Christopher Glick's blog

I just wanted to mention that I have been putting up various full-screen panoramas I have taken at my current personal website, which will be valid for about 5 years (paid in advance): http://chrisglick.us

This evening I took some time to work with LensFix CI. I entered my figures from calibrating my Peleng lens then played with the sliders to correct chromatic aberration. Rather fun.

If I understand things correctly, it's best to do these corrections--CA and lens distortion (but not defish)--in LensFix CI then use the exported images for stitching. I'll find out over the next week or so.

Disclaimer: I'm a hobbyist with only the most rudimentary graphic editing skills.

Over much of the past year, I made QTVR panoramas with PTMac. My 6 horiztonal shots stitched wonderfully, but adding the zenith often caused errors with seams, in the triangle formed by the zenith shot and the first and last horizontal shots. Usually the error would be a small section off by 1-3 pixels. I'm working on acquiring the graphic editing skills to take care of such errors.

I began using Nisus Writer 6.5 perhaps with Mac OS 8. An English teacher, I am constantly writing activities, articles, and handouts, for which I rely on Nisus Writer Pro. Though a software house, Nisus also sells a CD, Kyoto Gardens. Here's the product blurb:

Kyoto Gardens: A Virtual Stroll Through Zen Landscapes utilizes Apple Computer's QuickTime VR technology to "walk through" 24 of Kyoto's most renowned gardens.

I've recently learned to do two simple things in LiveStage Pro 4.6.6: add an image (e.g., "Chris Glick © 2008") to the QTVR window and make images appear at a fixed location in the QTVR window when a hotspot is clicked or when tripped with Mouse Down/Up. The latter task took a frustrating number of hours spread across two days with ample interruptons, but learning how to do it was quite rewarding.

I am a hobbyist panographer with little to no experience with graphic editing software. To date I have been using batch processing my RAW images as 16-bit TIFF files. PTMac gives me good results, but I have a small dilemma: I don't yet have a 16-bit graphic editor (neither GraphicConverter nor GIMP can handle the task, yet).

Over the next couple of weeks, I will try remake some of my 16-bit panoramas as 8-bit to see how the results differ.

Since calibrating my Peleng lens, I've been pleased at how satisfying my panoramas have become despite minimal skills in graphic editing. With PTMac, six horizontal shots and one zenith shot usually allow me to create something satisfying with only a few stitching flaws, often just a small section near the zenith or nadir that is ajar by a pixel or two. Perhaps use of a Clone tool can fix such errors, but I'm spending more time shooting and stitching instead.

After an embarrassingly long period of time, I finally got around to calibrating my Peleng fisheye lens this summer. I had earlier found what seemed to be the best nodal point on my Nodal Ninja 2 and overcome the problem of the Peleng-laden camera's endless sag by using some thin packing foam that adds enough friction to keep the camera straight when mounted on the panohead.

My camera has of late been sadly neglected owing to a change of job and location, from provincial Japan into Tokyo. My two-hour round-trip commute has eaten into my free time; the new position is more demanding as well. My tripod is still in hiding in a packing box, so I've not been able to get good paired shots for anaglyphs.

However, I have found my Peleng fisheye lens and Nodal Ninja 3 panohead, but I do need a new tripod: something stronger than my previosu one (that Peleng is heavy!) and with legs that can be kept closer to the Z-axis. An indisputable panorama novice, I am looking to avoid spending more than $300, something not more than 7 or 8lbs. in weight.