By Panos I mean cylindrical and spherical panoramic photographs, achieved by taking series of pictures using a tripod and a rotator, which allow to move the point of rotation and the view of your camera to what is commonly called nodal point, ideally located in the center of the lens. Doing so, all the shots needed to rotate 180 degrees on a single row (cylindrical panorama) or 360 degrees on multiple rows (spherical panorama) don't have parallax defects. This way, all the images can be effectively stitched using suitable softwares (I use Realviz Stitcher Express 2), achieving a single image which accurately reproduces the shooted ambient.
This shooting and stitching process allows, thanks to the QTVR technology developed by Apple, to live a unique and exciting virtual experience, furthermore giving the chance to get texture images which can be used in 3D programs as environmental and reflection maps, able to convincingly fake the specular shading attributes of materials applied to 3D objects. This way, the image of an environment captured with panoramic photography will be visible through the reflections of present 3D objects for a more realistic impact.
I started stepping into panoramic photography in 2005, when I bought a Kaidan QuickPan IV rotator with a Standard Bracket: a single vertical arm which allows the rotation of my Nikon D70 digital camera for cylindrical panoramic photographs. Later on I got a Manfrotto 303SPH rotator for cubic or spherical panoramic photography, which allows both the vertical rotation and the horizontal swirling of the camera in order to map an orbital view of the shooted ambient. Recently I purchased a Nodal Ninja 3 rotator for multiple row panos as the lightest and easiest to carrie equipment I found very useful on vacation or whenever I don't want to be overweighted by the backpack.
Special thanks to Greg Downing training dvd, edited by Gnomon Workshop, who inspired me to get closer to this amazing technology. For image and QTVR tweaking I use Photoshop and Cubic Converter by ClickHereDesign which is a useful utility I highly recommended for handling between Cylindrical, Equirectangular, Cube Faces, QTVR and Mirror Balls (for HDR application) formats. Amazing!
Please click on the subsections on the left to enter panoramic galleries.
For additional informations please click on the main Link section of the site under "Panoramic Photography".
India. This section concerns a set of panoramic cylindrical photographs - to enjoy in QTVR format
(you need Quicktime player) - I took in 2005, while I was on holiday in Middle India. The shots were mostly taken
using a tripod and a Kaidan QuickPan IV rotator with a Standard Bracket. Some panoramas were taken without any equipment;
anyway I've been able to stitch them together once I came back to Italy. This shows the high precision level of
Realviz Stitcher Express algorithm calculation in stitching, but I was anyway forced to a probing work of image
rebuilding using Photoshop. Indeed, shooting without any tripod and rotator involves big potential stitching problems,
a long and patient digital restoration and horizon alignment problems, with the result of excluding big parts of the
shooted panorama, not having being able to elude the parallax and to fix the point of view and shooting, so that the
final image doesn't match accurately the photographed environment.
I took every single shot using a 18 mm. lens and it took me 12 shots to make a complete 180° rotation.
Cornwall (UK). This section concerns a set of panoramic cylindrical shots I took in summer 2006 during my holyday. I used the same Kaidan equipment of India along with the Manfrotto 383 Leveller for a better alignment/levelling of the rotator head on the steep cliffs of Cornwall.