World design studio - a photo on Flickriver

Many people have asked, I have answered many times, now it's time to wrap up most of what has been said: a Little planet Tutorial! Now I don't want to spoil the fun of discovering what is to be done in detail: this is no step-by-step tutorial. However, I hope it helps in giving the gist of the main errors you should avoid.

Ok now let's get started !

1) Choose your location.
If you don't have a panoramic tripod head like a nodal ninja, the closer you are to objects all around you, the harder it will be. It's doable, especially if you have a wide angle, but it takes some practice.

2) Set your camera.
Before you take the pictures, be careful, you have to set your camera to manual mode (manual focus, aperture, shutter speed and white balance) or else you'll have horrible results. If your camera does not handle manual exposure, you'll have to do some extra research and work by yourself, as I'm ont familiar with that technique. Sorry!

3) Shoot!
The basic thing to know for panoramas is that you have to take pictures around the focal point of your camera - not you! with a point-and-shoot that basically means around your lens.
My way of shooting hand-held allows one to take very nice spherical panoramas without a pricy and/or bulky tripod and panoramic tripod head. The camera is kept very close to the body, and the lens is kept over a fixed spot on the ground: the tips of the shoes. The body rotates only once all the pictures in the visible area have been taken. It is imperative that you know how many pictures you need to take, so that you don't look in your camera. After almost all the shots have been taken, you also need to back away to take the zenith (otherwise your head gets in the way) and nadir (if you don't want your shoes on the panorama), keeping the camera always over the same spot on the ground.
With respect to the order of shooting, I do it by rows. I have a 36mm camera (35mm equiv.), so I know I need 6 takes (portrait oriented) do do 180° horizontaly; then i tilt the camera upwards by 30° and do another row of 6; then 30° more, but there (close to the zenith) I only need 3 takes; I then start over with the rows downwards; Then I spin over myself and start all over again. And at last, zenith and nadir (i.e. up and down :p).
So if I'm not mistaken, that makes 50 pics: it is rarely the case that i only shoot 50 pics, for the fear of missing something, so I end up with around 60-65.

4) Software part I: Autopano-Sift (this step is skippable with new versions of Hugin)
Autopano-sift generates control points to identify the (generally) 50+ pictures that compose a little planet. It's pretty easy to use, no need to go deeper here.

5) Software part II: Hugin
Hugin then distorts the 50+ pictures to arrange them in order to create an equirectangular panorama. Here, well... Hugin is a little harder to master, but its also fun to experiment. Again, I won't dig into this. Moving on...

6) Software part III: Enblend (this step is skippable if you have much less than 50 pictures)
Enblend actually creates the panorama by "melting" all the pictures. Enblend is a command line executable, therefore not really sexy to use, but not that hard. Type "enblend" in the command line and all the options will appear. You then get the equirectangular panorama.

7) Software Part IV: Hugin again
You then run Hugin with only one image, the equirectangular, and, changing some parameters (I let you figure out which), reproject it into a stereographic projection (to have the "little planet" effect), and voilà!

(Well, I also use The Gimp for extra post-processing (either before or after running Enblend): removing people, adjusting for lighting, contrast, and colours, add a patch of sky from time to time, etc.)

UPDATE: I now own an 8mm fisheye lens (a sigma 8mm EX DG). Here is what changes:
- I still shoot hand held, but only 4 images: portrait oriented, every 90° horizontally, and I tilt the camera for the 4 shots: +20°,-20, +20°, -20°. that way I don't need to shoot a nadir and zenith. However if the ground is difficult (tiles etc), I shoot a nadir.
- I don't use autopano, it's really easy to add 3 points per image manually, even with a nadir - and auto pano usually has trouble with fisheyes;
- I change the lens parameters to "circular fisheye"

Taken in: France / Ile-de-France / Paris (show map)

Taken on: December 6, 2006

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Sets appears in: • Let's go Exploring • Planetoids

Groups appears in: • panoramas • Imagination more » • 360° • Polar Panoramas • Create Your Own Planets • The Lords of Photo-Stitching • Paris 360° Panoramas « less

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