Greetings All:
I am now the proud owner of a new Sigma 8mm after many months of waiting on it's release.  The following are from my first test and I have some questions.  I am now testing the demo version for PW4 and I noticed my seams were more visable than with PW3.  I know my nodal or entrance pupil is not yet right on but PW3 to me was more forgiving.  FYI I have been using the Nikon 8700 with fisheye and 3 shot for my pano's.  I was used to where the three seams would fall with this setup and now I need to learn about 4 seams.  Will these seam issues improve as I fine tune my pano head or does my work flow need to change between the two versions?  There was some minor Photoshop work done but not to the seams.  All photos were shot RAW then processed as TIFF in PW4.  I am also new to shooting RAW so this could be some of my problem.

Thank you in advance for any tips.
TTurner

http://www.turnerimaging.com/PW4demo/PW4demo.htm

Your set-up looks fine to me. Can only suggest correcting your images for 'light fall-off' before stitching and possibly try cropping the images in Panoweaver with a slightly smaller radius.

Simon

Sigma 8mm edge light fall off is called "Vignetting".  We take Sigma 8 Raw images.  In Photoshop CS2 we use Adobe Camera Raw Converter.  We open all 3 full circle Canon 5d,  or Canon 350d or 20d 4 Drum type images and select all 4 images,  then on the LENS tab we slide the Vignetting slider to 100%  which brightens the image edge to where the light fall off is removed.  Then we set the mid center adjustment to 25.  This brightens the center of the image.

We also adjust the Chromatic Abberation (shifts the RED channel red edge fringe) back to where the red channel is aligned with the Blue and Green channel.  This essentially sharpens the image.  The red channel creates undesireable image blur.

If you are not taking RAW images you can use Photoshop (any version) and adjust the red channel in each of the 3 or 4 images.

Hope this helps

Thank you Dave for your advice on the light fall off problem. I took your advise on the vignette slider but 100% was to much. Perhaps the new EX DG version has less fall off at the edges.  I am now trying to fine-tune this problem with test after test and will let the forum know if I find a solution.  To Bigwade I did not understand you question about the blender.  I am not sure what blender means?  And a question out to anyone...Can your DLSR sensor become fogged and thus reduce the sharpness of your images?  I have never cleaned my sensor but have never seen any dust marks.  Just some thoughts to throw out to the many that know more than me about this pano world.

Thank you in advance
TTurner

tturner,

Mate, it is highly unlikely the sensor is fogged. Until we can see some images from your combination it is very hard to offer good advise. Perhaps you could zip up a set and make them available for download. Or you could send me a set via www.dropload.com If I have one RAW (at least) image I can offer you some settings to use.

Regards, Smooth

Smooth & all others:
I placed the 4 RAW photos from my pano in the demo at www.turnerimaging.com/downloads2.htm  . I am looking forward to seeing any results.  BTW the file is 27.2 meg and zipped.  I am still testing here but work that pays is getting in the way of work that will hopefully make my product better

Thanks to All
TTurner

Bigwade,

Panoweaver 4.0 does not use any blenders. Hopefully we will see this happen with Panoweaver 5.0

If you would like this feature added you should add it to the requested items list on this forum.

Regards, Smooth

tturner,

WOW! That Sigma EX DG 3.5 is SO different to the older 4.0 version.

Less flare, less vignetting, less chromatic aberration, more sharpness - completely different RAW settings required. I did a quick panorama with your "Pumphouse" images and have .zipped up the final result with the Photoshop CS2 RAW settings I used for this result. They are .xmp files. I used the pumphouse.xmp as my starter point and work the other images from there. But basically only slight "Chromatic Aberration" adjustments were required between images.

It must be said I didn't spend a real lot of time on this extracting the best possible results (which would be subjective anyway!)

I found the "seams" pretty close and really only affected the zenith shot which I cubed and repaired in Photoshop with the "healing" tool only.

Obviously using a blending program like Smartblend or Enblend would have eliminated the issue all together. But for this exercise it was all about using Panoweaver and Photoshop only.

Download the .zip file from here (limited time)

Regards, Smooth