Hi,
Looks to be an excellent compliment to the Merrill's, to get extreme high resolution plus the pixel sharpness of the Merrill's should be able to reproduce very large prints.
I am in the middle of researching which pano system to purchase RRS or Nodal Ninja in order to do stitching, panos to print very high resolution files and I bumped into your post, your panos looks impressively sharp.
An automated system might be an overkill for 2-4 stitched images but the Epic 100 is cheaper than RRS or NN.
Can you elaborate more on your workflow/setup.
Thank you
Abe
Hi Abe,
I don't think that I would need anything more than a tripod for only 3-4 shots, but if you want to make very large prints at high resolution then the gigapan might be worth looking at. Set-up is easy and if you are only using one camera with the epic 100 then it is a one time thing for set-up/calibration.
Instructions are here. When I start a new pano just mount the epic 100 on a sturdy tripod and level the device with camera mounted on the unit. Check camera alignment when attaching. Turn on camera, set fixed ISO, WB, exposure, and focus. If you are using a very slow shutter speed you could also set the 2 sec selftimer for shutter release. If you do make sure that your preset processing time in the epic 100 is adjusted to account for this. Turn on the epic 100, and when "New Panorama" appears on screen press OK, go through the checklist that pops up, using the directional arrow buttons direct the camera to the scene area that you want as the upper left corner of your pano (using LCD live view), next do the same for lower right corner, you will see info on pano dimensions and number of shots, press OK and let the epic 100 do its' thing. After a shoot I just dump the sd card files to a folder on my computer, batch them through SPP with preset WB, color mode, etc. and output 16 bit tifs to another folder. Open AutoPano Pro, point it to the output folder, it will find and organize all of your pano files (can be for just one or several panos), present previews for each pano, and then you have the option to either edit or render the panos for your desired output. Quick, easy, and good quality.
Have fun,
Carl