Forum

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Pro Battery Life

Hi Dave,

I charged up my battery for 24 hours. The charger never turned ‘Green’, but stayed red the entire time.

I checked the final voltage, 8.27 v

I inserted it into the Gigapan unit and got the message saying I need to charge battery and it was not useable.

I plugged in the blank plug into the Gigapan unit and it would work fine.

I believe I have both a bad battery and a bad Gigapan unit. I will order a new battery pack and see if this solves the issue…

Thank you for the tips

Jason

Topic: General Gigapanning / Exposure AND Focus Bracketing ....

Hello Art,

I do not believe you can control focus with Nikon computer interface in an ‘Absolute’ sense, with repeatable results for each frame- I believe its a relative control (focus in some, focus in some, focus out some, focus out some – not ’move camera focus to this point)

I believe you would be best suited to go ahead a build an Arduino device that focused the lens in steps and fired the shutter. It would be trivial to have an Aruino control a stepper motor driver and have the stepper motor attached to the lens with a pulley. Not sure how to have limits set, but there would be plenty of switch inputs capable of receiving a limit switch setting on the Arduino, and the Arduino could fire the shutter of the camera AND send a signal back to the Gigapan unit to advance to the next frame when its time.

It is easy to have the Gigapan send a signal to the Arduino, the arduino inputs will directly detect the Gigapans USB outputs. I have done this. Maybe an optoisolator is advised though.

It would be a fun project! Now I want to go build one…

Here I find someone built similar project with servo http://adisoffer.tumblr.com/post/23469538631/bu…

and here is an instructable project
http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Lens-Co…

Jason

Topic: General Gigapanning / Exposure AND Focus Bracketing ....

Yes, I was planning on focus stacking and exposure bracketing. I’d like to be able to have the entire panorama in focus. So right now, I shoot the 360 panorama with a 24mm lens which gives me the depth of field that I need. (I can go from 5’ to infinity at f-16.) I’d like to use a 50mm lens which will capture the same panorama in 90 shots that I currently use 35 shots to capture. This will give me greater resolution. However I don’t have the same deep depth of field with the 50mm lens as the 24mm lens. Because of this, I’ll have to resort to focus stacking to get the deep depth of field I’m seeking.

What I’d like to do is find a device which is capable of controlling the focus of my camera (D800E) as well as exposure bracketing. Even better would be if there would be a way that the Gigapan head could trigger the device. I’ve thought about programming an Arduino board to do this and have downloaded Nikon’s specs for controlling the camera but after reviewing the docs it is clear that it isn’t a trivial process. I’d like to automate this as much as possible as that way I can avoid errors if/when I do it manually.

Any ideas?

Topic: Stitch / Why does my GigaPan look all weird?

JAV,

One possibility is that it is the repetitive pattern of the windows. The stitcher can be fooled into thinking it has an alignment because of multiple matching points that are one window off. I have had tall glass buildings bend over like they were made of rubber and the sky border above them was collapsed. The GigaPan stitch does not have an alignment strategy that recognizes this condition and could apply a limit to the alignment. You may get a better result with other software, but it may take a lot longer, with more manual intervention. Another possibility may be the curvy structure closer to the camera that may be confusing the stitcher if you are off your nodal point alignment (entrance pupil) and you are getting a shift in that object relative to the background as the lens is rotated by the EpicPRO. You can check for this by setting up on the same scene and rotating across the object, checking that it remains aligned with the same background point on both the left and right edges of the frame. This second possibility is the most likely to be your problem. Good tips at this site: http://www.hugha.co.uk/NodalPoint/Index.htm#Det…

Dave

Topic: Stitch / Why does my GigaPan look all weird?

Here’s a GigaPan I just shot with the Epic PRO and stitched with GigaPan Stitch 2.1.0160.

http://gigapan.com/gigapans/127132

The hotel looks all garbled up and weird. Is there anything I could have done differently? Is there better software for stitching?

Thanks,
JAV

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Pro Battery Life

Jason,

The “fully charged” AA NiMh cell voltage should be 1.35 to 1.45V, giving a stack of 6 the full voltage of 8.1 to 8.7V. I believe that the sealed unit is made up of 6 NiMh cells connected in series and the specification of 7.2V or 7.4V is a minimum expected under nearly discharged and worst case environmental conditions. If you measure 7V after charging, that means to me that you may have one shorted cell. 1.4V x 5 = 7V. Probably not a coincidence. Other cells will operate and charge normally with a shorted one in the string.

Dave

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Street View tour of Gigapan Systems LLC

It is possible to tour the Gigapan Systems LLC headquarters on Google Maps Street View here

https://maps.gstatic.com/m/streetview/?panoid=A…

Pretty fascinating stuff for a fan of Gigapan, tour around the front office, with lots of computer stations, a few huge printed out Gigapans, attractive people at work, bean bags. A nice adorable dog photobombs about half the shots (as does a Gigapan Epic Pro)

A few of the offices have experimental units visible. Something to do with mounting multiple cameras vertically on the same unit (probably to get a large panorama shot faster). There is a ceiling mounted epic pro, I don’t imagine what it does (mount a projector? a disco ball?, a stadium cam?). There is a large format x-y scanner prototype in the warehouse.

The programmers seem to like coffee a lot, but this is the Pacific Northwest. Dual monitors seems to be the norm. Lots of headphones, but no speakers, polite.

The conference room has a kinect hooked up, do they have hand gesture drivers. On the table is a 360hero unit, for taking 360 degree video and panoramas with 6 Gopro cameras.

I enjoyed seeing some of my underwater panoramas printed out on display in at least two offices, nice to be appreciated ;) ;)

Venturing into the warehouse and production room it look like it is a lot of work making these units. Lots of stations and bins. These are definitely made right here in the USA, and there are lots of parts. Lots of boxes ready to go.

Thank you Gigapan for posting these, I really enjoyed it! Everything seems ship shape and passes examination;)

Jason

Topic: Digital Cameras on Gigapan / Canon Lens with Gigapan

Both of them will work. I presume this is for your university shot? If your able to get the people in the photo to stand still enough, I would go for the 100mm as this will allow you to take more photos, thus gaining more detail and higher resolution.

I would also do a second shot though at a shoter focal length, about 50mm.

remember to review your shots as it’s taking them and if you happen to notice something not right, retake that photo after the gigapan has completed.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Professional Gigapan Job Request

Let us know how it goes!

Topic: General Gigapanning / Professional Gigapan Job Request

Thank you for your advice… is it very helpful!! Best of luck to you.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Professional Gigapan Job Request

Given what you have said, I would (personally) charge $200 for the call out to take the photo. I would not stay longer than 2 hours for this price.

State that all print orders should go through you and that this is standard photographic business practice.

Then if a student wants a print, mark up printing costs by 200% minimum.

Also, you could try your luck with advertising on the image too, get a sponsor that suits for such an image, a local restaurant or such, tell them that your taking this image and that it will be seen by a large local public on facebook and charge them $100 to put their logo on the image.

Hope that helps. For more business discussion, please join my group here on gigapan at this link; http://gigapan.com/groups/107

Topic: General Gigapanning / Gigapan Epic Pro - in moderate winds

Hello cwinhall,

The forum was intended be more of a platform for peer-to-peer support such as exchanging tips and other ideas. Those who need direct technical support with their GigaPan robots, stitching software or gigapan.com membership account should contact us at http://gigapan.com/cms/support/contact-support
However, we will answer forum posts whenever we can!

Topic: Digital Cameras on Gigapan / Canon Lens with Gigapan

We have a Canon 100 MM and a Canon 24-70 mm will either of these work with this gigapan. We are using a 7D Canon.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Professional Gigapan Job Request

Thank you for your reply…
This is an outside picture with the students in a formation
not a 360… they are going to use it for facebook for tagging
haven’t been told about prints but what a great idea
We are unsure of the cost to shoot/stitch the image and provide a file back to the university.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Professional Gigapan Job Request

Could you provide mroe info about it? Is it a 360 image inside the uni? or a Pano of the outside, or several shots as a whole package? What is the intended use for the image?

Will they want prints of it, if so, how many? You can make a lot of profit from printing gigapans so if they order some prints, reduce your shooting cost. Take photos of the prints before you hand them over to present in your portfolio or on your website.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Professional Gigapan Job Request

We are new and specialize in virtual tours. One of our clients would like to order a gigapan image of their university. What would be an average price for this job… not including travel?

Topic: General Gigapanning / Exposure AND Focus Bracketing ....

He might be able to do the opposite by focus stacking, so that guy may still be able to help. I think it’s just easier to set the hyperfocal distance with the aperture.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Exposure AND Focus Bracketing ....

I think he is after something the opposite of that. Am I right in saying that you want the whole image to be in focus Art?

Your only option I feel to automate this would be to do it through software for controlling your camera.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Spherical Gigapan iPad App

That is the part I found gimmicky. The rest is useful :)

Topic: General Gigapanning / Spherical Gigapan iPad App

Which part do you think is a gimmick?

If you are referring to the panning using the gyroscope, that is just an option. You can see near the end of the video that she turned the gyro off and is panning and zooming w/ swipes and pinches.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Download GigaPans

Sharing a Gigapan via email only sends the link to the Gigapans image page on Gigapan.

It is not possible to print from Gigapan an image that is not either marked as ‘public print’ or is in your own account.

It is theoretically possible to systematically reconstruct an image that is publicly posted on Gigapan as the underlying tiles are all available by http, but doing so for any unauthorized use (ie, printing) is copyright infringement.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Exposure AND Focus Bracketing ....

Not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but I ran across this person’s pictures on Flickr. You might want to get hold of him to see how he does it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanmolin/6911745136/

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Download GigaPans

Ummm, really? I was always under the impression our Gigapans were safe from people “stealing” and printing them on their own. Now that I know it isn’t safe, not sure I want to post the “good” ones.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / SCANDAL! no, but a minor quibble

I agree with both of you. One of the reasons why I didn’t enjoy entering into the more recent contests was because of the downrating that was going on. I know my picture wasn’t the best, but there were ones that were definitely deserving and they were rated very, very low.

If Gigapan really wanted to limit the contestants, which I’m positive they don’t want to do, they can put a rule in there that states the pictures MUST have been taken with a Gigapan or motorized panorama unit. I admit I’m an offender of not using a Gigapan all the time, but it might limit the downraters in that the ones that rate panoramas down could be ones that don’t own or use a Gigapan unit.

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Pro Battery Life

That’s a great idea Jason. I haven’t seen any batter issues yet, but I think I’ll go through my box of orphaned power warts and see if I can harvest a tip to throw in my bag “just in case”.