8mm Lens for my new 5D

Hi there Ian and Doug
Well I had a 20D a few years back, and the sigma 10-20mm lens, and I wasn't very impressed with the setup at all, it felt like i had to take about 30 images, and they never seemed to stitch correctly. I then went out and bought a Nikon 4500 and the 8mm lens, but was all stolen the day later in a robbery
http://www.sunderlandtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=1107&Articl...
So I reverted back to using my trusty Olympus Camedia cameras, which is what I have used for all my Panos on my site below and in my Gallery on here. It seems like fait just doesn't want me to take full spheres

Unfortunately, they only did cylinders, but i want to do spheres. I really want to make a few Postcards and print material, so I thought I need to upgrade, but I also prefer the crowded "Street" photography, So I chose the 5D as it needs fewer images to make the full sphere, making less chance of stitch marks from people moving around. Also i don't plan on upgrading for a good few years, so wanted to future proof myself a little.

That's why I went for the 5D, as well as I use it also for studio work, because I look after 2 or 3 model and escort agency websites and marketing as well as use it a large amount for Object VR, which is much better than the Olympus.

So back to the lenses...

I have heard about the "shaved" Nikon lens, but never understood what it meant, does it need to be re-engineered somehow, or is it an attachment to make it fit the Canon, rather than the Nikon?

Also I have the 17-35mm sigma lens here now, will that do as well as the 15mm lens as its only a 2mm difference. I tried to take a set of images with it, and they wouldn't stitch together correctly using PT-GUI, but to be honest I didn't try for very long as Xmas and New Year got in the way with a large bottle of Vodka.

I don't mind buying which ever lens it is I require, but I'm planning on really pushing the VR work in the next few months of 2007 with local estate agents, and offering them a package deal in the same way as Doug does with floor plans and VR tours.

So I really want the lens and camera to take images that stitch together well, and I can do quickly in any property, get in and out as fast as I can.

Ive read half of the comparison page, thanks for that, ill have a look at the rest a little later on after i have picked up my lady from work.

Just for another argument, what is the 10-20mm lens for making tours with the 5D, anybody know?

Cheers for your help so far.

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Ian & Ian (Sounds like a law firm)

For real estate VT photography, speed and ease of work flow is as important as quality.

I'm planning to try something when I get the Coolpix 8700 I just bought on eBay and later one of the Agnos rotators for the FC-E9 lens. I can do it with my 5400 too

If I position the camera sideways (portrait orientation) and don't use the "Fisheye Mode on the 5400, I could zoom until the round edges are just short of the top & bottom of the potrait oriented image. I'm guessing 4-5 shots around to get enough overlap for PTGui to get a good stitch. It should look something like the Cropped Fisheyes from a Sigma lens.

The difference is the FC-E9 lens has a 183° FOV on the 8700 (8mp) and 190° FOV on the 5400 (5mp), even with the zooming. That means no Zenith and Nadir shots needed.

My 5400 doesn't use the image frame very well in Fisheye Mode and I've already gotten much improved resolution by zooming the Circular image to the full height of the landscape oriented image. I did the math and its 98% more pixels in the Circle by zooming than in the "normal" Fisheye Mode

It won't be the quality of a Nikkor 10.5mm or Sigma 8mm, but I'm betting it'll a big step up over 2 or 3 Circular fisheyes for real estate virtual images with a fairly easy shoot in the house.

And the cost of the cameras, lenses and rotators is very reasonable; Coolpix 8700 on eBay $500, FC-E9 $299 new, Agnos rotator $300 new.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Ian
I need to find out more about the Canon 15mm. There have been several mentions about it in Forum postings.

We've traded postings and I don't remember if you mentioned in any of them why you'd need a 12,000 x 6,000px equirec.

If you're going to print panos 12 x 6 ft (oops 4 x 2 meters) I can see the need for that kind of resolution

If you're going to produce interactive images for the Web it seems like major over kill. There's only so much screen area and bandwidth. And I assume it takes a ptretty healthy computer to stitch a 72,000,000pixel image

Please understand my perspective is a real estate VT photographer who's working to move up in quality & resolution for the hotel/resort industry. I just bought a Coolpix 8700 on eBay as one of many steps.

I understand Full-Frame fisheyes like the 10.5mm use all of a camera's pixels, the Cropped Fisheyes like the Sigma 8mm waste some area beyond the round edges and full Circlular fisheyes have even more wasted "black" area (I'm using a Coolpix 5400 and FC-E9 lens that produces a Circular fisheye), but "maximizing" pixel usage normally means more shots for a Full 360x360 image (full spherical or cubic) doesn't it?

I'm suprised some one could get a Full 360x360 spherical or cubic image from a Nikkor 10.5mm with just 3 or 4 shots. It just doesn't seem like it has enough picture to work with.

I'm just thinking in terms of a business situation where I would need to use methods & techniques to produce a high (not the highest) quality product on a consitant basis.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Your totally right Doug,
My first camera was the Olympus Camedia 2020 which has 2 mp sensor, and even the images from that are high enough quality for what i need in print never mind web which i still have to reduce down from 12,000 pixels long, to about 4000 to make it realistic in files size etc.

Even full screen tours don't need to be much higher than this.

To be honest i only got the 5D as it was a good price on EBay and came with full warranty, plus it also is excellent for my studio shoots. It also like i said a little earlier there just wanted to be future proof. And for an extra few hundred pounds on a camera i plan on keeping for quite some time, i didn't think it was too bad.

I have to say mind, i have the idea of making the Panos print out quite large, for wall picture size, but I'm also very aware that wall pictures don't need to be photo quality, as its very rare anybody will stand 3 inches away from it.

There are a few huge tourist attractions local to me, like the castle where Harry potter was filmed, and Durham Cathedral which i want to produce postcards and other material for using 360 degree panos.

I believe the way the 10.5mm lens will work on a full frame camera is in landscape, as even though a slice is missing from the sides, the top and bottom of the circular fish eye is on the canvas. This means when they are positioned side by side 4 at a time, the sides over lap anyway and then the top and bottom all nip up. Of course I'm sure there will be a few issues with another image needing to be photo shopped into it to make it seam stitch-less, but it will work.

But as you said Doug, for the commercial work, it is huge overkill, and i will probably set the camera to its lowest settings and even then still have to reduce the final image down to make it realistic. But i just wanted to make sure that the camera was good enough so when i walk 20 miles up a vertical mountain and take images at the top, it will be worth it and i can use it to almost any job i wish including print.

I have been asked by a Hotel chain in the Lake District to sell them a Canvas with a huge Pano 3 meters long from the top of Scarfell pike (the highest mountain in England), but the one i have already taken a few years back was with a 4mp camera and it just isn't high enough quality to print that size, so I'm going to have to drive 120 miles over there, and walk all the way to the top again, and retake the images with my new camera. But this time i want it to be right.

My whole life i have had a goal of climbing a substantial mountain such as the MatterHorn, K2 or Everest, you never know i might do it one day.

I think i better buy a lighter tripod if i do ;)

Hopefully they will be high enough quality for Hans to post on his site for everybody else to see.

Ian

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Rather than post a huge set of different comments, I've bundled it all up into one post:

I have heard about the "shaved" Nikon lens, but never understood what it meant, does it need to be re-engineered somehow, or is it an attachment to make it fit the Canon, rather than the Nikon?

The lenshood restricts the view because it was designed for a 1.6 crop camera, so people have been trimming off the lens hood. You also need an EOS to Nikon adapter, but there's no cutting involved there...

will that do as well as the 15mm lens as its only a 2mm difference

It's only 2mm difference, but fisheye lenses generally have a wider view for the same focal length. FoVCalculator is giving me:
17mm rectilinear lens: 70 x 93 degrees - or 2-3 rows of 6-7
15mm fisheye lens: 94 x 147 degrees - or a row of six plus an up shot

The 15mm is going to be at least twice as fast to shoot and stitch. The Canon 10-22mm won't physically fit on a 5D, it's only designed for the crop cameras, they call it and EF-S fit.

We've traded postings and I don't remember if you mentioned in any of them why you'd need a 12,000 x 6,000px equirec.

My background is large-format landscape, most of my income comes from big prints for the corporate art market, biggest print so far was 4 x 1.2m @ 200ppi. :-) As you say, it's overkill for most screen-based uses, on the other hand all that downsampling reduces noise if you have to crank the ISO rating up high.

Nikkor 10.5mm with just 3 or 4 shots. It just doesn't seem like it has enough picture to work

Jook uses the combo quite often, that's enough for me. ;-) I've also had a go with some samples that were posted to the PanoToolsNG list and was pleasantly surprised at the output quality. And for a fast workflow, the fewer pictures the faster the stitching tends to be...

a huge Pano 3 meters long from the top of Scarfell pike

Sounds like a great commission, might be worth taking a couple of different lenses and seeing which version comes out best.

Ian

Ian
I understand the Nikkor 10.5mm is used by many of the photographers. I just don't see how 3-4 shots can provide enough coverage for a fully spherical or cubic image.

I did some basic math and in "portrait" orientation the Horizontal FOV (short dimension) is only about 110°. That would use up at least 4 shots just to get 360° around with some overlap. And not much overlap. Vertically they would only have about 150° FOV so there would need to be a top and bottom shot to get full 360° x 360° coverage. That means at least 6 shots wouldn't it?

I understood the "Multi-Row" shoot technique has to be used with the 10.5mm lens in a sideways/portrait orientation; 6-8 shots around at level, 6-8 shots tilted up 45°, 6-8 shots tilted down 45°. I'm not sure if a Zenith and Nadir are needed. The results I've seen are awesome.

My point is there's just not enough FOV with the 10.5mm to produce full coverage with just 3-4 shots

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Hi Doug, was that with a full frame camera, or a 1.6 magnify camera?

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

I few weeks ago I asked Nikon's Online Support what the exact FOV would be with a Nikkor 10.5mm on a D80.

Their answer, after pressing them for a more precise answer than their initial one, was "180° accross the diagonal of the frame"

Knowing the FOV accross the diagonal, I just used a little geometry (Pythagorean theorem) to estimate the FOV along the sides of a frame with 1.3 to 1 aspect ratio (2592x1944 pixels) digital image.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Fisheye projection =/= rectilinear projection. The focal length of a fisheye lens effectively changes as you get towards the edge of the image, so regular geometry calculations that work fine with normal lenses give you the wrong results with fisheye lenses. :-( If you want the nitty-gritty maths, try http://wiki.panotools.org/Fisheye_Projection .
Also, pretty well ALL dSLRs (apart from the 4/3rds consortium) are 1.5:1 aspect ratio, not 1.3:1. This includes all Canon and Nikon dSLRs that I know of.

On a 5D, the 10.5mm fisheye has a view of approx. 150? across the narrow part of the image, the view across the full projected circle is somewhere over 190? - giving plenty of overlap with four images, and just enough with three, although you end up with the lower quality edges of the images in the final pano.

Ian

I knew my geometry wouldn't be precise, but figured it was close enough for discussion. I forgot DSLRs use a different aspect ratio than other didgital cameras like my Coolpixs

But 190° FOV changes everything.

Are you saying the FOV is 190° across the wide part of the image frame?

If so, with the camera in portrait orientation, there wouldn't be a need for a Zenith and Nadir shot.

With just 4 shots the work process would be simple enough for real estate virtual tours while benefiting from the 12.8 megapixels, the CMOS Sensor and the sharper, brighter pics the Nikkor 10.5mm is reported to produce compared to the Sigma 8mm.

Now I'm really intrigued. I'm loosely planning my next equipment upgrade for late 2007 or 2008 after the Coolpix 8700 I just got.

That would almost make the US$2800 price worth it.

Please let us know about that 190° FOV

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

You get a mostly complete circle, but it's cut off by the two long edges of the frame. So in portrait mode you get ~150? horizontally and ~190? vertically. Landscape mode wouldn't do the full sphere without an up shot.

Here's a sample image shot by Carlos Chegado (http://www.carloschegado.com):

Ian
That's cool!!

So the Nikkor 10.5mm produces a Cropped Fisheye on the Canon 5D like the Sigma 8mm does on other cameras.

Except the FOV from round edge to round edge is 190°

Do you know what the VFOV if a Sigma 8mm on the Canon 5D is?

Eliminating Zenith & Nadir shots simplifies the shoot time so much.

I think the other Ian needs to forget the Sigma and Peleng lenses and pay the little extra for the Nikkor.

Just out of curiousity, do you know if any of the less expensive Canon DSLRs (around US$1000) work with the Nikkor lens like this?

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

I've not seen any samples of the Sigma 8mm on a 5D, but would suspect that the edges of the image circle would be pretty low in quality.

The FoV across the whole image circle should be a bit under 180?, i remember Jook saying that his Nikkor 8mm wouldn't quite cover 180?.

Ian

Hi Doug, that's why i have spent more money on my camera equipment than my 200bhp turbo diesel BMW cost me. I figured the equipment is powerful enough to produce print quality images, but also to produce fast turn around high quality images for commercial work like estate agents and hotels etc.

Also Ian dropped this link above in the forum and it explains some excellent info about the 2 lenses and comparisons of them
http://michel.thoby.free.fr/Blur_Panorama/Nikkor10-5mm_or_Sigma8mm/Sigma...

I will be definitely getting the Nikon 10.5mm lens after this conversation, as it seams pointless getting anything else. Im a little worried about the conversion plate and the fact it wont allow communication between the lens and camera, which means you need to lock the aperture by hand as Hans did here
http://www.panoramas.dk/adapter/canon-nikon-adapter.html

As soon as i have some samples i will pop them on, but i imagine it will be a few weeks from now, as i need to buy the lens and ring and then practice a little.

and doug, yerp, it fits all EOS SLR cameras including film

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Ian & Ian
What do you think of the idea of a section in "Learn about VR" where members could tell what camera, lens & rotator combination they use and what they like & don't like about it?

Members could post a sample Virtual Image produced with the combo and the source pics like iPIX had on this comparison of the Nikkor & Sigma lens.

If you click on the Source Sample graphic, the new page shows the pictures (not all of them are there) and have a box in the lower right corner to download the actual source pics.
http://www.ipix.com/products_iis_samples.html

If I had known this was here I would have been able to test PTGui a lot sooner instead of having to wait til I got the Manfrotto 300N Panhead to use with my 2-stop-only iPIX rotator.

By having actual source photos, Members could experiment with other camera, lens & rotator combos without spending thousands of dollars, pounds or euros to get their hands on the equipment, just to find out a particular setup isn't the best solution for them.

It would really make IVRPA.org different from any other site about Virtual Photography.

The Public would only be able to see a list of camera, lens and rotator combos, but only Members could get into the text about the combos and downloadable photos.

As well as an awesome resource, it would probably be a big membership generator.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Doug
I have been building a review system in my website for the new version which I'm trying to find time to build up.

I will be trying to compile a full list of all hardware and software used in this industry with reviews able to be wrote about each produced by registered members to stop nutters filling it with spam.

I was going to be contacting members on here to see if they can supply panos produced with set combinations such as

5D - sigma 8mm
5D - Nikkor 10.5mm
30D - Sigma 8mm
and so on

And yes i was going to try and have the original pano available as well.

I have quite a huge amount of hosting space allocated for it.

Also each item i can get hold of for a short period of time to photograph and make into an objectVR, so people can see it from any angle as well.

I have also made many tutorials for the system in flash, in the same way as i have done this for the CMS system (Joomla) i use.
http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/site/tutorials/intro.htm

Each item will also have all the technical info i can find, so allowing it to be quite intensive.

This is going to be spread to many products, allowing other companies to link to the page and showing full info about then, this includes mobiles and TVs etc.

I already have the system ready on my test server. But the whole site needs more work yet as it has bugs.

Ian

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

I understand the Nikkor 10.5mm is used by many of the photographers. I just don't see how 3-4 shots can provide enough coverage for a fully spherical or cubic image.

You can't actually take the photos in the normal portrait orientation. You'll get the most overlap at an angle. This is exploited in an Agnos head that you can see here. The really fascinating use for a setup like this is the 3-camera one-shot solution. (Note: I realize that these are all showing the Sigma 8 lens on a Nikon camera, but the 10.5 on the 5D actually gives more coverage than the Sigma8/Nikon).

An example of a 3-shot 10.5/5D combination can be seen on the World Wide Panorama: Carlos Chegado.

On a full frame sensor, using fovCalculator from Kekus, I get 235° landscape FOV, 139° portrait FOV, and "not a number"(!) diagonal FOV.

Landis
I hadn't thought of how much picture there would be to work with in one of the new "Angled" rotators. I'm still trying to visualize how the overlaps and coverage would work.

Though if I remember, we were talking in terms of a Nodal Ninja rotator.

So I'll qualify my statement, other than with a rotator that can position the image frame at an angle, I don't see how a Nikkor 10.5mm lens could provide enough "photo" to completely cover a cubic or spherical image in just 3 or 4 shots.

Can't you get the "Full Frame" coverage with a Sigma 8mm just by zooming a little?

That Agnos (is it a rotator???) three camera mount must be how some of the members get those "crowd" scenes with no seam problems.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

You can't zoom with the 8mm, it's a fixed focal length lens, as is the 10.5mm.

Seam problems are as much an issue of careful timing, and the use of things like Smartblend and manual editing of layer masks in Photoshop.

Ian

Landis
My mistake, the Nodal Ninja was in another thread where the photographer was using Canon cameras

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Hi Ian, Can i ask what you mean by Shaved

A much better fit would be a 'shaved' Nikon 10.5mm

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

I already said further up the page, but to repeat, it's where the lens hood has been cut off, because on a full-frame camera it cuts out the edges of the image.

Ian

Sorry about that Ian, i thought it meant something else like machining the fitting face, which terrified me, even though I'm an engineer by trade.

I have had a quick look around Google and found a few handy links for others reading this as well

The Nikon - Canon adaptor, i found this link through panoramas.dk
http://www.dvdtechnik.com/?p=res&id=&mid=79&cur=usd

Nikon 10.5 lens page
http://www.nikon-image.com/eng/Nikkor_Lenses/dx/af-dxfisheye10a.htm

Also a guy who has far too much time on his hands and needs to go to the pub, has made this web page about the adapters ;)
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/nikcan.htm

I assume the Nikon lens above is the same as the Nikkor Lens we are all talking about here, as ive never picked up Nikon SLR before and I thought Nikkor was a different company like Sigma is from canon.

Ian

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

It's scary enough! Nikkor is just the 'brand name' within Nikon for their lenses, I think it used to be a separate division.

Ian

Hi there

The main differences in the cameras are the size of the sensor, not the mega pixels, but the physical size of the sensor.

The 10D, 20D, 30D 400D are all 1.6 times smaller than a 35mm film negative. So the lens is magnified by 1.6 times. This means you slap a 10mm lens on the front of it, and it will actually look exactly like a 16mm lens when you’re looking through the view finder.

The 5D and 1DsMKii are the only full frame cameras (that I know of), so the sensor is the same size as the 35mm negative film, meaning a 10mm lens is a 10 mm lens. But you pay for what you get of course.

There are a few 1.3 magnify cameras out there, there is loads of other info in these forums about particular cameras like this.

The 10.5mm Nikor lens will fit any Nikon or Canon EOS camera, but for the canon you need an adapter plate which is mentioned in detail earlier in this post. The plate also unfortunately stops the camera communicating with the lens, so auto focus and aperture doesn’t work anymore. But it’s not a huge problem on a lens this wide.

The 10.5mm lens when fitted to a Nikon or Canon camera, give a diagonal 18 degree image. So it’s not like your Nikon set up there where you see the whole hemi sphere, it’s actually more like the edges are cut off, but leave a small segment of the edge. So if the camera is on an angle 45 degree tilt, it has 180 degree view from the top to bottom. But if it’s on a 5D, it snips off the edges slightly, but in general has the top and bottom of the portrait so allows very good stitching with 3 or 4 images.

The blurring you have won’t be form the amount of pixels you have, for I’ve used a 2mp Olympus Camedia for 5 yrs, and gave some amazing results. Here are a few

http://www.quicktimevirtualreality.com/bridge/
http://www.quicktimevirtualreality.com/calendar/
http://www.quicktimevirtualreality.com/postcard/

So you need to have a play with it a little more, and see what you are doing wrong. The 4500 camera is an excellent piece of kit; I used to have the 990 and FC-E8 lens, and was amazed with it, but lost it in a burglary.

The 8mm like discussed earlier in this forum thread, is excellent for the 20,30D, but for my 5D it has too much black wasting pixels, so I opted the 10.5mm which I’m still waiting for!

But with a tight budget, you can see here with the tags system, which movies used the 20D http://beta.ivrpa.org/taxonomy/term/179 which you can pick up for next to nothing compared to some to some of the other cameras available. You can click on the “read more” on each image and see what lenses they used and what software etc, so you can have an idea of what you need.

I hope this helps a little.
Ian

www.newworlddesigns.co.uk
www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

If you're doing real estate virtual tours, your camera and lens are a very good setup.

One drawback to switching to either the Nikkor or Sigma lens and another camera, is not being able to produce a Full 360°x 360° image from just 2 shots.

The Angle of View of the FC-E8 on that camera is 183° so 2 fisheyes can cover the whole interior of a sphere of cube.

The reduced work flow of just 2 fisheyes makes the lower price of real estate tours more acceptable

You didn't mention what you're using for a rotator. I ask because depending on whether you can put the camera in a portrait orienation, you may be able to zoom until the curve of the image is just short of the top & bottom and take more pictures around the horizontal to make up for the part of the circle that gets cropped on the sides. But you won't need a top & bottom shot to fill the cube or sphere.

I can e-mail you 2 fisheyes from my Nikon Coolpix 5400/FC-E9 to try to stitch. The FC-E9 doesn't produce the "lens flares" the E8 does and on the 5400 it has a 190° Angle of View so the seams almost never show up. There's a thumbnail of 2 fisheyes from this Camera/Lens and an iPIX Rotator in my Member Gallery.

I haven't started using the 8mp Coolpix 8700 I just got a few weeks ago, or I'd offer a couple shots from it.

All in all you should be able to get pretty good quality from that setup. I used a 2 megapixel Coolpix 950 with the FC-E8 for 5 years.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

I reread your post and saw the mention of a larger screen size.

How big are you trying to display the images?

Four megapixels in a circular fisheye isn't enough image for a 1024x768 or 800x600 full screen display, 640x480 would probably be the limit

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

woh ~ da8iwr and Doug thanks for you superb clear answer. I SO HAPPY to hear you guys said the setting is fine. now i can focus on other things. oh my 50% headache gone just like that. YES!

you guys answer are so straight to the problem. Now i can pretend to be a pro also and advice my friends. ha ha just joking only.

i never mention about rotator because i too shy to tell i simply don't have one. sorry. I did some research, seem like lot of people using nodal ninja and is the cheapest. But when i browse the website further i found remark that it doesn't support big fisheye FC-E8 and E9. I was so so let down. Is this correct? anyone try that before ? Doug (my nearest example )you're using IPIX 5400. Its website says only support camera specific and never mention Coolpix 4500. So what rotator can fix 4500 then ? help.

my tripod is also cheap brand. one day i pass by a 2nd shop and walked out with a Sakure TR-35. Maybe later i should get a more decent one from E-bay. Doug what tripod you use ?

2mp Olympus Camedia ROCK ! A1. Really can't believe my eyes.

what is "lens flares" ? Later i will download 2 thumbnail and stich and see what happen. Will let you know. Pls email picture from your 8700 if you free. Thanks. What rotator and Tripod you have on 950?

I take 3 fisheye pictures with normal setting. Each file is about 700KB. After stiched is about 250kb. When display over 90% of 14inches screen, it becomes blur. If less it to 50% is fine. I guess need to work hard to improve things.

Quick answers as I'm in the middle of food :)

Rotators are probably the most important thing in VR photography. It doesn't need ot be a super duper expensive head, just accurate. My first head was a Kaidan Kiwi 2000 designed specifically for the camedia camera, and was perfect. It cost about £180 if i remember rightly a long time back in 1998 i think it was maybe just after. But i have just recently spent a fortune on the Manfrotto 303SPH, which is about £400 or so.

But so far i have spent about a million hours trying to get it exactly right and its close but not as accurate as the Kaidan head. Because it simply isn't designed for one camera, it is a multi head, so i have to calibrate it my self. But its just time consuming not difficult.

So get what you can afford and move up from there. You will be amazed at what you can get away with. For my Nikon 990, i used a piece of bent mental with holes drilled in it, and it worked perfect. So you could even do that if you want.

A tripod, don't worry too much, just get the best one you can, all you need is a strong as possible tripod to eliminate shake and movement. My first was given to me for free, and was terrible, but worked (i think i took them images i showed you with it), i then got a cobra tripod, which was about £80 second hand, but i actually got it for free as I made a deal with a photography company and i designed them a simple holding page website. Since then i have rebuilt it a few times and now they have a full site which they paid for. So i got a free tripod and was paid :).

I recently i just bought a heavy duty manfrotto tripod, as the 5D was too heavy for the last cobra, but it only cost me £130 brand new in a shop (not on the net), which isn't too bad.

Lens flares are where light hits the lens on an angle and bounces around a bit and makes the flare mark on the image. Take another look at the images i linked to, the moon is flared, as there was a slight bit of finger print on the lens, but it look like a flare.

And if your stitching 3 images at 700kb, it should be about 3 times 700kb so about 2.1mb. If any smaller then you have it set to compress. Some of my 4mp panos stitched with 14 photos come out at about 300mb in size on full res. so don't be surprised if its big.

Speak soon Ian
right back to food he-he

www.QuickTimeVirtualReality.com

Both the E8 & E9 have a diameter that extends below the bottom of many cameras and thus won't clear the vertical arm of a lot of rotators.

Agnos.com has rotators specificly for the E8 and E9 that solve this problem and aren't too expensive.

Or you can watch eBay for some one selling one of the iPIX rotators for the Coolpix 4500. Run a search and save it and eBay will e-mail you when a new item meeting your requirements comes up for auction.

But the iPIX Rotators are almost all 2-stops. I get 3 or more stops by putting the iPIX Rotator on top of a Manfrotto 300N panhead that lets be do 2, 3, 4 stops on up.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Welcome to the forum!

1. You can't. At least, not easily.

Option 1 is to remove the legs afterwards in photoshop, option 2 is to bring the legs of the tripod in close together so that they show up less, but the tripod gets less stable. Option 4 is to shoot the panorama, take the tripod away and then hold the camera pointing down in the same position it had been in on the tripod, giving you a clear view of the ground.

2. Your friend is probably thinking of wide-angle interior shots on a large-sensor camera.

Most compacts go up to f11 at most, but they effectively have more depth of field for a given f-stop than a larger camera. Fishete lenses also have massive depth of field compared to other lenses, f7.5 and f10.5 will be fine!

3. See above. :-)

Ian

thanks for the welcome. now i'm a proud member of this website. this is a remarkable day in my life. I actually receive a rotator from Italy. haha so happy. i told my friends about it and they all can't believe it.

for start, this is my work (lousy). thanks for viewing. any comment welcome.

http://www.geocities.com/property_3d/DSCN3152_v2.jpg

Ian's right, you won't be able to get the tripod out of the photo. The FC-E8 and FC-E9 lenses have an angle of view of 183°, so it can "see" straight up and straight down.

One possible solution may be in your software, the iPIX Interactive Studio (no longer available) has a function to Insert a Tripod Cap (any image you want to use) over the tripod. Take a look at the Ballon Museum image in my Member Gallery and tilt down. I think RealViz Stitcher Unlimited has this tool too. There's a description/link on the PTGui website that describes a method to put a Tripod Cap into an Equirectangular Projection using Photoshop, but I haven't figured it out yet.

The other method is to edit out as Ian mentioned. I was just trading e-mails with George Thomas at Channel360.com, a RealViz seller in Washington state, about something related to this. What we came up with was RealViz Stitcher outputing the the 6 cubic faces as 6 separate images and editing the tripod out of the bottom face. The benefit of this method is the warp/distortion is corrected in these faces so copy/pasting or using the rubber stamp tool in Photoshop doesn't have to deal with curved lines in floor tiles

Here's what George quickly created using 2 fisheyes I sent him. There is a slight alignment problem, but that's not what we were working on;

ftp://channel360.com/pub/doug_ipix/

The file "doug_test_d.jpg" is the Bottom Face and he quickly edited out the tripod to show what Stitcher could do. Then we could use the 6 faces as source images and have Stitcher convert them into an EquiRec Projection or what ever other outputs RealViz Stitcher can do

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

You mention the Coolpix 8700 & 8800, but I'm not sure if you have one or do I remember you have a Coolpix 4500?

Depending on what you're doing virtual images for, real estate, hobby, etc, the 4500 should serve you well.

I want to get an Agnos MRotator for my FC-E9 too, because I want to try something to get even more "image" out of the camera & lens;

You can "zoom" the Coolpixes with the FC-E9 fisheye on it.

On my 5 mega pixel Coolpix 5400, the fisheye circle is only about 1325 pixels in diameter at the default, but by zooming until the circle just fits in the height of the frame I get a circle that's 1925 pixels accross. That gives me a fisheye circle with 110% more pixels. I can really notice the difference in the virtual images.

With the Agnos MRotator for the FC-E9 I can turn the camera to a portrait position, zoom until the diameter (in this position, the height) of the circle is almost 2550 pixels on my 5400 or 3200 pixels on my new 8700. The photo will look like the Cropped Fisheye (hockey rink shape) the Sigma 8mm produces on many DSLRs.

The big benefit is the Angle of View is still 190° on the 5400 and 183° on the 8700, so I still don't need a Zenith (top) or Nadir (bottom) just more one or two shots around the horizontal. This will use much more of the image sensor's pixels, giving me even more resolution

You may be able to the same thing with the MRotator and your camera.

Why don't you start a new Forum post when you get some virtual images completed and posted to the Members Gallery. I'd be interested seeing your results with the new rotator.

Good luck

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM