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Really useful info, all of it! But one thing that’s odd is how all Sam Rohn’s posts are ‘by’ Leon. Is there a site glitch?
k
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.com“the problem was evident before Mr. Schrader stepped to fill the vacancy of president after Mr. Martin left.”
Please stop mischaracterizing things. I left because I could not find a way to improve things, as my resignation letter shows. And I finished my term as president and Juergen started his in the normal manner; there was no ‘vacancy after I left.’ Your wording is dishonest.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comThere isn’t one ‘best’ DSLR I’m afraid. As a general point Nikon, Canon, Sony and others make some excellent cameras. When it comes to what is best for you, that depends on a number of factors including the kind of work you want to do and your budget.
For example, the Nikon D7500 is a great camera, as is the D7200 it replaced, and their prices are relatively affordable. These are both DX sensor cameras, so any lens you use is effectively 50% ‘longer’ than normal; a 50mm lens delivers the view angle of a 75mm lens and so on. For 360 VR shooting it’s normal to use as wide an angle lens as possible, so this can be a slight challenge – but it’s not impossible to deal with.
Alternatively, the Nikon D850 is an absolutely incredible camera, and it has an FX (full size) sensor. You could buy this tomorrow and still be using it very happily in 2029… but it costs a LOT more.What kind of stuff do you plan to shoot? What is your budget?
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comHi Gustav – you may find a tool I made useful. Exif Fixer helps people get panoramas working in Facebook, including cylinders and partial panoramas.
See http://thatkeith.com/exiffixer for details and download links. Oh, and it’s free.
Keith
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comFor the record, while we were investigating the reason for Luc’s inability to post his statement I posted it for him. He subsequently asked for it to be withdrawn, which I did once I had confirmed that he really wanted this.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comCandidate statements are not the place for these discussions; these are formal election statements. Everyone is welcome to start a separate post if they wish to ask questions. Please keep things civil.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comNo, as per previous elections, once a vote is cast it cannot be changed.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comIt is indeed important to do this because you want to help. It’s more important to be interested in helping the organisation than having a lengthy resumé.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.com1
I’ve been interested in 360 photography since Apple first showed QuickTime VR, over 20 years ago! I got into it properly (as opposed to just experiments) around 2005, with the help of a friend.2
I enjoy many different kinds of 360 capture. I particularly love the creative and technical challenges involved in festivals, clubs and similar dynamic environments, although ‘specialise’ is a more exclusive, limiting term than I would use.3
Could you give a bit more context to this question? It’s a bit vague…4
Hmm…5
This has been a topic that has caused a lot of vexation over the years. I don’t think it’s a good thing to throw out numbers without a TON of context, and even then there’s the question of whether this strays into price fixing territory to consider.6
What are you proposing? Are you launching a service?7
See number 68
No. It’s a personal decision: I didn’t want the hassle of having to follow requirements that didn’t fit my aims or keep on top of the shifting sands.9
Yes. I’m looking forward to reading your responses to number 6 (and 7). :)10
‘360 over VR’? Please don’t go down the route of saying something isn’t VR unless it’s in a headset! That’s IMMERSIVE VR, a very effective way to deliver 360 media but not the only thing that can claim the VR term. QuickTime VR was launched over 20 years ago. 360 content can be delivered in many ways, all different forms of delivering VR experiences. Perhaps our glossary might help? https://ivrpa.org/about-ivrpa/virtual-reality-photography-glossary/Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comHi Sandi, that’s a lot of questions! Some are potentially contentious, so I’ll think them through rather than just rattle off quick thoughts.
I’m also curious – what’s the project, who is it for?
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comI’m not a fan of that kind of tour; it pushes photographers away from producing high-end creative work and into churning out ‘waypoint’ snapshot panos. Of course, if that’s bringing in the money… :)
You need to make your own choice about how much work you’re prepared to put in and what resolution is actually required for whatever you’re aiming to produce and how it is to be delivered.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comYour 16mm lens is a fisheye, not a wide angle. Although its ‘mm’ number is larger it sees further than the 14mm ultrawide does, so if you switch to shooting with the 14mm you’ll need to change your shooting pattern – take more shots and as Aaron says shoot multiple rows.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comIf you want to shoot equirectangular (‘spherical’) panoramas rather than cylinders they MUST be 2:1 width to height ratio. I’m afraid I don’t have the linguistic knowledge to browse your site effectively, I apologise!
How do you stitch your images together? What software do you use?
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comGiven recent GDPR requirements I would rather not consider adding new automated email alerts until we have time to consider the ramifications and make sure we have appropriate systems in place to manage this.
Keith
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comI agree transparency is important. The 2017 report deadline has been extended by three months by formal agreement with the tax authorities, as we have had delays with getting some documents back from the Austrian accountant we used for the Vienna conference. The numbers are fine and the final report will be published within the official schedule, please bear with us.
I apologise for the missing reports; I wasn’t aware until recently that the ones for 2015 and 2016 were not in the proper place. Maybe you can help get to the bottom of this, Luc, as you were President for some of that time? Regardless, we will find the final report documents AND the meeting minutes and post them ASAP.
Keith
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comHi Rick,
Wow, Kaidan QuickPan Pro? That’s a blast from the past! I have one at home. It’s an impressively robust bit of kit, but I’d only recommend using it if all other options were not available; it’s huge, heavy, and a bit of a fiddle to assemble.
However, I may have a printed copy of the manual that I could scan. I’ll look for it and let you know.
KeithKeith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comA short statement from someone who has done SUCH a lot for the group! Respect.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comImproving the organisation’s links with education is a big part of my goals, as always – and with the development of two major VR-specific courses at the University of the Arts London we’re well placed to do that. This will also help us be a bridge between education and industry, in ways that only a dedicated non-profit organisation with world-class expert members can do effectively.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comThanks Luc! Absolutely – it’s rewarding and important but requires active participation.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comCould you also tell us a bit more about your output settings? As long as your input images are fine it’s all going to be down to the options chosen for the output.
k
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comIn which case, to qualify for the lower price you’d need to be a Google Trusted Photographer when you purchased the head.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comIf you can access your own web space the best approach will be to separate the two requirements: creating a virtual tour, and making it available only to certain people.
1. Create your virtual tour using any up-to-date industry-standard tool. I suggest Pano2VR, but there are others.
2. Upload the finished tour to a directory on your site and work out whatever level of web-based security you prefer. This can be simply putting the tour into a directory that doesn’t have public links into it (‘security through obscurity’), slightly more pro-active JavaScript password scripts, all the way to server-level htaccess name/password access control.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comAlexandre, this is very cool! Belated thanks. :)
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comYou mentioned 360 video – what software do you use to prepare your final 360 content?
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comAdding to this, 360Cities is worth checking out. You have unlimited uploads, and Pro accounts include embedding in third party sites with control over the display.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comIf the light level difference isn’t too extreme you can do a lot by processing a single set of shots at the RAW processing point, recovering burned out highlights (as long as they aren’t actually blown and clipped) and lifting dark shadows. But if the difference is strong the only safe, professional solution (short of custom lighting control, which is very complex for 360 work) is to shoot bracketed exposures and blend/fuse the exposures together either before stitching (my preference) or as part of the stitching software’s own workflow (another good method, just not my own preference).
Whatever you do, don’t shift the exposures for individual shots in one set. :)
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comIf you make edits to an equirect in Photoshop you always run the risk of this kind of problem. It’s generally better, where possible, to do that kind of adjustment to the individual images before you stitch. If this isn’t possible you can extract the zenith and nadir and do some touch-up work to eliminate the glitch.
If your edits changed the left and right extremes differently and you now have a vertical line where the equirect wraps around and joins up that’s a tougher fix – but it’s doable by using Photoshop’s Offset filter (Filter > Other > Offset) to bring the seam around to the middle of the image and a separate process to extract the zenith and nadir for patching.
I use Pano2VR for extracting patches from an equirect for fix-up edits, but I do my very best to make any and all wholesale adjustments to the individual shots before I stitch anything.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comThe IVRPA logo is a PNG with transparency, which helps it blend into the ‘look & feel’ of your site. Using it should be fairly self-explanatory, but in case it’s any help I’ll list a few basic pointers…
- Use the entire logo; don’t crop off the text on the right. You and I know what the diamond and circle graphic means, but until we complete our plans for world domination most normal people won’t.
- To avoid encroaching on the visible part of the graphic, the pixel area of the image shouldn’t be cropped. This example shows the actual pixel area of the logo:
- If the background of your page behind where you place the logo is visually busy (i.e. has a strong pattern or other distinct content) and is likely to clash with or obscure the logo, particularly the type, please put it into a container with an opaque fill. White is preferred.
- This graphic is 600x300px. Scaling the image down to 50% (300x150px) will work well, but smaller sizes will lose legibility.
Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.comHi Aaron,
Very interesting feedback! Thanks – the project got pushed back somewhat and I’m still thinking and tinkering. Useful stuff here, I’ll be re-reading this and rethinking my experiment plans. :)Keith Martin
PanoramaPhotographer.com and ExifFixer.com
IVRPA - The International Virtual Reality Professionals Association is an international association of photographers who create and produce 360° Panoramas and other Virtual Reality Content including 360° Video, 360° Virtual Tours, Gigapixel Panoramas, and more.
This website showcases both our members and VR Photography community enthusiasts, and serves as a central place for news and communication for the 360° VR industry.
Professional and amateur and 360° VR photographers are encouraged to