Some panos from Paris (again) - big files sorry

[Nastavnik]

Hello Everyone,

Again it has been some time since I posted some photos in the forum, but I do keep reading the new threads here. It is just a matter of lack of time.

I made these photos in april, but I took a long time to stitch them, and only now are they more or less done --- though while uploading them I evidently found some PP problems in some of them. So fell free to point out any obvious errors and amateurish mistakes. I am still discovering the basics in photoshop, and reading a lot of advice here both here and in other sites, but it takes a long time to assimilate all that.

I'll put them in the next 2 posts, the first are the photos from Paris, mainly 360 panos taken from 3 bridges and one pano from Ile de la cité, which I posted a daytime version before. This one is a night version. And there is a final one from Parc de st Cloud, from where you can see Paris in the horizon. One note of caution, the pics are rather large, I thought I had scaled them down enough, but now I have some doubts.

In the following post, are 2 more panos from a small village near Paris, Auvers sur Oise where many impressionist painters lived and used as their subject in their paintings. Not many pictures from there since I didn't like very much the results I got. Many feel just like vacation snapshots, so I won't bother you with that

 

[Nastavnik]

So, the photos from Paris.

The 360 panos are made from 30 photos taken with the sigma 10-20 mm, and S3 of course.

The ile de la cité pano, is taken with the nikon 70-300 VR at 100mm (more or less). The original file for this one is 120MP. I started late in the afternoon, and when I took that last one, it was night already.

For two of them I've already made a quicktime VR file, when available, I'll put the link to it.

Maybe I'll start from west to east.
So this is the Parc St Cloud:



And the bridge, well not actually a real bridge, near to the Eiffel Tower



And the Musée d'Orsay, from the Pont Royal



There is a small portion of the museum that was very hard to retrieve because the boats on the seine point their very powerfull lights at the buildings so people onboard can see them clearly, but is actually a nightmare for photographers (and for the people living inside them...)

QT: http://perso.orange.fr/pabloleme/images-affichage/pontnuit/pontnuitv2-%20pp-qt.html

And finally, the pont des Arts, in front of Ile de la Cité, from which I took the next picture too:



I chose to leave this next one rather big, so you can see some of the detail. The picture is comprise of 40 shots. 50 in fact since I took two versions of the middle section where all the light is, to make an HDR version of them.

 

[Nastavnik]

And now Auvers sur oise, just a couple of photos actually, of its most known feature, the church, which most people know as Van Gogh's painting:



Which now look like this (I tried to reproduce his painting, at least perspective-wise:



And from the other side, looks like this, when you are arriving:



And the last one, from inside:



QT: http://perso.orange.fr/pabloleme/images-affichage/eglise-Auvers/EgliseAuvers-web-qt.html

There is also a Chateau ("castle") in the village :



All in all, it is a place well worth the visit, and in many streets thare are posters of the original paintings, so you can compare it with the reality, quite a nice idea actually. And just 1h or so from Paris

I hope you liked it

 

[Paulo Abreu]

Enjoyed a lot the panoramas - pretty cool and great technique too.

How did you make the stitchings? I love panoramas and although I know the basic at the time of capture (like leveling tripod, shooting M, fixed WB, etc) I am a bit primitive in the post processing... using CS2 photo merge and strugling with perspective and vigneting in the skies...

Any tips will be welcome.

Again,. great views and very nice work - thanks for sharing

Regards
--
Paulo Abreu,

'It is not worthy to make a video of your life - just keep the best moments in pictures!'

 

[blawrensen]

I really like your panoramas, especially the first Bridge. Overall, very nice work. I need to do more panos, though I know it can take a long time to get them together!

Regards,
Barry

--
http://www.festivemedia.com
'Choose to go the extra mile - it's not a busy road.' -Unknown

 

[obwilton]

Superb!
--
Regards,

jw

 

[Nastavnik]

Hello Paulo,
Thank you for your kind words.

As for the process, I am in no way an expert, since i'm still prone to beginner mistakes, like forgetting to set the WB in the night photo of Paris, which caused the AWB to be all over the place, depending on what was in the frame. It took a long time to bring it all back together, and it is still not perfect.

So yes indeed, the points you mention are important. I also use a panoramic bracket. I started with the panosaurus, and then upgraded to a more sturdy one, as the panosaurus was suffering a bit with the weight if the S3 plus lens. The good head helps when stitching.

I then use PTGUI to assemble them all. Sometimes actually I do a first run with autopanopro, which I have the trial version, that allows me to export basic control points into PTGUI (I save the project and reopen in in PTgui, since I cannot generate the image in autopano with the trial version, due to markings in the image). This hugely shortens the processing time for me: it used to take me up to 6 hours, and now I'm down to about 1h30.

I then generate a PSD with all the 30 layers (it tends to be a heavy weight file, between 500Mo and 1,2Go --- which cause other problems, for my computer...). I track down all the ghosts in the image and try to find the last stitching errors. The program does a good job most of the times in the blending of the sky part, but I find that the more the images overlap the better (in this regard). So instead of taking 2 or 3 rows of 8 pictures for a full 360, I take 3 rows of 10 every time.

The perspective thing is another problem. In PTgui, the easiest way to avoid it, for me at least and until I find better, is to chose one photo as the center of the panorama, and position it yourself (so you must be sure of the data you will enter in the image data fields), and let the other be placed by the software all around this central image. I've found that this way it is easier to manually set an image that has a vertical line for instance, and let the rest be built around it. Though it doesn't work everytime, since I did one pano outside of the church I showed here, and there was noway i could stitch it and not have the impression the church wasn't melting away, or even getting closer to the painting when it came to respecting (or rather not) the straight lines... I have to study the question more and more importantly, practice more
I hope that, my day job allowing, next month I'll have more time to do it.

Anyway, maybe you should try PTgui and see how it goes for the sky problems. The pano head is not absolutely necessary, it just helps, specially it you are not making a full 360° sphere.

Please feel free to ask if you have any other questions on the subject, I'm glad to help

Enjoyed a lot the panoramas - pretty cool and great technique too.

How did you make the stitchings? I love panoramas and although I
know the basic at the time of capture (like leveling tripod,
shooting M, fixed WB, etc) I am a bit primitive in the post
processing... using CS2 photo merge and strugling with perspective
and vigneting in the skies...

Any tips will be welcome.

Again,. great views and very nice work - thanks for sharing

Regards
--
Paulo Abreu,

'It is not worthy to make a video of your life - just keep the best
moments in pictures!'

 

[Nastavnik]

Thank you Barry.

Glad you liked it. I'm still fine tuning my process. Hopefully there are many more places in paris for me to explore
Nastavnik

 

[Nastavnik]

Obwilton,

Thank you!

I hope to have some more soon. Maybe a high res pano of the Notre dame so you can all see the detail. It is just a matter of getting there and setting up a tripod, without being stopped by the police.

 

[Paulo Abreu]

Hi Nastavnik and many thanks for sharing your technique and for the valuable info on this post!

I'll give a look on PTGUI and make some tries - will keep you updated later.

Regards

As for the process, I am in no way an expert, since i'm still prone
to beginner mistakes, like forgetting to set the WB in the night
photo of Paris, which caused the AWB to be all over the place,
depending on what was in the frame. It took a long time to bring it
all back together, and it is still not perfect.
So yes indeed, the points you mention are important. I also use a
panoramic bracket. I started with the panosaurus, and then upgraded
to a more sturdy one, as the panosaurus was suffering a bit with
the weight if the S3 plus lens. The good head helps when stitching.

I then use PTGUI to assemble them all. Sometimes actually I do a
first run with autopanopro, which I have the trial version, that
allows me to export basic control points into PTGUI (I save the
project and reopen in in PTgui, since I cannot generate the image
in autopano with the trial version, due to markings in the image).
This hugely shortens the processing time for me: it used to take me
up to 6 hours, and now I'm down to about 1h30.

I then generate a PSD with all the 30 layers (it tends to be a
heavy weight file, between 500Mo and 1,2Go --- which cause other
problems, for my computer...). I track down all the ghosts in the
image and try to find the last stitching errors. The program does a
good job most of the times in the blending of the sky part, but I
find that the more the images overlap the better (in this regard).
So instead of taking 2 or 3 rows of 8 pictures for a full 360, I
take 3 rows of 10 every time.
The perspective thing is another problem. In PTgui, the easiest way
to avoid it, for me at least and until I find better, is to chose
one photo as the center of the panorama, and position it yourself
(so you must be sure of the data you will enter in the image data
fields), and let the other be placed by the software all around
this central image. I've found that this way it is easier to
manually set an image that has a vertical line for instance, and
let the rest be built around it. Though it doesn't work everytime,
since I did one pano outside of the church I showed here, and there
was noway i could stitch it and not have the impression the church
wasn't melting away, or even getting closer to the painting when it
came to respecting (or rather not) the straight lines... I have to
study the question more and more importantly, practice more
I hope that, my day job allowing, next month I'll have more time to
do it.

Anyway, maybe you should try PTgui and see how it goes for the sky
problems. The pano head is not absolutely necessary, it just helps,
specially it you are not making a full 360° sphere.

Please feel free to ask if you have any other questions on the
subject, I'm glad to help

Enjoyed a lot the panoramas - pretty cool and great technique too.

How did you make the stitchings? I love panoramas and although I
know the basic at the time of capture (like leveling tripod,
shooting M, fixed WB, etc) I am a bit primitive in the post
processing... using CS2 photo merge and strugling with perspective
and vigneting in the skies...

Any tips will be welcome.

Again,. great views and very nice work - thanks for sharing

Regards
--
Paulo Abreu,

'It is not worthy to make a video of your life - just keep the best
moments in pictures!'

--
Paulo Abreu,

'It is not worthy to make a video of your life - just keep the best moments in pictures!'