Fisheye Lens

greedy123

greedy123

greedy123

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As the resident photographer at my architectural practice I've been asked about doing 360 VR photography and stereographic panoramas. I understand I need a fisheye lens to get the super wide angles required to easily capture such things and was wondering if anyone had any knowledge on the subject.

Some examples I found of the things I've been asked about:

http://www.samrohn.com/360-panoramic-photography/

http://www.samrohn.com/interactive-panoramas/

I have a 5D MKII so would need a compatible lens. What would the cheapest option be? I looked at the Canon 15mm fisheye which costs £800 and the Sigma 15mm fisheye which is £500. Is there a different make which is considerably cheaper as for the amount I'd be using it these lenses cost too much.
 
greedy123 said:
As the resident photographer at my architectural practice I've been asked about doing 360 VR photography and stereographic panoramas.

Is there a different make which is considerably cheaper as for the amount I'd be using it these lenses cost too much.
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Claim it as an office expense :D

Do you know how often you'll be asked to do this or could you hire the fisheye and pay a nominal fee each time instead?
 
If its for a small period of time; you could perhaps hire one? lensesdirect.co.uk? I want one for a weekend that I am going to go to London to do some archi type shots. I cannot say I would use it much to warrant the purchase so am going to hire instead. Not too sure about those lenses, but I do know that there is a fisheye that is better served for Full Frame; not sure which one though. :)
 
Hiring is a hassle really, not really worth it as it was discussed. Problem is I wouldn't normally be given enough notice to go and hire one, its always more of a can you go do this now kinda thing. I saw that you can get fisheye extensions for lenses which screw onto the end of another lens. Anyone tried one? They are only £50 ish in the jungle.
 
What's the widest lens you've got at the moment? I dont think that a fish-eye is totally necessary for these shots. you just take more photos to stitch if your lens isn't as wide.
 
Usually, fish eye lens are not used for these sorts of things because the distortions and so on. Normally people use a moderately wide lens that has next to no distortion and the highest quality. Normally a prime.

People somtimes use moderate telephoto lens as this will result in a pano with more resolution, but requires you to take more photos.


The one bit of equipment you do need is a good VR tripod-head setp that removes the parallax errors (by rotating exactly around the sensor plane midpoint). Get one of these and soemthing like a 24/35mm prime.
 
Those shots linked to are not done with a fish eye lens, you need a wide angle lens for this as you have the 5d I would recommend the 16-35mm. The first link is a series of images spun around a central point to form a small planet like image there is a technique on this somewhere on here I think.

The second link are a series of of shots pieced together to form a 3d view again im sure this has been discussed before but a fish eye would not work for this technique as the images would be to distorted to stitch together, I know that Quicktime VR will display the interactive pano's but cant remember if you can use it to create them.

Hope thats a bit of help I will try to dig up some links
 
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ichabod crane said:
Those shots linked to are not done with a fish eye lens, you need a wide angle lens for this as you have the 5d I would recommend the 16-35mm. The first link is a series of images spun around a central point to form a small planet like image there is a technique on this somewhere on here I think.

The second link are a series of of shots pieced together to form a 3d view again im sure this has been discussed before but a fish eye would not work for this technique as the images would be to distorted to stitch together.

Hope thats a bit of help I will try to dig up some links

Mini planet technique
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Thanks but I think that link may be wrong :)

I have a 24-70 and a 24mm ts-e. Problem with using a multi stitching pano is that anything which moves (people/cars) are going to **** it up as they will appear more than once possibly. With a fish eye, and correct me if i'm wrong, id only need 2 possibly 3 shots rather than 15.
 
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greedy123 said:
Thanks but I think that link may be wrong :)

I have a 24-70 and a 24mm ts-e. Problem with using a multi sticking pano is that anything which moves (people/cars) are going to **** it up as they will appear more than once possibly. With a fish eye, and correct me if i'm wrong, id only need 2 possibly 3 shots rather than 15.
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Ah i was looking at the Stereographic Panoramas in your first link which are what I have linked to.

You just may find it difficult to stitch the fisheye shots without it looking a bit out of proportion. I have seen a video for the making of the interactive shots and you do have to take a lot of images to create them, you pretty much stand in one place and photography every elevation including the ceiling and floor
 
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ichabod crane said:
Ah i was looking at the Stereographic Panoramas in your first link which are what I have linked to.

You just may find it difficult to stitch the fisheye shots without it looking a bit out of proportion. I have seen a video for the making of the interactive shots and you do have to take a lot of images to create them, you pretty much stand in one place and photography every elevation including the ceiling and floor
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Yeh its just the link you posted was to a desktop pc lol. I think I worked out how to do them anyway, I'm guessing you just do a panorama and then convert to polar coordinates in ps. I do already have a panorama tripod head which is good :)
 
hey all -

i saw the hits on my site pointing here, so i figured i could answer a few questions -

the panos on my site were shot w/ a 10mm full frame (not circular) fisheye on a nikon D300 or other non-full frame sensor nikon, this is the equiv fov of canon 15mm on 5Dm2 - both are very common setups for shooting 360x180 full equirectangular panos

you can use a longer lens, that just means more source photos, more chance for stitching errors, light change, etc but also greater resolution - gigapixel images are done this way

using a full frame fisheye like the nikon 10mm or canon 15mm (on full frame canon) means 6 images around, + 1 up & 2 down is pretty much all it takes, until you start shooting HDR bracketing sets......

on the 5Dm2 you can also use a 8mm sigma i believe for 4 shots around, or a modified nikon 10mm etc

2 or 3 shot panos w a circular fisheye are of lower quality than whats on my site, too much distortion to get good detail for architecture, and stenciling out moving objects is part of the fun :)

forget cheap glass & lens extension things on the 5Dm2, the resolution of that camera is brutal on cheap optics :) better than nothing on a compact camera though, all my panos from before 2004 were shot that way

the stereographic and interactive panoramas on my site are all from the same fisheye source images and resulting equirectangular image, the source focal length is not a big factor here - anything from circular fisheye to prob about 30mm will work, (you could use any focal length, just means more pics) as the stitching apps take care of the distortion when warping the images to merge into the final pano

also, a proper spherical pano head like nodal ninja is critical for this, as is having it properly set up for your camera/lens - the head rotates the camera around the lens nodal point (more correctly called the entrance pupil), not the sensor plane as was said above, properly calibrating your camera/lens/pano head nodal point is crucial for good results

also make sure that everything is set to manual - white balance, exposure, & focus - none should change while shooting a pano

for stitching software, look at ptgui (most popular), autopano (easiest), & hugin (freeware), all have their advantages etc, ptgui is what i use - avoid autodesk stitcher, it used to be a contender, but is currently hopelessly out of date

the little planet polar pano technique mentioned above is different than the stereographics on my site, ether ptgui, hugin, or a photoshop plugin called flexify for that trick

here is an example from my flickr page of the same image as equirectangular & stereographic -

343926795_9eda8a1439_m.jpg


345206336_1f196046bc_m.jpg


otherwise, plenty of panoramic photography forums, tutorials and discussion online, panographers tend to be quite gregarious it seems...

http://www.panoguide.com/howto/
http://www.panoguide.com/forums/
http://www.nodalninja.com/forum/
http://www.autopano.net/forum/
http://www.tawbaware.com/forum2/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/equirectangular/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/stereographic/
http://www.vrwave.com/panoramic/photography/lens_database.html
http://wiki.panotools.org/Main_Page
http://www.rosaurophotography.com/html/technical0.html
http://michel.thoby.free.fr/
http://regaltips.com/

etc...

have fun :)

sam
 
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I usually use a Canon 15mm lens, 1Ds mk3 with NN5 (Nodal Ninja 5), sometimes I use a Sigma 8mm fisheye lens for really tight areas, you can actually almost get away with just 3 shots from that as it's virtually 180 degrees view (mind your feet!).

For the 5D Mk2 you probably want a NN3 (might be newer ones now, I only know of the NN3). I use PT GUI for stitching and then Deval VR for personal viewing. Software for making the panoramas and virtual tours, look in to Immervision Pure tools.

Remember to take all shots in manual so they're all the exact same exposure otherwise you'll be cursing later on. :)
 
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np, the pano scene is pretty geeky, being somewhat pedantic seems to go with the territory -

i use a Nodal Ninja 5 for my D300, and a friend uses a Nodal Ninja 3 w/ his 5Dm2, NN3 clearance is a bit tight for straight up (zenith) shot, but it does work -

also, pure player is a bit dated, the current state of the art flash pano players are Flash Panorama Player, KRPano, & Pano2VR - QTVR is effectively a legacy format nowadays, as the latest quicktime X included with mac os x snow leopard 10.6 has removed qtvr support :(

FPP is considered the highest quality, but hasn't been updated in quite a while, and requires some XML scripting, KRPano is similar, but updated more frequently, & Pano2VR allows simple drag & drop creation of stand alone swf pano files, by far the easiest option - prob starting w/ Pano2VR is best

flashificator is a GUI for FPP that simplifiies the authoring process of making virtual tours, FPP & flashificator is prob the best virtual tour authoring package currently out there

see this page for a comparison of various panorama display options - http://www.panoramaphotographer.com/comparisons/

sam
 
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Thanks Sam for tracking us down! I love your work.

Thanks for the tips and suggestions on equipment, I'll look into them further!

Out of interest how do you go about removing the tripod on your panos? Is it just a painstaking cloning process?
 
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you can shoot an unobstructed "down" (nadir) image either hand held or by moving your tripod and twisting the head's vertical arm around so it is offset from the heads lower rotator, but i usually only do this if the floor contains a non-repeating patterned rug or mosaic, otherwise cloning, healing, etc -

typically you would use something like Pano2VR to convert from equirectangular to cube faces, fix the bottom face, convert back, then bring your completed equirectangular back into PS or lightroom for final adjustments, then convert to flash or whatever for web display - final pano should be around 2-4MB, depending on detail etc, usually an equirectangular around 6000x3000 to 8000x4000 pixels works well

watching your feet, shadow and reflections to keep them out of frame is a good idea too, less photoshop later on - using a wireless remote helps with that -

http://www.phottix.com/wireless-remotes.html
http://martybugs.net/blog/blog.cgi/gear/PhottixPlatoWirelessRemote.html

sam

note - i edited my original post a bit, clarified a few things, added a few links, etc
 
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