I've been making panoramas for a number of years, both interactive and
straight, photographic prints. At my researh lab (IMTC, Georgia Tech -
http://www.imtc.gatech.edu) we produced cylindrical panoramic movies (full
screen even, though 640x480 passed for full screen at the time) using custom
software a couple years before Apple released QTVR. It had been a few years
since I'd produced any interactive panoramas, but I got the chance to do so
again on a recent project. Full screen versions of a few of the panoramas can
be seen here: http://www.slrobertson.com/galleries/vr/cubicvr.asp.
The first example was produced using a Nikon D1X, Sigma 14mm rectilinear lens
and Kaidan QuickPan Spherical mount. Three rows of 10 images were stitched
with Panorama Tools and PTAssembler. I took three bracketed exposures in one-
stop increments to deal with the large dynamic range of this indoor scene. I
stitched each set of exposures and then blended the three panoramas in
Photoshop to capture the entire dynamic range. The result was a monster 13K x
6.5K equirectangular image which I also printed as a stunningly sharp 40" x
20" print on an HP 5000.
To cut down on the time and effort to produce a full spherical pano, we bought
a Sigma 8mm Fisheye to complete the project. The other two examples were
created using this setup and were completed in a fraction of the time to build
the first pano. I shot four frames around at 90 degree increments, then a
zenith and nadir shot. I also blended several exposures on these examples to
capture a dynamic range larger than the D1X was capable of capturing in a
single exposure. On the second example I tried using HDRShop
(http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/) and a tone-mapping plugin
(http://www.gregdowning.com/HDRI/tonemap/Reinhard/) to automatically blend the
exposures. I had to tweak the contrast of the result in Photoshop, but it
worked reasonably well.
Scott Robertson
http://www.slrobertson.comhttp://www.imtc.gatech.edu
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