snurre
Heliman
Location: Sweden, Stockholm
My Posts This: Topic Forum | added functionalityHi fellows,
Before this thread was started I was thinking of designing a simple pano controller, but for other reasons than the wire tangle issue.
Now since I see you are already on to something similar, I will present my idea to see what you guys think, and if PistaJ think it could be included in his project.
Background
I have done some limited attempts with pano production, however, not the fisheye spherical, but rather using 12 - 35 mm focal length.
Shooting this in portrait orientation and stitching provides a hight definition pano that can be used for various purposes, like poster size panorama print or zoomable high definition area photos. To do a 360 I used like 14 overlapping (portrait) images. From the stitched image one can extract selected parts and use just like a oblique shot.
I am using a Nikon D300 with zoom lens 16-85 or 12-24mm.
Experience/problem
Motion blur became an issue when shooting during camera pano rotation movement. The photos was still usable, but not perfect due to the blur. During really good light conditions shutter time may be short enough to reduce the problem, but I would like to be able to do these shootings also in same not-so-bright light conditions that works fine for normal oblique stills (I live in Scandinavia, and autumn / winter comes with many scenes with less light)
Yes, tweak the ISO, aperture, rotational speed... - I know, but it´s not enough, the equation does not compute!
Example: ISO 320, f3,8, 22mm, 1 photo per second during 15 seconds of pano rotation provides one serie covering (slightly more than) 360 degrees. This gave me photos with sharp horizontal details, but blurred verticals.
15 seconds is already quite a long time for keeping the helicopter in a stable lateral and vertical position (at least during some conditions), so the first and last photo in the serie will fit together. (Yes I know, GPS and altitude lock will make position lock better but still...). Point being that slowing down speed of continous movement is not an option.
Solution / idea
Syncronize pano sector movement with the camera shutter. So, when the camera shoots the pano movement is off. Then pano movement starts and run for a selected (adjustable) time, stops, and next shot is triggered. And so on until desired sweep is completed. Since the camera does not move during each shot, images get sharp. Between the shots, maximum usable speed pano movement could be used to minimize total shooting time for one pano serie.
Syncro tech solution
Use cameras flash syncronization (X-sync?) port (present at most DSLR cameras) as a guid signal for pano servo control. Measure time between first two shots in pano sequence and then use for servo syncro control.
The servo control would benefit from soft starts and stops, meaning that the servo controller uses short ramp up and ramp down of servo speed.
So, I hope this posting was not too confusing.
It might not be a must-have thing, but I would certainly find it very useful. And with the project you already begun, this functionality might not be too difficult to achieve. (?)
So, whattaya think of this idea? |
