PanoTools NG:
Re: Game changer
Roger D Williams roger@... 2015-Jan-14 11:12:38
Well, let's be clear. I am passing on hearsay, having not tried this myself. But I have seen examples of the technique, so I do know it works, and I've read everything I could find about it.
Sent from my iPad
> On Jan 13, 2015, at 8:35 PM, 'Keith Martin' #removed# [PanoToolsNG] <#removed#> wrote:
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> On 13 Jan 2015, at 7:04, Roger D Williams #removed# [PanoToolsNG] wrote:
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> The trick is to take many frames--far more than needed for Wim's one camera approach--and take only a very narrow slice of each frame when building the final panorama.
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> How many slices are we talking about here? The process is not suitable for raves or street demos, but I must admit those aren't the only kinds of thing I shoot... ;)
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> Typically, the examples I have seen use the video capabilities of the DSLR rather than still frames.
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> Do you think that's largely because of the overall quantity of data that would be involved? Full HD is just 2 megapixels, which is ludicrous for showing full-screen panos on modern screens. 4K is much better by comparison, but it's still only around 8 megapixels ? not my kind of wonderful. Oh boy, I seem to be talking myself into handling gigapixel levels of data. :-/
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The key concept is that you don't handle huge numbers of multi megabyte files. You take all the frames during a video sequence taken as you swing around the scene using the video mode. You can swing around the scene in as few seconds as you want if you are taking, say, 50 or 60 frames per second. Of course you have to choose a rate of rotation that does not introduce blurring, and since you're not going to be looking at the video as such, you can select a higher shutter speed than would normally be appropriate for video (where blurring can actually help to make subject motion look more natural). Then you select every Nth frame, where N is some convenient number. Then you apply your slicing software to the individual frames you have selected, and stitch the thin, individual slices. Et voila!
I must confess it took me a while to get my head around this, but by then I had found that the resolution was not going to satisfy me and gave up on it...
I suppose that if you have two mirrorless cameras with a high enough sustained rate of continuous multiple exposures you could use the full resolution of still images rather than be limited to video. I won't be traveling this road, however, as I had enough of a problem convincing our bread earner (my wife) that I needed ONE A6000. Of course, if I find a fellow enthusiast in Japan who has an A6000, we could combine our efforts...
Roger W
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