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Sharing thoughts and ideas on business, security and photography163 Megapixel panorama : View from my lounge
Posted on August 22, 2010This morning I created and uploaded my Gautrain panorama (see previous post). That encouraged me to try and make a more detailed and refined panorama using a better camera. I have always enjoyed the view from my lounge / balcony so decided to try and create a panorama shot from there.
Using a basic tripod and a Canon EOS 550d DSLR camera I took a series of 31 photos which were then run through Microsoft ICE and uploaded to Photosynth. The resulting image is the 163 megapixel panorama image present below. What is really impressive is the level of detail present in the synth. Try zooming into leaves on some of the trees, cars on the freeway in the distance or to windows on the office block. This really is powerful technology which anybody can enjoy.
This second synth was taken over lunch using my Nokia E71. The quality isn’t great as it was taken handheld. The synth has many gaps and misplaced photos. I took 77 photos and ICE used 66 of them to give a 360 degree vertical coverage and 144 degrees horizontal. I uploaded it out of interest thinking it would be a bit of a disaster but after playing with it for a while made it public and added some highlights. Its amusing to play with for a short while.
You can download the Microsoft ICE tool here at the Microsoft Research website.
Gautrain station photo synth (3d image composite)
Posted on August 21, 2010Below is a very “rough and ready” photosynth of the Gautrain station platform in Sandton. It was created from 35 photos taken handheld on my Blackberry Bold 9000 (without flash) the other day while waiting 10m for the train to arrive.
The synth was put together with Microsoft Image Composite Editor (MS ICE) and the Microsoft Photosynth plugin for it. All free software that does quite an amazing job of stitching together a bunch of randomly ordered photos that you drag into the window. I will add some more screenshots and information in another post later. In the meantime here is the synth.
Excuse the gaps (in pics) and occasional mismatch, I did move forward at one stage to avoid getting too many people in on the platform to the right, and this caused a little bit of a mismatch with the railway line.
I’m very impressed by what can be achieved with such a low end “camera” and some very nifty software from Microsoft. I am very attempted to take along the DSLR and tripod next time to see how that would come out. Comments and feedback welcome.
Click on the picture below to “activate” the synth then expand to full screen and move the view around to enjoy the full 3d effect.
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