Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with panorama

how do I control exposure for panorama photos?

intermod — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:10:11 -0800

I just bought a new Canon digital camera, an SX110IS, and have discovered that it doesn't have the stitch assist mode. I may yet return it, but I'm wondering what would I need to do to still do a decent panorama without the assist? Obviously I have to frame the photos for overlap, but the real benefit of stitch assist mode was the exposure control. What should I do, manually, to get good panoramas as a result? I love making panoramas while traveling, and the stitch assist mode in my older Canon A720IS was great for this. Besides guiding you on the image framing for overlap, it would hold the exposure settings across the series, so that they'd blend well later when you stitched them.

Frankly I just assumed that all Canon digital cameras came with that feature now, but I see now that the lower end SX110IS and SX120IS don't have it. Once you step up to the more expensive SX200IS and up, you get the feature. Bah!

So, do I need to put the camera in some sort of manual mode, and which exposure parameters exactly should I control? Aperture? ISO? I'm not much of a photographer.

I'll give it a shot during travels next week, and if it doesn't work so well for me then I'll return the camera, but I'd like to avoid that hassle.

Stitching a video into a panoramic image

TheyCallItPeace — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:24:58 -0800

How can I turn a movie taken with a digital point-and-shoot into a photographic panorama? I have seen demos of software that will do this. From a movie of a scenary, a panoramic shot is digitally created, much like photostitchers like hugin, Autopano, etc create panoramas from series of photographs.

I could extract the frames of the video, and feed them into photo stitching software, but that sounds like a much slower process than I have seen in the demos I described above (where the panorama building was pretty much real-time).

Does anyone know of any software that is out there which does this? It would be awesome if it is open source as well.

Tutorial or template for embedding Quicktime VR pano file in a website?

tnygard — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:35:59 -0800

Tutorial or template for embedding Quicktime VR pano file in a website? Hi all, 7 years ago I was part of an archaeological project, and we made one of those stitched together panorama movie files that allow one to explore an environment. I created it with Quicktime VR and it has the pano extension. I would now like to embed this file in my personal website, but I am having trouble finding a good tutorial for that.

The support on the quicktime website says to use the html code that the stitcher produces, but that is no help for me because I do not own the stitching program and do not have the html code it may have produced 7 years ago.

What I do have access to is the full Master Collection of Adobe CS3. Perhaps there is a way that this suite can interact with pano files, but I have not been able to figure it out thus far. I have been using the CS3 version of Dreamweaver and Photoshop to assemble the site, and I am also doing some hand coding. Any suggestions for getting this embedded would be most appreciated

How to embed Quicktime VR but forbid a download and enable fullscreen mode

fenwaydirtdog — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:11:03 -0800

How to embed quicktime VR on web site without letting user download the VR and with letting a user go into full screen mode to see the embedded movie I know there have been questions here about embedding QuickTime VRs on web sites, and lots of questions on the internet at large, but this has a twist that I was hoping somone might be able to help me with

I want to embed a QuickTime VR on my site. However,

1) I don't want the visitor to my site to be able to download the VR. This is because if they download it they might not come back to the site, and I want to maximize traffic.

and

2) I want the visitor to be able to enjoy the VR in full screen mode.

Can one embed the VR with these two prior conditions being met?

Thanks!

Pitchers! Purdy pitchers! Get yer pitchers here!

polyglot — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:51:11 -0800

How do I get my photographs into galleries and/or sell prints? I'm a landscape photographer who, after prodding from impressed friends (perhaps not the most impartial people), has decided to go somewhat commercial and sell prints of some of my better photos. I've given and sold a number of prints at cost to friends & colleagues but never something to a member of the public for profit.

I put together a website (dig through my profile, I ain't posting it here for the self-link police to jump on) for the purpose of selling prints and printed up a batch of 6x4" flyers that I've been handing out to likely businesses. Problem is - no one seems particularly interested in parting with cash. I realise I'm never going to make a living from this, but I'd like to sell maybe a handful of prints a year for the purpose of funding new photographic toys. I know it can be done and there are oodles of people who apparently manage to sell prints over the internet.

So: how do I get exposure? How do I get in front of corporate types who'd like to put a 2.5 metre print on their foyer wall? How do I get something in a gallery? As background, I'm an engineer rather than your prototypical artsy type so I have no idea how galleries really operate wrt selection of material, sales, commission, wallspace rental, whatever. I don't even seem to be able to find a decent photographic gallery in my city of 10⁶ people that would contain the sort of images I have.

(If the answer is "your photos suck", that's OK: if it's true, I need to hear it. Likewise if you think I'm asking too much but keep in mind that they're large, high resolution and take a reasonable amount of time and skill to create).

Panoramics and Photostitching

wibbler — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 05:55:03 -0800

What is the most impressive flash-based panoramic image web script? And as a secondary question, anyone have an idea of the best photostitching software?

Help me buy a mirror ball - but not a mirror ball

unixrat — Sun, 07 May 2006 22:15:19 -0800

Help me find a mirror ball to purchase. No, not *that* kind of mirror ball - the other kind... So I've been doing panoramic photography for a while now. It's going swimmingly, having captured dozens of scenes using my digital camera and some software.

There is a niche in the panorama scene for 'mirrorball', where you take a single shot of a mirrorball at the zenith/nadir and, bang, you've got a low-quality 360 pano in one shot. The mirrorball is the solid, completely reflective sphere kind, not the million-tile disco kind.

This type of photography is really appealing to me, because I'd like to capture events and action that don't wait around for the photog to get all the necessary panoramic shots. However, the internet is awash in disco mirror balls and fawning conversations about Sarah Mcglauf^WMacGlaph^WWhat's-her-face's album. Through all that noise, I'm having a hard time finding a mirrorball to purchase.

I bought a "garden" mirrorball to try out, but it's got so many 'artistic' distortions, that it's worthless. (There's an example of a test pano shot using it in the comments...) I can find a convex mirror, like the kind used for security, but I'm not sure they would work.

So, can anyone find high-quality mirror balls for purchase? Or, do you think that those 360 deg security mirrors would suffice?

Photoshop: Creating a Panorama

skwm — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:18:33 -0800

I'm trying to create a panoramic landscape view from several photographs in Photoshop. How do I go about making the colors/tones of the sky & snow match from photo to photo?

Large panoramic posters to cover a wall?

adrober — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:18:49 -0800

I'd love to buy some Andreas Gursky posters for my new apartment, but alas they don't sell them anywhere. Can anyone suggest or link me to other panorama-like posters that are funky and cool and can cover a large wall? Thanks!

Panorama-Constructing Software/PS Plugin without Artifacts or Dropped Sections?

scarabic — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 13:04:31 -0800

My digital camera came with a program for stitching together multiple panning shots into one large panoramic picture. It's okay, but it leaves lots of artifacts, and occasionally drops sections (erroneously matching other areas together and effectively cutting out part of the pic). Is there a better program out there I can try? I don't think I'm willing to pay (not much anyway) for this. Windows preferred but OSX will work too. I have Photoshop, so plug-ins are cool too.