Ben Rubinstein
pro member
Huge project on at the moment. Working for a youth college taking endangered youth, mostly from broken homes, drug backgrounds, etc and helping them find themselves and a way in life.
The college recently bought up 5 huge buildings in Jerusalem, the buildings are old, from 120-400 years old with walls thicker than the length of your arm and a charm and beauty which has been utterly inspiring. Added to that the college have serious financial backing which they have used to make sure that everything from the hallways of the dormitories through to the eating halls and study halls look incredible. I couldn't believe the dining room with chandeliers, napkins in every place, food served to the table, etc. Wasn't like that in my college days!
They want me to shoot 360 degree virtual tours. I'd never done them but having done a test run in my lounge and knowing that I have the software included with Autopano I was sure it would be easy.
Oh no it ain't! Firstly I'd never bothered with all this nodal point nonsense. Why should I when Autopano is so good that I've never needed it? Um, this 'nonsense' is now suddenly very very important. Rotating a 16mm lens with multiple level stitches and I've been fighting with autopano all day to get a good stitch. It's working with both architecture and very very close up walls, chairs, objects etc where the magic runs out and there is just a limit to what it can fix.
An 8mm fisheye to give me a full 180 degree view might solve the problem, you don't need that much resolution anyway for a web sized thingy however I've discovered that my attempts to do multi level without a nodal slide are almost impossible, they just won't stitch when doing 360 in a small room full of stuff. Not without too many problems. On the other hand how do you use a tripod with a lens like that? Heck how do you keep your feet out of the frame even?
Or I could get a full two axis nodal slide rig and I've been sucessfully avoiding that particular pain in the neck for 3 years now.
Oh well, not that many more rooms to do, managed to force 8 'tours' to stitch albeit only 360X100, it will have to do, I gave them a charity price.
On the other hand added to the virtual tours I'm doing a lot of regular non pano shooting, some incredible stuff in these old buildings, as I said to a friend, I'm being paid to shoot my project!
Here is the head of the youth section marking papers in his office which is a piece of history in its own right, incredible room, I could sit there all day among 4 walls floor to ceiling with decade old books and silver artifacts...
Difficult shot to do, the room is shot with flash along the same axis as the lamp but kept very low to just bring enough detail into this dimly lit room which actually looked as it does in the photo.
The college recently bought up 5 huge buildings in Jerusalem, the buildings are old, from 120-400 years old with walls thicker than the length of your arm and a charm and beauty which has been utterly inspiring. Added to that the college have serious financial backing which they have used to make sure that everything from the hallways of the dormitories through to the eating halls and study halls look incredible. I couldn't believe the dining room with chandeliers, napkins in every place, food served to the table, etc. Wasn't like that in my college days!
They want me to shoot 360 degree virtual tours. I'd never done them but having done a test run in my lounge and knowing that I have the software included with Autopano I was sure it would be easy.
Oh no it ain't! Firstly I'd never bothered with all this nodal point nonsense. Why should I when Autopano is so good that I've never needed it? Um, this 'nonsense' is now suddenly very very important. Rotating a 16mm lens with multiple level stitches and I've been fighting with autopano all day to get a good stitch. It's working with both architecture and very very close up walls, chairs, objects etc where the magic runs out and there is just a limit to what it can fix.
An 8mm fisheye to give me a full 180 degree view might solve the problem, you don't need that much resolution anyway for a web sized thingy however I've discovered that my attempts to do multi level without a nodal slide are almost impossible, they just won't stitch when doing 360 in a small room full of stuff. Not without too many problems. On the other hand how do you use a tripod with a lens like that? Heck how do you keep your feet out of the frame even?
Or I could get a full two axis nodal slide rig and I've been sucessfully avoiding that particular pain in the neck for 3 years now.
Oh well, not that many more rooms to do, managed to force 8 'tours' to stitch albeit only 360X100, it will have to do, I gave them a charity price.
On the other hand added to the virtual tours I'm doing a lot of regular non pano shooting, some incredible stuff in these old buildings, as I said to a friend, I'm being paid to shoot my project!
Here is the head of the youth section marking papers in his office which is a piece of history in its own right, incredible room, I could sit there all day among 4 walls floor to ceiling with decade old books and silver artifacts...
Difficult shot to do, the room is shot with flash along the same axis as the lamp but kept very low to just bring enough detail into this dimly lit room which actually looked as it does in the photo.
