Panoramas and the "No-Parallax" Point

parallax between two different pictures

When reading tutorials about making nice panorama pictures you often find information about the nodal point and that the camera should be adjusted to rotate around it. In our first panorama tests we didn't care about, but this week-end we tried some pictures with objects in the foreground and had some problems with parallaxes.

In the picture at the right hand side you see two picture details taken from two picture we made with a rotation of 30 degrees. In the upper picture you can see a much larger part of the mast below the handrail than in the lower picture. The camera only had a distance of less than one meter to the handrail. Continue reading

First gigapixel panorama

Fabian

As the weather was really nice this week-end we tried doing some new panoramas on sunday. At first, we went to hill "Pfaffenberg" near Entringen to have a nice look at Entringen. We found a really nice spot at 48° 33' 40" N, 8° 58' 42" O and took our first panorama of the day there. We had little problems with the alignment of the motorized head in parallel to the ground as we are only using a microphone stand as a tripod at the moment (We definitely have to get a adpter from 3/8" to 1/4" to use a real tripod!). Another problem is that we're still using the EOS Utility and a USB cable to trigger the camera and the bracket option doesn't work this way. So we still have large areas which are overexposed. The simple solution for this is to use an N3 cable to trigger the shutter — it's on the way :). So this first panorama of the day is a real good one, but it gives a nice impression of the wonderful location. We have to redo this as soon as possible. Continue reading

New panoramas of Entringen

Thomas and Fabian

On Friday we tried another panorama location for testing. We found a nice spot on 48° 33' 4" N 8° 57' 1" O between the villages Entringen, Pfäffingen and Reusten.

On our first attempt, we took at 360° panorama, which is a little over exposed as the sun came out a few minutes after we began the panorama. You can see the villages of Entringen, Pfäffingen, Poltringen, Oberndorf and Breitenholz, a plane starting at Poltringen Airfield, the chapel of Wurmlingen and the castle Hohenentringen. Continue reading

Panoramas with a motorized head

Canon SLR EOS-1D Mark III on motorized head

Today, I received my Non GoTo Merlin head from Teleskop Austria. With this motorized head which is controllable by Papywizard it's very easy to make professional panorama pictures. Together with Fabian Amann we did some testing today with a Canon SLR EOS-1D Mark III. Papywizard controls the Merlin mount via an USB adapter from Ursa Minor. The camera can be controlled by this adapter as well (if you have the correct cable) or by the EOS Utility via an USB connection (We chose this way, as we had an USB cable ;)). Continue reading