blog added 07/11/2006
PTGui v6, Canon 10D and Sigma 8mm Workflow
click on above image to interactive 360 degree full screen panorama (more at the bottom)
A large number of my panoramas were taken using the Canon 10D camera with the Sigma 8mm Fisheye lens, until this summer with the launch of PTgui v6 and Relaviz Stitcher Unlimited 5.5, the workflow to generate panoramas required silly extra steps due to IPIX patent issues. So I was interested to go back and see the work flow with PTgui v6 with this older panoramas.
Workflow
I found the process to be very easy, quick, and compared to my old workflow, the quality of the results far better.:1. Launch PTGui
2. Load the seven photographs from my Canon 10D with Sigma 8mm f/2.8 FE (set to manual focus, manual exposure and locked white balance)
3. Set the lens setting, is spotted correctly but it points out you must set the crop circle, next step
4. Press align images, after a short while this is completed, interestingly it set my lens as being equal to a 176 mm Fisheye
5. Check the resulting panorama editor to confirm the alignment
6. Work on optimizing the lens parameters, firstly I delete control points with large values.
7. Then press on optimize to improve lens parameters, I repeat these two steps several times until the control point values have come down nicely.
8. Press on advanced button/optimize to select horizontal and vertical shift parameters, to tweak final control point values.
9. Create Panorama by 1) setting output size, 2) .tiff format, 3) method - I use Stitch = PTGui and Blend = Enblend plug-in 4) press Create button.
10. The resulting .tif file was then checked briefly in Adobe Photoshop, turned into a QTVR file using CubicConvertor and web page created using Pleinpot.
The generated the resulting QTVR file can be seen by clicking on the image below.