beginner - taking the photos

[occy]

hi, ive had a look through the tutorials, and i may have missed this, but how do i take the photos? do i take a 360 degree horizontal and then 1 above and 1 below?

[360Texas]

Hello Occy.

We use a dSLR Canon 20d and a Sigma 8mm 180 degree fisheye lens. We take 4 images at 90 degreees each around the [4 x 90= 360 degree] horizon and 1 up or Zenith image total 5. We use PTgui http://www.ptgui.com to stitch all 5 images into 1 flat 2000 x 4000 pixel dimension image. Then we use Pano2VR to convert this 'Flat' image into either a QTVR .mov or Flash .swf file.

Hope this helps

[occy]

thanks 360texas,
i have a canon 300D with the standard 18-55. i want to stick with this camera for now (until i get better and start offering these panoramas to clients).
so if i take 360 horizontal view and 1 up shot (and/or 1 down shot) and stitch them all together, i should end up with a stitched imge in the shape of a sideways 'T' (the same shape if you open pano2vr and where it says 'drop your panorama here')?
im pretty sure thats what im meant to do , but thought ild check!

[360Texas]

The Canon 300d is a good 6 megapixel camera with a 22.7 x 15.1 mm CMOS sensor. As such it has a 1.6 crop factor. Means your 18-55mm lens used at 18mm converted to 35mm equivelent is 18mm x 1.6 = 28.8mm lens.

Reference URL http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos300d/page2.asp

Using this lens in portrait ( image long side UP) use this Lens calculator to learn the lens Angle of View gives you a Field of view of 45.24 degrees wide on the horizon and 64.01 degrees vertical.

http://www.panoguide.com/howto/panorama ... ulator.jsp

Now I am going to try to figure out how many portrait image you will need to take to complete a 360 degree rotation given 30% overlap. Someone jump in here if the math is not correct.

42 degrees view wide 42 * .3 = 12.6 -42 = -29.4 degrees inverse = +29.4. 360 degrees / 29.4 means about 12 images.

Possible Work flow

12 images tilt up 45 degrees
12 images around the horizon.
12 images tilt down 45 degrees

3 x 12 = 36 images

http://www.ptgui.com possibly can stitch these types of panoramas.

I would try to take about 10 of these types of images before even thinking about clients.

Sigma 8 mm only requires 4 images --- no UP or down shots required.

Have fun

[occy]

hhhmmm, think i understood most of that! i guess im going to be buying a new lens!