I am using a Fuji S7000 camera with a Nikon FC-E9 fisheye lens.  I am also using an IPIX rotator bracket.  Can someone suggest what might be a better quality set up?  My pictures are coming out nice, but I have a hard time getting both side of the rooms to be the same exposure.  Any suggestions?

I was thinking about buying a Canon EOS model with a sigmna lens.  Would this be a better set up than what I already have?

Here is a sample tour that I did for a Real Estate agent.

http://hometour360network.com/provider/myvirtualagents/1700_dilworth/Tourviewer_1700_dilworth.html

I havent used a s7000 so I dont know if it has ae lock or not but It appears as though you are not setting ae lock when taking your exposures on both sides. using the same exposure settings will not necessarily give you the same exposure on both sides unless you have ae lock on, you seem to be splitting the light source efficiently in both sides so try ae lock and see how  you go.

Method: turn ae lock on, take hemi side 1 then two,
reset ae lock do a second set starting with the opposite side to the first.
you also may want to increase your blend width in pw and play with the healing brush in photoshop cs

Hi Myvirtualagents,

I had a look at your link.

I have shot hundreds of 2 shot tours like what you are doing.

The very fist think you MUST do when shooting 2 shot panos is SPLIT THE LIGHT.

In the pano of the loving room where you are at the front door. I can see that you placed the seam to the right of the door in the corner. You should have placed the camera directly under the skylight and placed the seam on the CENTER of the door.

Using AE lock is not going to help out. AE lock works for outside but even then you still don't need it. Note - when shooting outside put the seam ON THE SUN or if under a porch or tree put the seam WHERE THE SUN IS. You have to get the same amount of light exposure on both hemis.

See the link below. These are all 2 shot panos with no AE lock using an old nikon 950 + FC-E8 and old ipix rotator. Look at the tripod to see where the seams are falling . You will see that I placed the seam onto the CENTER of the closest light source.

Second shoot from the middle of the space if possible. If you get too close to a wall this will casue a imbalance in exposure because you are cutting out light from the close side.

 Look around the space and note where the wondows are and how the light falls off from the brightest window. IF you have two bright windows then put the seam between the windows.

The point is to get a feal for how the light is falling off into the space and SPLIT the light source. If you do this correctly the hemis will almost always be equally exposed. If you didn't get it right then do the following:

Open the hemis in photoshop. Apply and adjustment layer to the darkest hemi. Adjust the layer for midtones only until it looks like the floor and walls are matching the other hemi. Save as a BMP so you don't loose any quality on the save. Open in PW and stitch. If the hemis still dont match keep adjusting the layer midtones and stitcheng until you get a good stitch. Be careful about adjusting too much becasue this will change the edge of the hemi and you will start getting stitching problems. But with PW4.0 and 3.01 you can use manual stitching to correct this.

One last thing. Put the seam onto wall corner/edges, door frames etc. If you can place the seam onto a verticle object like the cornet of a wall or a column this works great in hiding the seam to begin with. If you look around in the space you will notice that the light will change intesity from on side of a wall to the other on a corner for example. In this case the seam will be disquised in the difference of light fall off. You will go a long way in hideng the seam and exposre difference by doing this. I try to place seams like this becasue often you can hide the exposure difference if any and the seam from the ceiling to the floor. So even if there are seam problems or exposure problems they are only noticable in the ceiling and floor. Not directly in the center view of the room. This reduces the amount of tourching up required.

http://66.118.155.203/roebuck/282_snowdrift/360_living_room_1.html

Gen. Lee