Virtual Tours at Cape Schanck

[alexch]

Hi All,

I always wanted to try a 360 panorama with an astro-modified camera and this week the weather was good so I went to my favourite spot at Cape Schanck lighthouse and used my modified Sony NEX-5 with Nikkor 10.5mm fish-eye lens.

Two virtual tours below are made from 6 shots (30 sec, ISO 3200) at 30 degrees up. Stitched in PTGUI.

Balancing the colours is a bit more painful with spectrum modified sensor but I think I got it pretty close to what it looked like at the scene.

Two links below should open virtual Flash tours (each tour is 2.5MB so it takes a while to load). It starts to rotate after loading but you can spin and zoom with the mouse or the buttons at the bottom.

http://www.terrastro.com/iis/cs_vr/CS_Lighthouse.html
http://www.terrastro.com/iis/cs_vr/CS_Lagoon.html


Cheers,
Alex

[Octane]

OK, I'm spun out now. :P

The lens flare in the sky in the lighthouse one could pass off as a supernovae remnant.

Lovely.

H

[dugnsuz]

Amazing Alex - guys like you and Phil are making top shelf high art for sure.
Thanks for sharing - love it
Doug

[Doomsayer]

Really impressive. Quite an immersive effect.

guy

[multiweb]

Very cool alex. It's like being there. :thumbsup: With a fast enough computer for playback and a fisheye lens you recon you'd be able to map a video to a sphere? I'm thinking of an immersive time lapse. Done it in the past for very short pre-rendered video segments but the technology has gone a long way since then.

[Irish stargazer]

Thats really awesome Alex. Keep them coming.

[atalas]

That's awesome!

[h0ughy]

nice work

[DavidU]

How good is that !!!

[alexch]

Thanks, everyone for kind words. I have not done 360 panoramas for a while and almost forgot how much fun it is.
Alex

[Troy]

Wow, that's really good :D

[FlashDrive]

That's a great share .... really nice Alex :thumbsup:
Man ... you guy's sure know how to put things together.

Flash. :)

[alexch]

Troy, Flash - Thanks!

I like the angle with the lighthouse in the virtual tour so I processed a piece of the 360 panorama into a rectilinear image (attached).

Cheers,
Alex

[iceman]

Stunning work!

And that single image is just beautiful.

You'll have to write an article on how to do that!

[niko]

Stunning work Alex.

I for one would love to see an article by you on how you achieve some of your great work

Truly inspirational

niko

[alexch]

Mike, Niko - thanks!
I have been planning a set of articles for more than a year but finding time is the biggest issue. I find myself either working, imaging or processing images :)

Cheers,
Alex

[Phil Hart]

hey alex.. great work again. keep an eye out for auroras down there these days.. russell cockman has already caught a glimpse from bayside suburbs in a couple of images.

articles would be good, but for now do you have a link to instructions about how you posted your VR pano online? i did one at heathcote last night but have got around to figuring out the online code and your interface looks good.

Phil

[SkyViking]

Awesome work, the image quality it superb as usual. And it's amazing to be able to pan around and look up on the Milky Way like that, like being there - just great :) Thanks for sharing these. If you ever do find time to write some articles then I'd certainly be a keen reader too.

[Hagar]

Magnificent as always Alex. A lovely spot to image from and the images produced are cutting edge for sure.

[Paul Haese]

Excellent idea and well executed. Colour balance and detail are great.

[alexch]

Thanks, Phil. I use Pano2VR (http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr.php) to convert a 360 spherical image (2:1 ratio) to a flash animation. It is very easy, has export to HTML and supports editable Flash templates (those nice buttons).

Cheers,
Alex