Okay, I've been wanting to play with a gigapan (www.gigapansystems.com) since I heard about this product. Seems that there is a Disney World fan out there who's already giga-panning WDW!! Awesome! Go to www.gigapan.org and search for Disney. Here are a couple cool ones, to whet your appetite... MK: http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=19997 Epcot WS: http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=2921 (The cool thing about gigapan images is how much data there is... for instance, zoom in on the castle in the MK pano. You can read the clock!) Awesome! This doesn't happen to be any of you guys, does it??
Wow! I have a goal of doing something similar with my Canon A630 (it has photo stitch) but Im sure I can't come anywhere near as awesome as that!
That's very cool. I just wonder why the MK shot is so out of sync. There's a line right down the middle of the photo from left to right where all the people's top of their body don't match with the bottom. Some people have no legs & some have no torso or head.
I think that had to do with the multiple photo's that it took. ; People are moving and in one image they might have been in one spot and in a later image they had moved. ; This is probably a better landscape technique then trying to shoot Main Street as is with all the people there.
Exactly...the same rule applies for any pano or multi-image stitch - moving things make it harder. ; People are the hardest - you just have to accept a few ghost people and half-torsos every once in a while! Very cool system - I would love to see one in action. ; File size must be an absolute terror though!
That's exactly right. You can also see artifacts of the flag. Not the best situation for a pano, but certainly an epic location. The reason some people don't have legs (and some legs don't have people...) is because Gigapan lets you take many exposures to make up the pano. I'd estimate that image is 5 x 12 exposures... 60 total clicks. That's approximately a 500+ megapixel exposure (assuming the person was using a 10Mp P&S.) Nothing that you couldn't do manually, if you're EXTREMELY patient and precise. Sounds SO cool. Imagine taking a 2-GIGApixel pano! Me wantee!
That explains it guys. I was not that familiar with Gigapan to understand what was happening, but now I do understand. Still very cool though.
You can rent one at lensrentals. ; They said Gigapan is only programming it for the smaller sensor cameras because of the increased DOF they provide. ; Is it still in beta?
Well I still have my DSC-H5 in the closet - maybe I could whip it out and rent this thing to see what it can do. ; I wonder how much to rent! ; The H5's got excellent resolution and always gave me very good results at 7.2MP...so it should work very well with this type of system.
Here's the page at lensrentals.com http://www.lensrentals.com/rent/gigapan ... mic-imager The DSC-H3 is on the list, so I'm assuming the H5 would be okay as well, since I don't think the body changed.
I saw Scott Bourne's tweet as well. That's disappointing, especially since they list the D90 as a compatible camera on their website. From what I've heard, the current models are made for P&S cameras and "smaller" DSLRs. Not sure what "smaller" means, if the D90 doesn't count. I still think it's a cool tool, especially since it costs less than most lenses I've been looking at lately.
A picture being on that site does not definitely indicate that it was taken with one of the gigapan robotic mounts. ; To check this out I just created an account and it appears to let you upload your own images with no apparent check to see that they were made with the gigapan mounts. I'm thinking of the Epcot picture in particular. ; There's some signs of a lack of precision in how that pano was taken, either that's human error indicating a manually set up shot, or else the gigapan mount isn't too precise either. It's neat that the site appears to be open to all. ; I might have a couple of shots that I could put up on there, I'll have to check them out and see how much resolution I have to work with. Oh, as to definition of "smaller" DSLR, the description of their larger mount says camera and lens combination below 3 pounds.
You're right... after looking at it closer, that WS pano doesn't have as much info as some other photos on that site. The data below the photo says that this is only 5 exposures from a D80... which is easily done without a gigapan system. Heck, you could pull that off without a tripod. But, that data (below the pano) is not always that reliable... the MK pano's stats say that it is "2 snapshots", which it is obviously not. With the resolution on the WS pano, though, I'd say 5 exposures seems about right. You really see the potential of this system when you look at some of the featured panos they have on the site. Last week they featured a shot of the Golden Gate bridge that was astounding.
