Category Archives: Panoramas

Make 360 degree QTVR panoramas

Virtual reality revisited

Panoramas

Better tools and some thoughts on Flash.

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I have decided to do some new work in Virtual Reality panoramas, having written extensively in these pages about the technique some four years ago. Snow Leopard refuses to let either PTMac – the software used to stitch the constituent images – or CubicConverter – which converts the stitched panorama into Virtual Reality format – work, so my first port of call was to ace panoramic pro UK photographer Rod Edwards. Rod has got this technique down and one of the most stunning examples of VR I have seen is his panorama of the famous Racetrack in California’s Death Valley which can be seen by clicking here.

Following Rod’s advice I settled on PTGui for stitching and Pano2VR for VR generation. Processing VR panoramas is a two step process – first stitch the constituent images into a seamless flat whole, then convert that image into a circular panorama which the viewer can pan at will in all directions, not to mention the ability to zoom in and out.

In the process I learned a couple of things. First, the software is now friendlier than before, though the Panotools engine used by PTGui seems identical to that used by the obsolete PTMac. Second, Pano2VR is an excellent tool making it easy to add sound, navigation controls and copyright data. But, most importantly, I learned how superior Adobe’s Flash is to Apple’s Quicktime. Yes, Pano2VR can generate VR files in either format. The Flash versions are half the size and offer far more control. Panning in Flash panoramas is also much smoother than the jerky alternative in Quicktime. Yes, the very same Flash which greedy piggy Steve Jobs has banned from the iPad. It’s ironical that Quicktime VR is no longer supported by Apple’s own latest version of their media player, QuickTime X, as they appear to be abadoning the VR format. But you don’t expect Apple to tell you that now, do you?

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So to play a jerky Quicktime VR pano you have to download the older Quicktime 7 if it’s not on your system. Let’s hope the anti-trust powers stomp on Jobs’s arrogance and force him to open the iPad to Flash. If not, the competition will see to it in any case, and I’ll be first in line for a tablet which plays Flash and has a built in SDXC card reader. What a jerk! Here’s a guy who has a monster ego and a huge vendetta against Adobe for some reason. A little power is a dangerous thing ….

As a quick proof of concept, I snapped six pictures of a loft interior using the Canon 5D and Canon fisheye lens mounted vertically on the King Pano panoramic head. The excellent King Pano remains available and I recommend it. You do not need a fisheye to use it but a fisheye lens is the way to go if you want to do 360 degree Virtual Reality panoramas. Even with regular lenses, the King Pano is immensely useful as it provides the correct nodal point offset for the camera, meaning your efforts to stitch images properly will be speedily rewarded. Determination of the right setting for rotation of your rig about your lens’s nodal point is not that hard, and well explained in many places on the web, including on this site.

As proof of concept, click on the picture below. I have added some Vivaldi to jolly things along and the whole thing takes a minute or so to download. I did not bother using HDR, though that technique is highly recommended in VR work owing to the huge dynamic range frequently encountered – look at the burned out windows as an example. HDR fixes that. Nor did I fill the zenith and nadir holes, concentrating on the core stitching functionality instead. So next week it’s off to Point Lobos to do the real thing. In the image below I used TIFF files for maximum definition and you are looking at the Flash version.

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Click to load and play the panorama. Use the mouse to navigate in all directions.
Will NOT play on an iPad.

To view a selection of my earlier panoramas, please click here. These use Quicktime7.

Disclosure: No connection to, or investment in, any of the companies mentioned in this article.

The Race Track improved

Panoramas, Photographers

Dykinga was good. Edwards is better

There’s a magical place in Death Valley, Arizona and it’s called the Race Track playa.

Jack Dykinga illustrated it in his magnificent book which I reviewed a couple of years ago. Simply stated, stones of substantial mass move, magically, yet no one has ever seen this occur. I choose not to dwell on the reasons. Some things are simply magic. The Race Track is one of those.

Why not leave it there?

Well, because a fine photographer whose work I have been privileged to mention here on occasion, has done it better.

Rod Edwards, a UK professional, is that photographer and he has taken Dykinga’s work to a higher level in his rendition of that phenomenal place in Death Valley.

I have been unsuccessful in monetizing my QTVRs, much as I have tried. I would take my iBook around various wineries in central California and show them to proprietors, only to be met with blank stares. Indeed, when I had my one man show I considered including a couple of big screen TVs to better show them off, sound effects and all, but gave up on the idea based on those self same stares.

However, to Edwards’s credit, he has persevered and has been justly rewarded with a commission from Britain’s National Trust – an institution which you can best learn about from the wonderful writings of James Lees-Milne, a magnificent conservator and writer about the early years of the NT. Simply stated, the National Trust is charged with the preservation of the UK’s architectural and cultural heritage – a rare good use of taxpayer monies.

No need to dwell further on the subject – just click on the picture below.


Rod Edwards’s Race Track

Update August 27, 2014: The mystery of the moving stones has finally been solved and you can read all about it here.

Immersive media

Panoramas

A step up from QTVR.

I have written a lot in this journal about my discovery and adoption of QTVR 360 degree virtual reality photography using Quicktime and a special camera mount. If you would like to see some of the results of my efforts, please click here.

Now all of that is old hat!


Immersive Media’s Dodeca 360 camera

How about a 360 degree movie version? Click here for a demonstration. The camera, by Immersive Media has no fewer than eleven lenses and can be worn on the head, for those seeking to emulate the man from Mars. It seems pretty light.

Now where’s my check book?

Adding sound to QTVR panoramas – Part II

Panoramas, QTVR

Batteries not included! Heck, lotsa things not included.

I looked at incorporating public domain sound into QTVR panoramas in Part I. How about recording your own sound track?

Meet the latest addition to the digital household:

Made by the fellas who gave us all those rock-‘n-roll consoles, Roland, it is mightily costly at $400 (whadya expect? It’s made in Japan, not China), comes with no batteries, an insanely chintzy 64 mB SD card for storing recordings (a leaf out of the digital camera makers’ book – at least Canon has the good sense to include no card with the 5D) and no headphones.

Appropriately enough, Marty Paris, ace acoustical guitarist and local UPS driver, just delivered it so we got to chatting about sound recording. “Wait a minute”, he intoned, “I thought you were a photographer?”. “My dear Marty”, quoth I, with that bemused look of pity and understanding we sound panographers reserve for the unenlightened, “Photography is sound!”. “What?”. “Hey, you know, QTVR and all that. Imagine your band with 360 panoamas and sound, man”. Note the ‘man’ bit. A little bit of hip. Big thing in the musical world, I’m told.

So I open the box and find that this little MP3/WAV sound recorder, which will serve to add sound to my QTVR panoramas – no more public domain stuff for this operator – comes without batteries. Gee, is that cheap or what? No problem. Two AA sized NiMh batteries, which have yet to explode or catch fire, are resurrected from one of the chargers in the ancestral manse, and hey presto!, she fires up.

OK, so the R09 records on an SD card. The 64 mB card included with the R09 can record just about all the true statements from all of the USA’s senators and congressmen made over the past decade, which means 5 minutes’ worth, at best quality. Well, the spare 1 gB card for the Leica DP comes out and truth, justice and the American Way (or, at best, the prospect thereof) are restored.

How large is the Edirol R09? Judge for yourself – that’s the 1 gB SD card on top of the iPod and the picture is about life size on my iMac:

Feel? Positively chintzy compared to the iPod, and the flimsy combined door for the two AA batteries and the SD card is a problem waiting to happen unless it loosens up with use. Indeed, one of the first things you see on opening the box is a warning to the effect that the battery/card door is easily damaged. Not good. How about redsigning it, Roland, rather than hiding behind lawyers and disclaimers? Add the fact that the supplied (useless) charger cannot recharge NiMh batteries in the R09 means the door will get a lot of action as batteries are removed for recharging and replacement. I suppose you could argue the charger can be used for running the R09 off mains power, but given that it’s twice the size and six times the weight of the R09 you know what you can do with it.

Another useless accessory is the provided USB II cable to connect the R09 to your Mac. In practice, you simply remove the SD card and pop it in your card reader which displays all the MP3 or WAV files on the card. Nor do you even need to format the card in the R09, despite dire warnings in Roland’s instruction book. The 1 gB Sandisk Extreme III card formatted in my Lumix worked fine in the R09. Nice. At a pinch you could mix MP3 and JPG/TIFF/RAW files on the one card.

In fairness, one reason for the light weight of the R09 is that there is no hard disk inside, unlike in my 60 gB iPod. Recorded sounds are stored on the miniscule SD card, meaning the device should be fairly shock resistant as there is a near total absence of moving parts.

Roland claims a battery life of 4 hours continuous recording (at least small stereo microphones are built in – you can see them in the snap above) so figuring in the ‘Washington factor’ (when you hear your taxes will go up by 5%, multiply by four) that works out at one hour, which is still a lot, given that the average loop for a QTVR panorama is some 60 seconds long. Even my boy reciting his ABCs takes less time than that!

Monitor your recording or listen to the playback using the R09? No such luck. No earphones are included. Fortunately, I saved mine from the iPod (a device I use connected to the home AV system, not to my long suffering ear drums) and the R09 can be monitored just fine:

Note the sad and unsuccessful attempt to emulate the superb iPod ‘click-wheel’. Aren’t patents wonderful?

So we have here a very expensive, crappy looking device, with a miniscule SD card, no batteries, no earphones, a useless charger, unnecessary cables, no case and the usual 102 page booklet (hell, you press ‘Rec’ and have at it – you need a 100+ pages of legalese to tell me how to work this thing?) So how does it work? Stay tuned for Part III.

QTVR panoramas on my web site

Panoramas, QTVR

Time to make these a page on the site.

I have assembled some of my recent panoramas on my web site and, to make them easily accessible, have added a Menu option on the Main Page. Click the Menu then click on ‘The Panoramas’.

Alternatively, you can go directly to the panorama index page by clicking here. Recommended especially for Safari users, as this web bowser is especially bad at refreshing its cached history of web pages.

Can panoramas be photographic fine art? I have absolutely no doubt – if art is something that evokes emotions and feelings, then the answer has to be a resounding Yes. Who could not thrill to the strains of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde in Redwood Valhalla?