Hi All

I need some good advice J

Im currently using a 5700 with an Fc-e9 with an Agnos rota-base. The camera and lens combo was a right load of dogs dinner (the Agnos rorta was spot on).  So now Im looking to buy something different, as you can see Ive already made one costly mistake and I cannot afford to make another.

I've been scratching around the forum for around 3hrs, and Im finding it difficult to decide which would be the right combination for producing high quality full screen (well nearly) interior/ exterior panoramas.

These are my options based on my budget and what I have seen

Nikon D70 / D70s / D50 / EOS 350D
Nikkor 10.5 Lens / Simma 8mm
360 precision rotator / Agnos / Manfrotto 303 SPH 'Multi-Row'
Panoweaver / Tourweaver Software / PTgui

Would using the 303 SPH give me better quality then if I was to use a 360 Precision or Agnos, alternately would it be best to invest in a higher spec camera and then opting for the 360 Precision or Agnos.

 Looking at the spec sheet the EOS 350D has 8.2 million sensor photo detectors compared to D70, D50 which is 6.1 million, dose this mean the EOS 350D is able to take higher quality images than the Nikon, and is this an important factor when deciding on a camera.

What do the professionals useJ

Can anybody help me.

Many thanks Justin

Nikon D70 / Canon 20D are the most popular.

Don't know enough about the 350D/D50 to give much advice there. However, the 300D, the precusor to the 350D, was a dumbed down version of the 20D. Main draw backs were the limited manual adjustments u could make which are needed for pano work. There were a number of other issues which I researched but can't recal when looking into the DSLR game... I choose the 20D.

6 million pixels - 8 million pixels... more pixels more image therefore better quality. HHmmm whilst this rule of thumb is true it isn't the only issue to consider. What kind of sensor has the cam got?? Great pixels and bad lens don't work either. My best advice is to have a look at www.dpreview.com where you'll see full cam specs. be able to compare like with like and see many user comments.

Nikon D70 is very popular and allows the use of the 10.5 lens and sigma 8mm. The 10.5 lens is very good. Main drawback is having to take 6 insted of 4 pics with the sigma. That said, the sigma lens is softer, however it's a good lens and produces good results though the 10.5 produces even better results. There are many threads to this subject. The choise will be urs.

Agnos/SPH/prec360... Agnos is very popular on this forum and I've heard nothing negative on this head. SPH is also widly used... however, I hear it's very fiddly to find the nodal point and I know many who've spent much time being annoyed with this head. Agnos is also cheaper... so looks like Agnos wins here. The precision head is the new kid on the block and is apparently very good. Alas I've not used one yet and at nearly double the price compared to the Agnos it would have to be perfect. I'm very keen on aquiring one, however, there was a recent thread on this head and there was an apparent minor compatability issue with the head and Easypano PW 4.0. This resulted in minor stiching errors. I hear that the 360 guys are talking to Easypano on the subject. They say that it's a software issue and are looking into the situation. Apart from that... I hear good things on this product.

Software. I use Tourweaver and have been very happy with the software. It enables me to make multinode pano tours (java) with great ease and allows many add on features eg map, thumbnails, text, urls, hotspots, movies, ..... However, it's not really suited for full screen movies due to the java applet driving it. Most full screen stuff gets done in Quicktime. (PW 4.0 will output a quicktime.mov). I've done a tour with tourweaver and added hotspots to open a QT.mov file for a full screen image or 2. I also use cubic converter and navigator for purly Quicktime work. www.clickheredesign.com It works really well, is easy to use allows a lot of control and has easy to use GUI.  However u need a MAC. PW 4.0 is my most used tool and enables me to produce good results with little effort. PTgui has more calibration possiblities and also allows for cylindrical panos... However theres a very steep learning curve connected to this software.

Written enough now... I hope this helps.

Get a Coolpix5000 and the FC-E8 lens. You won't have to carry around  a pound of glass anymore. LOL...the first time I saw a FC-E9 lens I was like what the heck is that.

Add the Agnos MrotatorA and your set. It is nodaly perfect and very lightweight. This little rotator is small and a great match for the cp5000

The Coolpix5000 is 5 megapixel camera quite capable of producing very good panos displayed at 600 pixels wide or less. The FC-E8 lens is better than the FC-E9 because it produces a sharper image. There are several threads on this.

If you will be producing full screen panos the cp5000 will suffer slightly in quality. But not much. You won't have that crisp look like you will get at 500 pixels wide(displayed).

I am using the D70s + Nikkor 10.5mm and this produces very sharp and vivid images. This is an excellant choice for high quality work but requirs much more skill in capturing the exposures correctly and more post processing work.

The Cp5000 setup doing a 2 shot or 3 shot pano is very quick and easy and will produce very good panos.

My setup consists of both of these cameras and  Agnos rotators. I really love the cp5000. I can shoot 8 image brackets per hemi in about 3 to 5  minutes. It is lightweight and compact and easy to move while still on the tripod. After my walk through of the property I just setup and start shooting. I am out of there in no time.

Gen. Lee

hi Gen :

i have some questions after i read your post

Question1. if i zoom my camera closer to my fisheye, will i get better pixel of the picture? Again, if i do that, i would have to take more shots and also cannot use the 2 hemi sitiching ?

Question2. Will the QTVR movie produce at 3 shot better resolution than taken at 2 shot?

Question3. i am using 5MP camera (not nikon) with E8 fisheye on. i use resolution of 1600x1200 to take all my picture which is same as the max resolution for CP5000. i took 2 shots (180" each) and converted them into QTVR at 640x480. However the QTVR look blur and crisp. I can imagine that it will be more worse if i convert the QTVR size into 800x600.

So i am trying to find a solution to make a better QTVR file. Software wise, i am using panoweaver v3.

tks

fatchai

Hi fatchai.

Q1 - Some people do this so that the image circle completly fills the CCD up to the top and bottom. I haven't tired it yet. But I believe you would get a bigger image and therfor more pixels in the hemi. So I would say yes, you would get a higher quality hemi.

Q2 - A 3 shot will produce better quality because you are using 1 hemi more pixels in the total image. Better tonal range and more pixels to work with.  Also it is more forgiving in seaming. You still have the white balance issues just like 2 shot.

Q3 - using a 1600x1200 hemi I think the max size you should display at is 450 pixels. Anything over that will start making the image less sharp. The size of the pano meaning the dimensional size(4000x2000 or 1400x700) and the viewer size are related. If you try to display a 1400x700 pano at 600 pixels wide it is going to be a soft image. Same image displayed at 400x300 is going to be nice and sharp providing you have a good quality pano that is properly color balanced.

If I want to display the image larger than 500 pixels wide I make the pano at 4000x2000. Open in Photoshop and size it down in steps applying the unsharpen mask each time at about 10 percent. I take it down to say 2000x1000. That is 1/2 half the original size. I do this in 3 or 4 steps. On the last step I apply a little more unsharpen at about 25 percent or so. I find this makes a sharper image than setting the size to custom in PW. But that is just my opinion. This resized image can now be displayed at about 600 pixels wide and still look pretty good.

A 5 megapixel camera will make good panos at 600 pixels wide or less but if you dislpay them bigger than that you will suffer some qualtiy loss ie... soft image and some pixelation depending on the tonal range.

At 1600x1200 this equals a 1.92 megapixel image. A 1280x960 image equals 1.23 megapixel image. The more total pixels the better the final image will be so the larger you can make the original image the better. That is where the higher megapixel camera comes in. The image is at 300 dpi regardless. The higher the megapixels of the camera the LARGER the image is

The CP5000 can make a max size image of 2560x1920. That equals 4.92 megapixels(effective).
Your Camera at 1600x1200 max size equals 1.92 megapixels.

But this is only relavent when making panos displayed at 600 pixels wide or larger. 5 megapixles is plenty to make a good quality pano displayed at 600 pixels wide or less. If you need to display at larger than that than that you need more megapixels and better optics like the Sigma 8mm and a 4 shot pano.

Now all that said a 2560x1920 hemi will still make a pretty good 800x600 displayed pano. It is just not as crisp as the smaller size but not that bad. You can definitly tell the difference between these and one made with a Sigma 8mm (the better optics pay off).

1600x1200 hemi will make good panos for sure but will suffer some sharpness issues displayed at over 550 pixles wide.

Gen. Lee

Hi Gen Lee...

this is the first time I heard anyone stepping down in a number of steps and sharpening on route. My thoughts would have been that this degrades the image... hhmmm... I'll give it a go myself and see.