Virtual tour panorama

[elyshiamadison]

Just wondering does anyone have any experience photographing panorama's for virtual tours?

I've been asked to shoot a chain of BBQ stores in Sydney, we've done a dry run (which the owner of the business loved)... but I've learnt that my pano's aren't the right ratio. I need 2:1 for the software to create the pano. Is there a simple calculation I can do of how many shots high and wide I need to complete this? Or is it simply a case of trial and error? Especially factoring in lens distortion and overlapping areas. (One thing I learnt on that shoot was all about lens distortion....grrrr)

The Pano's I took last time worked - but needed to be cropped to create the tour, so some of the warehouse was missing.... I really want to be able to give them a 360 deg view.

I can supply an example later tonight when I plug in the external drive ;)

[MajickStudio]

Hi Elyshia,
It's a little difficult to help without a bit more info ....
I'd not brag about it ... but I'm pretty good with photoshop - I'm curious about what pano software you're using ?
also, it might be a simplistic question but ~ what is the ratio of the shots you've taken ?
also what camera/lenses are you using ?
I'm sure someone can help with a little more info ;)

[elyshiamadison]

I'll find the ratio of the images tonight - their on the external drive. And I'll load a pic too.

Using panotools, it's a free prog... I didn't want to fork out hundreds of dollars that some other companies wanted for their software, to only use it for maybe 3 tours!
Is there a way to do it in PS (the tour not the pano)? I never even thought to try there!

[Remorhaz]

I've done a number of Pano's using various software (I've tried about a dozen different packages but used Panorama Factory the most as it's one of the most flexible for both creating the actual stitched panorama image, supporting very wide lenses and also for auto cropping a 360 degree panorama and creating the output format (e.g. QTVR, etc)).

If by 360 degree you mean horizontal but not vertical then I'd just use whatever your widest lens is and shoot vertical frames on a tripod (ideally rotating around the nodal point but not critical at least not for things not really close (e.g. under 1m) to the camera) with about 30 to 50% overlap between frames. How many frames is determined by the lens focal length - e.g. using my 8-16mm rectilinear UWA lens on my crop sensor D90 (12mm equiv focal length) I take eight (8) 50% overlapped images to do a full 360.

If you mean a full 360 degree (both horizontal and vertical) panorama then you either need a rediculously wide lens (e.g. 8mm and or fisheye) with at least 180 degree coverage or shoot multiple rows (which is much harder). This will however give you a flattened image which is about 2:1 when projected cylindrically or spherically.

You normally don't look at the flattened projection however and certainly not when used in the virtual tour viewer. Most viewers normally have some controls which allow you to specify the projection and parameters of the source panorama image (e.g. HFOV (usually 360 degrees), VFOV, zoom, etc).

[elyshiamadison]

Thanks for taking the time to post all of that!

Downloading the trial as I type, hopefully it's a little more forgiving than the other program I was using.

Will let you know how I go.

[elyshiamadison]

Again have to say THANK YOU! That program did exactly what I needed it to... without the headache!
I'll be buying a copy! I love that it gives you the option of not doing the "full" 360, which is where the headaches were starting with the other program.