resolution (more than 1,3 Gigapixel).
Now, with flash it is possible to watch this in full resolution. Well don´t be upset! You will not have to wait hours infront of your monitor. It´s like a combination of Quicktime and zoomify.
Pleas enjoy it in "full screen" mode. ( Menue buttons)
Piaristenchurch of Vienna:
http://photoartkalmar.com/Photoart%20Kalma...ircheflash.html
UPDATE:

Quote from: OldRoy

Julian, this example is very convincing. Very impressive and beautiful results. I have posted a link to this thread on the panoguide.com site as I think that people will be very impressed.
Should you ever feel like describing your PS blending/tonemapping methods I think many of us would learn a lot.
Roy

For better reading I decided to ad the following to my post instead of answering:
There is really no miracle in manual blending.
I open all images and create one image with say 12 layers ( each layer is a different exposure)
And then I mask everything I don´t need using masks and a more or less sharp pencil. That´s it.
If you start trying this, it will be a little dificult, because you can´t see all layers at once, but with a little practice you will see that it is not so difficult, and the results are better then any software, because you can choose what ever you whant from each layer.
If you try this first time, it´s easier to star from an image created by tufuse or enfuse ,...
Open this image in PS as " prototype", and then coppie all you like from your original exposures.
This will work much more quickly in the beginnings, but in the end you are more quickly in doing everything manually,..

DarkPenguin · « **Reply #1 on:** December 04, 2008, 12:14:25 pm »

Holy living #*(<!

That is beyond nifty.

tamerlin · « **Reply #2 on:** December 04, 2008, 12:34:26 pm »

Thanks for sharing, that's extremely well done!

situgrrl · « **Reply #3 on:** December 04, 2008, 01:53:03 pm »

Wow! Really impressive. Combine this sort of thing with Google Earth and holidays will seem so old fashioned!

framah · « **Reply #4 on:** December 04, 2008, 04:53:42 pm »

I second DarkPenguins comment!!

So... is this a hobby of yours??

dmerger · « **Reply #5 on:** December 04, 2008, 06:45:38 pm »

JDClements · « **Reply #6 on:** December 04, 2008, 07:02:09 pm »

Sure is some weird/scary stuff in a few of the paintings! Fun to explore, thanks.

marcsitkin · « **Reply #7 on:** December 05, 2008, 08:39:32 am »

Just Excellent! Beautiful Image, very well done!

BlasR · « **Reply #8 on:** December 05, 2008, 01:03:09 pm »

Jose , Maria, padre de Dios.

I love the floor

Great job

BlasR

Jay Kaplan · « **Reply #9 on:** December 05, 2008, 03:59:37 pm »

Floor? I was getting vertigo panning uppppp. One fantastic photo

Jay

OldRoy · « **Reply #10 on:** December 05, 2008, 05:23:42 pm »

Hi Julian
Once again congratulations on your panorama. This time it's a bit nearer my own experience as I have been shooting the interiors of quite a few of the notable churches in the region where I live. You don't say exactly what equipment you are using. My own is fairly modest - a D200, NN3 panhead and Nikon 10.5 FE. I'm surprised that you needed to focus blend. I usually shoot these panos at F8 which gives enormous DOF at this focal length so focus blending is not necessary. I usually shoot a 7-shot bracket at 1 stop intervals and select the min/mid/max exposures for HDR blending - assuming I have got the spread correct. I blend using Enfuse, sometimes using EnfuseGui. I have found that the default settings work very well although sometimes I select different exposures to adjust the result rather than adjusting the Enfuse parameters. I stitch and blend using PTGui Pro. This results in an 8bit equirectangular image of >200 Mb.

If I may make a small criticism of this panorama (and your skills are far greater than my own) it is that you have used the "mirror ball" for the nadir patch. After so much hard work! To me this always looks like a terrible flaw unles it is used as a place to locate contact information. Personally I always patch the nadir using the 2 X 180 deg tripod shots and then a viewpoint correction shot taken at about 45 deg offset. PTGui handles this faultlessly.

I don't yet have a website (I hope I can achieve this during this winter) but I usually have 3 of my panos on:
www.panoguide.com/gallery/user/3110 (my nom-de-pano is "Skridlov")
At the moment two of them are exteriors that are not particularly interesting (I change the shots from time to time) but the panos of "Glynde" and "Boxgrove Priory" are, I think, quite presentable examples of the medium. Please take a look if you get time (they are only 4000 X 2000 pixel 2MB JPEGs) as I would appreciate your opinion. VR panos are regarded as of no interest here it seems so it is good to see your work being presented and appreciated!

Roy

DarkPenguin · « **Reply #11 on:** December 05, 2008, 05:39:25 pm »

I believe Julian shot his in the short telephoto range. DOF would be more of an issue in that case.

OldRoy · « **Reply #12 on:** December 05, 2008, 05:52:36 pm »

Quote from: DarkPenguin

I believe Julian shot his in the short telephoto range. DOF would be more of an issue in that case.

Yes I thought that would be the case. Makes it very hard. Julian certainly likes a challenge - I found it difficult enough to learn sphericals using a fisheye!
Roy

JDClements · « **Reply #13 on:** December 05, 2008, 06:20:03 pm »

Quote from: BlasR

I love the floor

Hey, thanks for the tip! I never thought of looking *straight down* and found the little surprise there.

julian kalmar · « **Reply #14 on:** December 06, 2008, 03:47:13 am »

Quote from: OldRoy

Hi Julian
Once again congratulations on your panorama. This time it's a bit nearer my own experience as I have been shooting the interiors of quite a few of the notable churches in the region where I live. You don't say exactly what equipment you are using. My own is fairly modest - a D200, NN3 panhead and Nikon 10.5 FE. I'm surprised that you needed to focus blend. I usually shoot these panos at F8 which gives enormous DOF at this focal length so focus blending is not necessary. I usually shoot a 7-shot bracket at 1 stop intervals and select the min/mid/max exposures for HDR blending - assuming I have got the spread correct. I blend using Enfuse, sometimes using EnfuseGui. I have found that the default settings work very well although sometimes I select different exposures to adjust the result rather than adjusting the Enfuse parameters. I stitch and blend using PTGui Pro. This results in an 8bit equirectangular image of >200 Mb.

If I may make a small criticism of this panorama (and your skills are far greater than my own) it is that you have used the "mirror ball" for the nadir patch. After so much hard work! To me this always looks like a terrible flaw unles it is used as a place to locate contact information. Personally I always patch the nadir using the 2 X 180 deg tripod shots and then a viewpoint correction shot taken at about 45 deg offset. PTGui handles this faultlessly.

I don't yet have a website (I hope I can achieve this during this winter) but I usually have 3 of my panos on:
www.panoguide.com/gallery/user/3110 (my nom-de-pano is "Skridlov")
At the moment two of them are exteriors that are not particularly interesting (I change the shots from time to time) but the panos of "Glynde" and "Boxgrove Priory" are, I think, quite presentable examples of the medium. Please take a look if you get time (they are only 4000 X 2000 pixel 2MB JPEGs) as I would appreciate your opinion. VR panos are regarded as of no interest here it seems so it is good to see your work being presented and appreciated!

Roy

I used 5d, 24-70mm 2,8 @70mm and NN5
My image is 3,70 Gigabyte (more then 1,3 Gigapixel)
I used 2 sec. exposure time for the floor, that´s why I didnt´shoot a nadir image (it´s not possible to hand held)
The nadir is not a mirror ball but a reflection of the pano
I saw your panos. They all look really good. I especially like your "Mouth of the river Arun " pano-really good idea. I think you used tufuse or a some similar software for your churches. You made a very good job in combinig the different exposures, but anyhow it´s visible. That´s why I combine the images manually in PS.

feppe · « **Reply #15 on:** December 06, 2008, 04:32:44 am »

Oh wow that is amazing - the detail goes so deep it feels like the Mandelbrot set.

And here I thought I had a tough project with TuFusing 3 bracketed exposures on a 218 megapixel pano...

OldRoy · « **Reply #16 on:** December 08, 2008, 10:02:26 am »

Quote from: julian kalmar

I used 5d, 24-70mm 2,8 @70mm and NN5
My image is 3,70 Gigabyte (more then 1,3 Gigapixel)
I used 2 sec. exposure time for the floor, that´s why I didnt´shoot a nadir image (it´s not possible to hand held)
The nadir is not a mirror ball but a reflection of the pano
I saw your panos. They all look really good. I especially like your "Mouth of the river Arun " pano-really good idea. I think you used tufuse or a some similar software for your churches. You made a very good job in combinig the different exposures, but anyhow it´s visible. That´s why I combine the images manually in PS.

Hi Julian
thank you for the comments.
Your patient approach certainly produces very impressive results. By "mirror ball" I really meant a reflection of the pano - I've used this myself - which looks like a mirror ball. You don't say what stitching program you use but I use PTGui as I mentioned. So for the nadir I shoot two straight down at 180 deg yaw and them move the tripod back a little way and shoot downward at an angle to cover the tripod hole from the two nadir shots. In PTGui you can then link this shot - alpha channel masked all but for the centre - to one of the nadir shots and warp it using the "Viewpoint Correction" mode. Obviously this involves a bit of interpolation to correct the perspective but at my level this doesn't seem very noticeable. Anyway shooting this stuff with a fisheye is very easy compared to your lens. I will try something similar (but a lot less demanding) with a longer lens when I'm feeling strong.

I use Enfuse, and sometimes the EnfuseGui as a front end. Never tried tufuse - do you prefer it? I usually adjust the fusion by selecting different exposures. I'd be interested to know what is it that makes the fusion obvious to you? I'm not good enough with PS to accomplish good HDR fusions I fear!

The river pano was just an experiment really, masking the background and greyscaling it. It was a dull and grey day so the original wasn't too exciting.

Seeing your accomplished work is very encouraging! I look forward to seeing more of it!

Roy

julian kalmar · « **Reply #17 on:** December 10, 2008, 06:00:35 am »

Quote from: OldRoy

You don't say what stitching program you use but I use PTGui as I mentioned. I'd be interested to know what is it that makes the fusion obvious to you? I'm not good enough with PS to accomplish good HDR fusions I fear!
Roy

Sorry, I forgot to mentin: I´m using PTGui
I can´t tell you exactely why I see that you used some fusing software, but generally I think that the look of auomatic combinated images either look unnatural- like photomatrix results,- ore a little bit flat- like tufuse or enfuse ( they work very simmilar)
I uploaded an example so maybe you can see, what I mean
the result of tufuse (12images)

the same, but manually blended

OldRoy · « **Reply #18 on:** December 16, 2008, 08:10:08 am »

Quote from: julian kalmar

Sorry, I forgot to mentin: I´m using PTGui
I can´t tell you exactely why I see that you used some fusing software, but generally I think that the look of auomatic combinated images either look unnatural- like photomatrix results,- ore a little bit flat- like tufuse or enfuse ( they work very simmilar)
I uploaded an example so maybe you can see, what I mean
the result of tufuse (12images)

the same, but manually blended

Julian, this example is very convincing. Very impressive and beautiful results. I have posted a link to this thread on the panoguide.com site as I think that people will be very impressed.
Should you ever feel like describing your PS blending/tonemapping methods I think many of us would learn a lot.
Roy

julian kalmar · « **Reply #19 on:** December 17, 2008, 03:11:44 am »

Quote from: OldRoy

Julian, this example is very convincing. Very impressive and beautiful results. I have posted a link to this thread on the panoguide.com site as I think that people will be very impressed.
Should you ever feel like describing your PS blending/tonemapping methods I think many of us would learn a lot.
Roy

Fot better reading, I decided to update my thread, so reading the answer is more convenience for everyone.
julian

Author Topic: world´s largest spherical indoor panorama (Read 12071 times)

DarkPenguin

DarkPenguin