350d 1.6x with 15mm fisheye - how many shots?

[jaarik]

Please help. I got 350d and waiting for Sigma 15mm fisheye to arrive. I know it's gonna crop most of it, but how many shots exactly will I then need so that I can get a good full-view 360x360 panorama? Your responses are appreciated.

[jaarik]

Any pro can give an estimate, please?

[stupot]

aren't you gonna have some serious distortion problems trying to stitch a bunch of fisheye shots together?

as for an estimate... thats entirely up to you... depends how much you want to overlap each shot (and you will want to).

[stupot]

perhaps this illustrates my point a bit better...

this is the distortion of the canon 15mm fisheye, image taken from www.photozone.de

im just gonna tile it horizontally... can you see any problems? (hope your screens big enough to see both of these side by side)

http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/canon_15_28_fish/dist/15mm.gifhttp://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/canon_15_28_fish/dist/15mm.gif


Of course, there are ways of correcting this in software, and if you are using some kind of 360degree virtual panorama software maybe that just does it for you, i dont know, never used anything like that. But if i were you i'd steer towards a canon 10-22, or sigma 10-20... in fact, thats what im saving up for now:)

[jaarik]

Yes, there will be distortion, but nothing that PanoTools cannot handle. As far as "as many shots as you wish" is concerned, i'll need to have at least a 30% overlap between the shots. Now i am terribly curious to find out the number of the shots needed, because i couldn't afford an 8mm. Now how many more shots is that i need? They say you need only 5 with an 8mm fisheye:-|

[SkipD]

Like Stupot said, it's silly to use a lens of this type for panoramics. No software can really correct the "distortion" properly. Using a rectilinear lens for panoramics just makes so much more sense for several reasons - not the least of which is parallax problems as you pan around the circle. A rectilinear lens with a mount that will pivot the camera/lens at the nodal point of the lens is required for good control of the parallax issues. The nodal point issue will be critical for you, even if you go ahead with the fisheye lens.

[verty]

have you thought maybe he wants a distorted pano effect??
ive seen some very cool design books that have used fisheyes for panos..

[jaarik]

I am grateful for your replies. You may correct me if i'm mistaken, but, distortion put aside, will the 15mm fisheye not offer me more degrees fov on the 1.6x machine than even the widest rectlinear wide-angle lens? I am going for fisheye out of necessity to actually make fewer shots. I did some rectlinear 360*360, but it's a hassle to work with too many shots.

[SkipD]

I am grateful for your replies. You may correct me if i'm mistaken, but, distortion put aside, will the 15mm fisheye not offer me more degrees fov on the 1.6x machine than even the widest rectlinear wide-angle lens? I am going for fisheye out of necessity to actually make fewer shots. I did some rectlinear 360*360, but it's a hassle to work with too many shots.I think that by the time you crop out the "distortion" to make stitching pics together you will have to use more images than if you shot with a 10-22 EF-S lens, for example. I don't have either so this is only speculation, but the images from the 10-22 would be far less distorted than those from the "fisheye" 15mm lens (which are intentionally distorted for the fisheye effect).

Perspective "distortion" may be a problem with any wide-angle lens if there is anything in the foreground, but that is a somewhat different issue. In my opinion, the rectilinear lens will give you a far better base of images to work with.

[jaarik]

Thanks, Skip. 10mm looks just as wide.

[Lorek]

I believe that two rows of 8 at +/-30 degrees plus vertical up and down will work as a minimum with a 15mm lens.

[SkipD]

I believe that two rows of 8 at +/-30 degrees plus vertical up and down will work as a minimum with a 15mm lens.You probably did not notice, but the original poster of this thread has not checked into the forum in about 4 and 1/2 years.

[burntpixel]

any particular reason you did not go with the 8mm ?

Sigma 8mm, 40D on board the Agnos Mrotator TCPS (http://www.agnos.com/foto.htm?imgfoto=dati/articoli/tcpsfull_00_big.jpg) head uses 4 stops.

I also add a little tilt which covers the zenith (top), so I don't have to clone out in post.

[Lorek]

You probably did not notice, but the original poster of this thread has not checked into the forum in about 4 and 1/2 years.

Oops yes sorry! I did not notice thet the post was that old!

[FlyingPhotog]

The OP is probably still rendering the project...