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Panoramic Pictures of Cache Location

Guest Peter Scholtz

By Guest Peter Scholtz
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Guest Peter Scholtz

Guest Peter Scholtz

Posted
Posted

Today I replaced my first cache which was stolen (we learn).

 

I recently bought a digital camera and while taking pictures of the location, I thought about taking a 360 degree panoramic picture.

 

I took three pictures for each of my two panoramic views, about 150 degrees and stitched them together with Photoshop.

 

Quite a nice effect - have a look at http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?id=1754 (Of course they could have been colour matched, but I'm a programmer, so a bit beyond me.)

 

Are there other caches with such wide angle pictures?

 

------------------

Peter Scholtz

www.biometrics.co.za

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Guest Creator of Geocaching

Guest Creator of Geocaching

Posted
Posted

Cool now you are Geographing!!

 

Visit Yahoogroups.com/geographing for a bunch of information on panoramic photography and many examples.

 

Dave...

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Guest Lux Lucid

Guest Lux Lucid

Posted
Posted

Cool, your pano looks very nice. No need to color match; overlapping shots is still a great effect. Keep it up!

 

I got re-excited about panoramas after good ol' makaio created a QTVR pano of one of my placements, Council Crest Cache. His third log entry here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=604 (or directly there: http://www.gpscache.com/ccrest/ )

 

He inspired me to do a QTVR pano at one of his (now archived) caches, "Sauvie Island".

Cache info and pano link here: http://geocaching.exocet.ca/found-008.shtml

 

I did a tall panorama at the tall location of the "Three Cats and The Postman" cache by Wit Camp. I stacked two handheld vertical 28mm shots and stitched in Photoshop for about 95-degrees of vertical coverage (vertigo!):

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=2079

 

Jeff and Mike Teague put a cache at LaCamas Park, WA, that was quite worthy of a 360-degree pano shot (10 vertical shots with 28mm on tripod):

http://tiltshift.com/LaCamasPark/LaCamas_PanoImage300.jpg

(QTVR Pano version might work for you here: http://tiltshift.com/LaCamasPark/ )

 

Panos burn up the film though, so I'm looking forward to a nice digital camera one of these days. :-)

 

-chad

(Team Exocet)

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Guest makaio

Guest makaio

Posted
Posted

Unfortunately, my Linux box crapped out so my site (gpscache.com) is not up. You can view the Council Crest pano flat image in the Geographing Yahoo group Files section...

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Geographing/files/GEOGRAPH%20GALLERY/Historical%20Places/%40N45p4988dW122p7069d%5BCouncil%20Crest%2CPortland%2C%20OR%5D.jpg

 

I use a digital cam corder on a tripod. Most important is getting the tripod nice and level. Then simply spin the camera (slowly) for a bit more than 360 degrees (better to have a little overlap then less than a full circle). My image capture software allows me to set it to grab an image every X seconds. I set it to 3-5 seconds and let it run. When done, it provides 20-30 images which make up the full 360 degree panorama. I then use one of the panorama shareware programs to stich them together seamlessly. Works pretty well for an amateur like myself.

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Guest bearboy

Guest bearboy

Posted
Posted

Your Cache site is awesome! You have got all of mine beat.I wish I could come to South Africa to find it.Keep up the great work.Those are some great Photos

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Guest Lux Lucid

Guest Lux Lucid

Posted
Posted

Peter (and others),

 

I know of a great viewer that will take a flat panorama JPG file and display it as a 360-degree "virtual reality" panorama. I hope you don't mind, but I tested out with your Cape Town shot so you can see the effect. Look at the HTML file here:

http://tiltshift.com/misc/CapeTownCityBowlPano/

 

In that directory, there's just three simple files. 1) The JPG you are familiar with, 2) the Java PTViewer.jar file that does the work, and 3) the HTML file that brings those two together for display. If you're semi-familiar with HTML, you can download those files and experiment on your computer. And if you have your own web space, you can reuse that stuff to post more panos online.

 

I like this PTViewer method better than the QuickTime VRs because it does not require that QuickTime (or any other plugins) be installed on a person's computer to view the panorama effect. Plus PTViewer is free, and small, works with ANY Java-enable web browser, and relatively easy to use. (Unfortuanately the maker of PTViewer, Helmut Dersch, is being sued and gagged by IPix, a power-hungry, patent-mongering panorama software company that would prefer that all people who make any panoramas pay $25-100 _per_panorama_ before publishing them. http://vr.albury.net.au/~kathyw/EyePics/ipix.html But don't get me started.) icon_smile.gif

 

-Lux "I love panoramas!" Lucid

(Team Exocet)

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Guest Lux Lucid

Guest Lux Lucid

Posted
Posted

Peter (and others),

 

I know of a great viewer that will take a flat panorama JPG file and display it as a 360-degree "virtual reality" panorama. I hope you don't mind, but I tested out with your Cape Town shot so you can see the effect. Look at the HTML file here:

http://tiltshift.com/misc/CapeTownCityBowlPano/

 

In that directory, there's just three simple files. 1) The JPG you are familiar with, 2) the Java PTViewer.jar file that does the work, and 3) the HTML file that brings those two together for display. If you're semi-familiar with HTML, you can download those files and experiment on your computer. And if you have your own web space, you can reuse that stuff to post more panos online.

 

I like this PTViewer method better than the QuickTime VRs because it does not require that QuickTime (or any other plugins) be installed on a person's computer to view the panorama effect. Plus PTViewer is free, and small, works with ANY Java-enable web browser, and relatively easy to use. (Unfortuanately the maker of PTViewer, Helmut Dersch, is being sued and gagged by IPix, a power-hungry, patent-mongering panorama software company that would prefer that all people who make any panoramas pay $25-100 _per_panorama_ before publishing them. http://vr.albury.net.au/~kathyw/EyePics/ipix.html But don't get me started.) icon_smile.gif

 

-Lux "I love panoramas!" Lucid

(Team Exocet)

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Guest Peter Scholtz

Guest Peter Scholtz

Posted
Posted

Lux,

 

dadgum that's nice! I definately want to use that. Only the last and first frame don't line up nicely though.

 

But I had a look at Panorama Factory mentioned earlier in this thread which does a good job of stitching them together and colour coding it! Only hassle was that it didn't like my two shots per angle. It wants them next to each other ...

 

------------------

Peter Scholtz

www.biometrics.co.za

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Guest joshgray

Guest joshgray

Posted
Posted

Cool stuff.. My fav program for panos is "Panoramic Factory" does eeeeverything for you. Stiches, blends, brightness, contrast, the works. I believe it even does the fixing of pairalax (sp?) distortion..

 

------------------

---

JoshGray

http://joshgray.myip.org

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Guest Markwell

Guest Markwell

Posted
Posted

Lux, I must be missing something. I found your very cool Cape Town Bowl 360 shot and I wanted to do the same.

 

I copied all three files to my local drive, and I can't get it to run. The browser indicates that it can't load the PTViewer Class (specific message is "Applet ptviewer class ptviewer could not be loaded").

 

I've got a cool 360° that I took from this morning and made a composite jpg, similar to the Cape Town City Bowl.

 

Am I missing something?

 

MarkLent60544@aol.com

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Guest Lux Lucid

Guest Lux Lucid

Posted
Posted

t/dmaurer/%7Edersch/Index.htm

 

The PanoTools software is not the easiest to use, but it's extremely powerful and free/open-source. The author, Prof. Helmut Dersch, is amazing in what he has provided for the pano community.

 

Hope that helps. Post more panos! icon_smile.gif

 

-Lux Lucid

(Team Exocet)

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Guest Lux Lucid

Guest Lux Lucid

Posted
Posted

t/dmaurer/%7Edersch/Index.htm

 

The PanoTools software is not the easiest to use, but it's extremely powerful and free/open-source. The author, Prof. Helmut Dersch, is amazing in what he has provided for the pano community.

 

Hope that helps. Post more panos! icon_smile.gif

 

-Lux Lucid

(Team Exocet)

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Guest Peter Scholtz

Guest Peter Scholtz

Posted
Posted

Rather than have a link to the panorama on the cache description page I want to embed it directly, so it shows as part of the page - now that will look nice!

 

I've emailed Jeremy the PTViewerJava and asked him to add the ptviewer.jar file because the following doesn't seem to work:

 

It seems I can't change this

 

 

to this

 

 

------------------

Peter Scholtz

www.biometrics.co.za

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Guest jeremy

Guest jeremy

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Peter Scholtz:

It seems I can't change this...

 

I believe this is a security feature in IE (and Netscape?) so you can't have evil code execute on an unsuspecting visitor.

 

I got ready to copy the code over and noticed the license. I have contacted the owner of the panorama code and asked permission to use it. If all goes well I'll add the code to the site.

 

Jeremy

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Guest Artful Dodger

Guest Artful Dodger

Posted
Posted

Hey Peter!

 

Excellent addition to the Geocache website. Congrats for plugging that feature. I think it will be used quite extensively now.

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Guest Peter Scholtz

Guest Peter Scholtz

Posted
Posted

quote:
Originally posted by Artful Dodger:

Hey Peter!

 

Excellent addition to the Geocache website. Congrats for plugging that feature. I think it will be used quite extensively now.

 

The thanks go to the guys above!

 

------------------

Peter Scholtz

www.biometrics.co.za

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Guest bigkid

Guest bigkid

Posted
Posted

Oh great, you post this AFTER I leave for my vacation, making think I have to go back to Oregon to shoot a 360.

 

I got the java software to work, that was definitely high on the cool-geek factor.

 

Another idea is to post a *.mov spun on a tripod, my Nikon 990 has a movie mode, although I hope Jeremey and crew have enough space to support a movie.

 

Look for a new cache in Oregon where I was, called Defenders of the Cacheumbia (where do we get these names?)

 

-bigkid

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