Forum

Topic: Special-effects Gigapans / Pano to Virtual Reality

www.kolor.com <<< Panotour o Panotour Pro, is all you want…and need

Topic: General Gigapanning / Shoot in Portrait mode

How can I “setup” my camera to shoot in portrait mode? I have my Nikon D800e in a RRS right angle bracket mounted sideways on my Gigapan Pro. When I set up using a 3:2 ratio, won’t that confuse the software? Shouldn’t I be able to set the camera at 2:3 to make it understand that the cameras on it’s side? Thanks!

Topic: Digital Cameras on Gigapan / Any experience with 5DIII or D800?

I’ve had great luck with the D800 and the 70-200mm f2.8 zoom

Topic: Special-effects Gigapans / Timelapse/series=disable

Hello Bent,

We see you have submitted a case to customer support and they have responded with some follow-up questions. Please check your email from GigaPan Customer Service.

Thank you.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Uploader interruption question

Yes. As long as you leave the Upload program running (even after putting your computer to sleep and waking it back up), it will continue to try to communicate over the network. If you switch network connections, e.g. switch from a wired internet connection at home to a wireless connection at an internet cafe), or reboot a router, the upload will keep trying indefinitely.

Any further assistance needed, please let me know.

Thank you,

Alicia

Customer Service
GigaPan Systems
gigapan.com

Topic: Special-effects Gigapans / Timelapse/series=disable

Why can´t I enable this menu in my Epic Pro= Timelapse/series=disable

When I try to change >Disable< nothing happens

When I set the timer to 2 hours nothing happens

Topic: General Gigapanning / how to make a gigapanorama over 65,000pixels wide?

PTGui will save files > 64K pixels, if you use Photoshop large (.psb) format. If you plan on uploading to gigapan’s site, make sure the .psb file has a single layer so you can open the file using gigapan’s stitch software.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Trade Nikon cable for Canon

Anyone willing to trade a non-Canon trigger cable for your unused Canon N3 cable for Epic Pro? If so, email me. Perdue@rvinteractive.com. Thanks

Topic: General Gigapanning / Uploader interruption question

My Gigapan is taking too long to upload on my sat link. Can I switch networks while the uploader is working and will it reestablish the connection and continue where it left off?

Topic: Web Site and Forum / All user generated links on Gigapan are broken

I am very happy to report that the link problem has been fixed!

Topic: Web Site and Forum / All user generated links on Gigapan are broken

I just looked at some pages that showed the bug you reported and they seem to be OK now. I also added a link ending in /file.html and that worked too.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Download GigaPans

You can always try asking gigapan.com to recover the image for you. They have done this in the past for me (admittedly when gigpan.com was gigapan.org).

Topic: Low-light Gigapanning / Using in low light

Rather than post a new question on the same topic I am going to reply here.

I’m a new GigaPan user. So new that the Epic Pro hasn’t even arrived yet and this is my first post

(1) If I use my 60Da and a Zeiss 21mm lens I can usually get by with ISO 800 and 1/20s @f2.8 However, 1/20s on a longer lens, say 200mm – 300mm is going to be too long to prevent star trailing. Does it make sense to use a wide angle lens for shooting a Gigapan of the night sky or is it a waste of time. I’ll probably try it anyway.

(2) I like to shoot night landscape images (starscapes). Is this possible with the Gigapan? It seems like relative star motion is going to be a problem

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!