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Peripheries instead of panoramas

M

Martin Evans

New member
I feel sure that this has been done by others, yet I have not come across examples.

The same software that is used to stitch panoramas can also be used to stitch a series of images of the outside of a cylindrical object, to create a flat, two dimensional, view of the surface of that cylinder.

The results of a couple of hasty, rough-and-ready, experiments are shown below. I used two objects to test the idea:

5270.jpg

Each was placed on a turntable, and a series of images taken, the turntable being rotated by one-sixteenth of a turn (22.5 degrees) for each photo. Then each image was loaded into photo-editing software (Paintshop Pro 7) and cropped to a narrow vertical strip. The strips were then passed to a 'stitching' or merging program. I used the free ICE.exe from Microsoft, which is very easy to use, though I have not yet located a manual on how to fiddle with it.

The result from the cylindrical repro apothecary's jar is pretty good:

canth 600x390.jpg

But the very spheroidal "octopus pot" (a museum repro of a Greek bronze-age vessel) was so far removed from cylindrical that the distortions could not be handled by ICE:

octopus 700x327.jpg

Nevertheless, even objects that are not strictly cylindrical can provide an interesting transformation to a two-dimensional view of their surface.

For more details, see:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/periphoto.htm

Has this all been done before? And better?

Martin
 
Doug Kerr

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Martin,
Martin Evans said:
I feel sure that this has been done by others, yet I have not come across examples.

The same software that is used to stitch panoramas can also be used to stitch a series of images of the outside of a cylindrical object, to create a flat, two dimensional, view of the surface of that cylinder.
Click to expand...
Very nice.

In engineering graphics, that process is called "development"

Best regards,

Doug
 
V

Valentin Arfire

New member
hi Martin

thanks for sharing the images are interesting and the technique good - nevertheless the idea is to view an object from outside without distortions

here is another way to present it, as a 3D object - the Sagrada Familia (model from the History Museum of Barcelona) as a mov film

http://valentin.europhoto.ro/3D/Sagrada-Familia-model-3D-handheld.mov

I took the pictures handheld and the light was uncontrollable, but it is a way to present the general view

for stitching I used PANO@QTVR program;
I don't remember how many pictures I've taken
 
Last edited:
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Valentin Arfire said:
thanks for sharing the images are interesting and the technique good - nevertheless the idea is to view an object from outside without distortions

here is another way to present it, as a 3D object - the Sagrada Familia (model from the History Museum of Barcelona) as a mov film

http://valentin.europhoto.ro/3D/Sagrada-Familia-model-3D-handheld.mov

I took the pictures handheld and the light was uncontrollable, but it is a way to present the general view

for stitching I used PANO@QTVR program;
I don't remember how many pictures I've taken
Click to expand...

Did you walk around the model of the cathedral and just shoot away or is there a definite method in the madness, LOL?

Asher
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Martin Evans said:
I feel sure that this has been done by others, yet I have not come across examples.

The same software that is used to stitch panoramas can also be used to stitch a series of images of the outside of a cylindrical object, to create a flat, two dimensional, view of the surface of that cylinder.

The results of a couple of hasty, rough-and-ready, experiments are shown below. I used two objects to test the idea:

5270.jpg

Each was placed on a turntable, and a series of images taken, the turntable being rotated by one-sixteenth of a turn (22.5 degrees) for each photo. Then each image was loaded into photo-editing software (Paintshop Pro 7) and cropped to a narrow vertical strip. The strips were then passed to a 'stitching' or merging program. I used the free ICE.exe from Microsoft, which is very easy to use, though I have not yet located a manual on how to fiddle with it.

The result from the cylindrical repro apothecary's jar is pretty good:

canth 600x390.jpg

But the very spheroidal "octopus pot" (a museum repro of a Greek bronze-age vessel) was so far removed from cylindrical that the distortions could not be handled by ICE:

octopus 700x327.jpg

Nevertheless, even objects that are not strictly cylindrical can provide an interesting transformation to a two-dimensional view of their surface.

For more details, see:

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/periphoto.htm

Has this all been done before? And better?

Martin
Click to expand...

This is a challenge others have addressed before you as it's important to look at various cylinders in machinery and look at wear and tear! One can do this by a camera with a strobe while a shaft is moving at high speeds.

It also is used for examining and cataloging at pieces such as vases or urns. This is the work of Andrew Davidhazy at Rochester Institute of Technology. Here is a rollout picture of an ancent but damaged vase.

pottery-peripheral-3A.jpg

The link os to a nice tutorial. Notice that because only a central strip s used, the resulting image of the rollout is rectilinear and shows no easy clue to the presence of a neck of the vase! The key is to have thin central strips.

Asher
 
V

Valentin Arfire

New member
Asher :)
in the madness at the museum (as using tripods is forbidden, I did used a "filopod" ) I just tried to maintain the same level, the same angle and the same step aroun the table where it was exposed - for this I considered the central tower of the church as an rotational axis

for scientific purposes there are many uses of strange projections while in art I now remember manierist painters who used cones and cylinders to complete their work.
 
M

Martin Evans

New member
Asher: many thanks for the link to Andrew Davidhazy's page on rollout peri-photography with a DSLR. I had to read it a couple of times to fully grasp his technique. He seems to swing the camera through an arc while taking a relatively long-exposure photo of the object rotating behind a slit. He is thus capturing, on one frame I think, the same approach as the old mechanical arrangement of a film moving in one direction behind a slit while the object rotated on a turntable mechanically linked to the mechanism that moved the film. It has the advantage of not needing stitching, and it displays even irregular shapes like a jug in one rectangular 'Mercator' projection.

Valentin: do you do much photography in museums? If so, I would value your comments on an essay of mine that is primarily about using flash photography in galleries, but also touches on tripods, copyright and similar controversial topics. It is at http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto.htm

Regards, Martin
 
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