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Hugely wide panorama picture kept fascinating me since I was a kid. Photo stitching software seem to have done a lot of progress these days. However, I was intimidated by the process of shooting the pictures (slightly overlapping, horizontally aligned) and doing the manual stitching adjustments, etc. and never made the step(1).
An alternate method, based on capturing a rotating vertical scanline, and then letting some software do all the job, has been in my head since about two years.
Having received a whole set of Fischertechnik (2) components helped me decide to experiment it, just for the sake of verifying the idea.
Then, although the whole is still a work in progress, the results are so good that I wanted to share them with you. It has room for many improvements to increase resolution and usability, but it basically works pretty well.
Read on, make one, and show your results!
(1) In short, I have much more interest in spending time engineering something (that can later be effortlessly reused), rather than tediously executing manual work.
(2) Fischertechnik is to mechanic what breadboard is to electronic --Well it's more than just that, but you get the idea.
An alternate method, based on capturing a rotating vertical scanline, and then letting some software do all the job, has been in my head since about two years.
Having received a whole set of Fischertechnik (2) components helped me decide to experiment it, just for the sake of verifying the idea.
Then, although the whole is still a work in progress, the results are so good that I wanted to share them with you. It has room for many improvements to increase resolution and usability, but it basically works pretty well.
Read on, make one, and show your results!
(1) In short, I have much more interest in spending time engineering something (that can later be effortlessly reused), rather than tediously executing manual work.
(2) Fischertechnik is to mechanic what breadboard is to electronic --Well it's more than just that, but you get the idea.
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Signing UpStep 1The Idea
The principle
A movie consists of a succession of pictures shot rapidly (30 per second). We will only consider the vertical central line (1 pixel thick), that we'll call the scanline. When slowly rotating the camera, each frame will be like the last one, but very slightly shifted. So the scanline will sweep the whole scene.
Being in the center of the frame, the scanline will have no lateral barrel distortion. The scanline will also be very well horizontally aligned (relative to the rotation axis).
In order to collect more vertical pixels (i.e. to have a taller scanline, hence a higher vertical resolution), the camera is rotated by 90°. This rotation will have to be taken into account during the post-processing.
In summary, there are two phases:
Enough theory, now let's test this principle
So if you want to experiment too, you must be (for now) familiar with computer command-line tools:
Tested on Linux (Ububtu) and Mac OSX so far.
But, upon popular request, I may write a user-friendly program that anybody can user.
A movie consists of a succession of pictures shot rapidly (30 per second). We will only consider the vertical central line (1 pixel thick), that we'll call the scanline. When slowly rotating the camera, each frame will be like the last one, but very slightly shifted. So the scanline will sweep the whole scene.
Being in the center of the frame, the scanline will have no lateral barrel distortion. The scanline will also be very well horizontally aligned (relative to the rotation axis).
In order to collect more vertical pixels (i.e. to have a taller scanline, hence a higher vertical resolution), the camera is rotated by 90°. This rotation will have to be taken into account during the post-processing.
In summary, there are two phases:
- Capture: The first part consists of shooting the movie in slow and continuous rotation. It only needs a camera able to shoot video clips, and a motorized rotating mount.
- Post-processing: The second part needs a computer program. It consists of extracting the central column of pixels (corresponding to the scanline) from each movie frame, and stitching them together to form the panorama image.
Enough theory, now let's test this principle
So if you want to experiment too, you must be (for now) familiar with computer command-line tools:
- the installation of command-line tools,
- the operation of command-line tools,
- the edition of script files, to tweak some parameters.
Tested on Linux (Ububtu) and Mac OSX so far.
But, upon popular request, I may write a user-friendly program that anybody can user.
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This empirical ratio could tune a quite simple formula... I'll keep you updated.
It takes 3 pictures, after each one the side of the last one is shown so that you can line them up. It gives very good results (with some funny errors sometimes).
The problem with this is that people and objects need to keep perfectly still for it to work.
I would love to have a program that does what you described!
I really can't see how this is different to how "Panorama Maker" makes panoramas out of video files except you are using a motorized rotating mount. I guess the mount could do a better job than hand held, but at 25 to 60 frames a second there is already a lot of image redundancy. Most video-panoramas I have made work quite well with the camera waving about all over the place.
To get a patch, post either a panorama made this way, or your mount (or a work in progress).
and I recently bought a HD mini DV camera RD52 SHE 2 MP camera mini SD card with 2GB card 640 X 480 pixels 30 framesper second resolution 1024 X 960 DPI video plays in media player no conversion required. camera cost less the fourty dollars on hobby parts web site hope this helps (Rapid)
The method I use to shoot my panorama's is very simple and can get really good results with minimal effort. Just use any camera, place it on a tripod take as many shots as you can (I usually end up taking about a hundred or more)... Then upload all your shots to your computer and use a free program called "Microsoft ICE" (Image Composite Editor)... The program will automatically stitch it all together, after this you can crop the image to any size you want and export it to many different formats..
Program Overview Page: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/