Tag Archives: panorama

SF City Hall

wpid5226-IMG_0942.jpgA meeting in the heart of San Francisco meant a bunch of our team were meeting downtown.  A few of us got there a little head of the meeting and, with a couple of minutes available, I wanted to check out the City Hall building since it was only a couple of blocks away.  As an old City, San Francisco has some classic architecture and this is no exception.  For some reason, despite the numerous times I have been to the city, I have never been to City Hall before.

wpid5228-IMG_0938.jpgA group of school kids were playing some orchestral music in the main hall and plenty of family members were there.  I wandered around taking a look.  Since I didn’t have my normal cameras, the phone had to serve duty.  Fortunately, that also allowed me to try another one of the 360 panoramas.  I suspect I shall be carrying another camera with me when I am next in the area.

Pano 360

There is an app I have had on my phone for a while called 360 which is for taking panoramic photographs.  I have had it for quite a while and have mentioned it before here but they have progressively introduced new features over that time.  While the new operating system has a pano function built into the camera (if your phone isn’t too old), it is rather basic and nowhere near as good as this one.

Taking images requires a little planning since you are able to take a full spherical image.  Doing this without having the whole thing look strange in close requires you to keep the camera point itself unchanged as you turn around.  This is harder than you think.  The software can compensate a bit but you need to try and get it right in camera as much as possible.

It shows you a grid of the total shot and so you can see which bits you have shot and what is needed to fill it all in.  It gives you a live preview as you shoot including looking straight up and down when required.  Once the image is complete (or as much of it as you want), it processes it and then you can upload it to a website to view later.  The links here are from that site.  It is a great app and fun in some situations and valuable in others when showing off a wide view is hard to do any other way.

When checking this examples out, don’t miss out on a cool feature.  At the top of the viewer are three buttons.  It starts on the middle setting which allows you to pan around.  If you click on the left button, it creates a view from the ground up.  The right button creates a view looking straight down.  (This only works properly if I have shot a full 360 image.)  This looks like the work that Gerry Holtz has done and I blogged about here although his is far superior.

Gerry Holtz Exhibition

I was recently in Los Angeles and, while there, took the opportunity to catch up with Gerry Holtz.  Gerry is a great guy I met at the Kennedy Space Center when we were both there to witness the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.  Gerry lives in LA where he runs his own business in the video editing and production business with much of his work being on your TV screens on a regular basis.

However, Gerry is also a photographer and a pretty good one at that!  One of the things that he has been working on in recent years is a form of panorama shooting that creates a 360 degree view in a single square format image.  Gerry has an exhibit running presently at a cafe in Hollywood.  If you are nearby, the details of the venue are below and, without jumping to the end of the story too quickly, I do recommend a visit.

Gerry makes use of some familiar software tools to create the panoramas but the important elements of his work are the ability to visualize how the components of the scene will appear in the finished image and the willingness to do more than just use the basic software tools.  He works on the details of the image – both the elements and their blending and the dynamic range that can be present in a shot covering such a wide area.  The result is a far more time consuming process to create the final image but a result that justifies the effort.

He also has put a lot of effort into the display of the images for this event.  A number of them have been mounted on rotating frames since the image can be viewed from many angles and the rotating frame makes this easier for the viewer to achieve.  A smart idea and one that works very well.

You might have noticed that I normally have a number of images in my posts but this time there are none.  Since this is Gerry’s work, I did not want to reproduce it here.  However, you can certainly take a look at what he does by visiting his Facebook page.  Go to www.facebook.com/gerradaholtzphotography to take a look at examples of Gerry’s work.  I think you will be both impressed and fascinated.  Some of the images can appear very abstract but then you can explore them further to see more of what is there.  Some will be of familiar locations and others you will not have seen before.

I would like to thanks Gerry for taking the time to show me around the exhibit and to wish him well with further displays of the work.  I understand he is considering a book of more of the images and think this would be a great idea.  The exhibit is at 6547 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90038 .  If you are in the area, take a look!

An alternate canvas

I guess the title is a bit of a lie in this case as the alternate is actually canvas. I haven’t done any canvas printing for a while. I used to have some canvas that printed in one of my previous Epson ink jets but I haven’t used that stuff since changing printers and haven’t ever found profiles from the manufacturer so they must have disappeared not long after I bought the stuff.

I have experimented on printing on a number of finishes in recent times with some printing on metal that has come out well. However, I gently had a client who was interested in a large format panorama. I was hunting for a good printer for this since my regular print outlet does not cater to large format panos at all. I had used another place as a trial but they had produced a really crappy result. While searching for an alternative, I mentioned to the client that I had heard good things about a place that specialized in canvas prints including larger format panos and was he interested. It turned out he had already been wondering about a canvas print.

I prepped the files and sent them off to the place. I told him to hold off paying for it until I had seen whether it was worthwhile. If I don’t like the result, I am not going to have a client paying the price if my name is on the work. The turnaround was really pretty speedy.
I received the canvas and I have to say I was impressed. It was mounted on a wood frame ready stretched. The finish was excellent and the colors looked very vibrant. The packing was also good and the whole product was well protected. I will certainly use this place again if I have anyone after a similar product and I now find myself contemplating some panoramic options for myself to justify a print for home.

Panning for gold

While the title might be a bit inaccurate, you are probably not going to struggle to guess what the topic really is. I have always enjoyed playing with panos since my days of film when it would be a lot less complex and consist of sticking together a large number of 6×4 prints to make a larger collage. The effect was rough and ready but there was something rather cool about the way they came out at the highly accurate results possible today doesn’t have.

While stitching together shots is straightforward given any number of software tools (although Photomerge in Photoshop has got sufficiently good that I rarely need to use anything else), achieving a good pano with the camera in my phone was a different challenge. Without control of the exposure and the white balance, it was hard to make the shots merge cleanly. I then got hold of an app called 360 which would shoot a pano as you gradually moved the camera around. It overlays a grid so you can see the coverage still available and you could pan up and down as well as laterally.

Originally the results were less then ideal. It would have discontinuities on some of the straight lines in the scene and was particularly unhappy in low light or when panning vertically. However, the latest version of the app is now out and it is a dramatic improvement. After playing with it at home briefly, I tried it while on the road the other day. We were heading up passed Green Bay and so stopped off to see Lambeau Field. I’m sure the Bears fans I know will be cursing me for such treachery but I wanted to see such a famous stadium. Anyway, it wasn’t a photo trip so I only had my phone in my pocket at the time. I decided to give the pano a shot using the latest version of the app and I think it did a pretty good job. It was fun to watch new areas that had a different exposure suddenly get corrected to merge with the existing image and straight lines that were originally out of position get jumped to the right place as the app worked out what was wanted.  It isn’t perfect yet.  Some lines still don’t line up and the resolution is surprisingly low compared to a normal shot by the phone.

Nice work by occipital who are the developers. I like what you have done so far and look forward to what you come up with next.