Photofriday :: Body of Water

Bass Straight in Winter, multi image stitched panorama

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Body of Water

 

This is a different, more immersive, way to view the stitched images created with ICE & perspective view, the uploaded to photosynth

Mentone Beach Photosynth :: Full 360°

Going Wide Angle on a Cameraphone

 

For PhotoFriday‘s Topic Wide Angle

I’m sure something like this must have has already been tried. Here I have used 4 photos taken on my android cameraphone, stitched them with Microsoft Research's ICE software and uploaded the resulting image to Microsoft Research's Photosythn. Zoom in with your mouse and look around, not bad resolution for a cameraphone. The big drawback in this image however is the horizon is a very wobbly line.

PhotoProject :: Earth Day a Broader View

As a second PhotoProject view for Earth Day I wanted to get a BIG landscape view of the park at the end of my street  This 100MB Photosynth was created from just 21 individual photos (hand held)using the microsoft Live add-in ICE and then uploaded to Photosythn.

Please zoom in and enjoy the park and sunny day. How many boys on bikes can you find?

Making really massive panoramas

There is a new version of Mircosoft Research’s ICE (Image Composite Editor) package available. There are several new features but the  important ones are, it handles many images together better, is blindingly fast in the stitching and has a more stable upload to photosythn. I tried it out on this 15 photo panorama set and used the prespective projection. I took the series hand held slowly panning the camera. I didn’t use a gigapan or similar fancy tripod heads,  which aim to rotate the camera around the focal center of the lens, or in fact any tripod at all. Ice informed me that my resulting image spans 101.7 horizontally and 30.9 vertically. I haven’t cropped the image edges so you get a feel of the projection. It only took a few seconds. The resulting image preserved maximum detail all 318MB of it! One trouble with trying to work with an image that size, is few of my programs will even load it let alone manipulate it (one exception is picasa). Adobe photoshop essentials falls over loading it and interestingly so does Window photo gallery! Yet Windows Live Photo Gallery does display it but notes it is too large to edit! The image displayed here above is significantly reduced in size (using picasa)

To see the image in its fall glory (and massive full detail) your need to view it as a photosynth,

The Full 360

This 130 megapixel photosynth is based on 37 photo. It was taken handheld just south of Beach One at venus bay and illustrates the recent erosion at the back of the beach. The photosythyn was created by Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor).

The Coast (Hoody Beach)

 
For Photo Friday’s Challenge the coast
I thought this panorama of the Hooded Plover nesting areas on the Venus Bay beach would give me a great comparison between autostitch and microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). I had taken a set of very conventional overlapping photos as I panned along the beach, starting on the right and going to left (this upsets a lot of panorama joiners by the way). Both dutifully stitched the image without complaint. The Autostitched version (below and also straighten & cropped above) is nice and seamless. It also has that “true to what I saw” perspective that wide angle camera shots don’t give. The ICE version wasn’t bad either but it does have a few little jagging joins when you look in detail. I experimented with the perspective projection and  found it gave a wonderful deep view of the beach (it is a beautiful long sweeping part of the coast). This is really enhanced if you have a look at this panorama as a photosynth (at the bottom of this post)
Autostitch
Microsoft ICE
Photosynth created by Microsoft ICE
Sorry only those with microsoft windows will be able to view this synth and get the live 3D modelling effect. [Correction Mac users should be able to view this via silverlight please leave a comment if you find that works]

An Overcast Panorama

I have been experimenting with Microsoft's ICE image stitcher and in particular its projection feature. The perspective mode does give a convincing 3D panprama effect, albeit with a very distorted image edge.

For PhotoFriday topic overcast

Nice ICE, but is it nice enough

I heard Paul Thurrott, in his Windows Weekly podcast, recommend Microsoft Research’s ICE Image Composite Editor. Sounded like I should try it out again.

ICE is very easy to use. There is only one main item on the pull down menu, File. With all its sub-function functions having their own little dialogues also displayed under the photo workspace as well. It just as simple one two three working your way across the bottom

My first attempts created a curved horizon. This happens in many panorama stichers when you don’t have the rotation horizontal and centered on the horizon as well. There are some neat projection settings and adjustments, including a great perspective projection. I do have a couple of worries. The Automatic Exposure Blend doesn’t seem to always work (see example) and I was left with a number of poor stitch offsets lines, and some unfortunate ghosting in some areas of overlap. This set of photos was take handheld in a strong wind (not on a tripod) and it was on automatic (so camera was changing the exposure was each photo). Even with those limits compare the ICE results with those obtained with Autostitch. ICE will only stitch a single sweep of photos. However it does let you create massive files (with all the detail available.  So My conclusion is it is great for really larger single sweep panoramas but you must use a tripod and constant exposure settings.

Having being a bit harsh up till now, I think the Photosythn export is pretty amazing and should get a lot of folks excited. It is slow but the results are worth it. See for yourself below

You will probably need to upgrade your photosythn and install HD view browser addons to get the full benefit of ICE. Both are free to download. Again MAC users look away, nothing for you here.

Drought, Heat & now a White Christmas

After some very hot days last week, the eastern side of melbourne woke to a few glimpses of a white christmas (frozen hail rather than snow), but still unusual for summer