Dear Gigapan Users:

I am stumped and looking for ideas. There is a ceremonial structure that I would like to shoot in Peru. The building is 30m per side (here is a picture of half the length of the front that I’ve taken already <http://gigapan.com/gigapans/108285>). In the front I have about 50m of space to step back. However, there are carvings around 3 sides of the building (the back is still covered and thus inaccessible). On the sides I can only stand back about 5m or less resulting in presumably a distorted and huge panorama. Is there a way to shoot all 3 sides and stitch them together in a uniform way to capture a single shot of all the iconography? Any ideas greatly appreciated.

Best,
Matt

Matt, These might be a starting point.

http://panospace.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/linea…

http://machoarts.com/linear-panorama-photo-of-s…#

Good luck, Terry

These look great Terry! I don’t return to the site until October, but if I’m successful this will make for an amazing panorama, both for Gigapan enthusiasts and definitely for archaeologists. Thanks, I’ll post a link to the pic when I’m done.

If you can get the full view of a slice of the building in with your camera oriented in a vertical position, then I’d think you could walk along the building moving the tripod and get a long panorama. I shoot a lot of panos in a single row by hand and it works fine with the gigapan stitcher. I haven’t tried to do one where I move the camera along so I can’t say for sure that the stitcher won’t get hung up for some reason but in that case some of the linked software above might work. when you take the picture
(1) Make sure the camera is fixed in position and the tripod is locked down.
(2) Make sure the angle and position of your view relative to your subject are consistent for each photo.
(3) If you can lay a measuring tape or line of some sort to keep you on the correct path at a consistent distance, this should help
(4) As you move along parallel to your subject, make sure to maintain at least 30% overlap between images
(5) make sure to try and stitch the image set asap so you can see if it worked and can come back if there are problems
(6) when stitching, set the stitcher to “rows down” and then set it to 1 row
(7) If you need to get more then one row in, you might be able to shoot a couple of rows if you mark the camera position on the ground to make each show location consistent. Shoot one row with the camera angled up, another with it down. might work

Thanks for the advice Tim!