Re: Top of building pano

["William G. Lea" <wglea1@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been shooting panoramas from just such a building.  I have shot
views from all 4 corners and the center of the sides.  I found that the
parallax was incredibly sever for close buildings. We are located in
downtown Tulsa and shooting from a balcony on the 15th floor.
Essentially you can pick a corner and get a 270 degree sweep with out
too much trouble but you can't then move the camera to the center or the
other corner and try for a stitch between pans taken at these locations.
You may have better luck if you don't have close buildings of almost
equal height. (My problem)

Gene Rhodes seems to have a technique where by he moves the camera in
small increments shooting through a telephoto lens which he stitched.
This seems to minimize the parallax although if you look close you can
spot some discontinuities.  Never found out how he stitched them, might
be by hand.  Maybe he's lurking and will chime in. (Gene, I still intend
to get together with you by the way .. things just always seem a bit too
hectic every time I think about it...)  Check out his site at:

http://www.photoprojects.net/

This might work but I haven't tried it yet. Of course I'm shooting with
an ancient Cannon AE-1, a pair of even more ancient 4x5 Graflex's and/or
a Xpan.  

Photo vista Seems to work fine as long as there is not too much
parallax, otherwise it craters. I had to turn off the warping to get
good results with stitching the Xpan frames. It handled the 4x5 stitches
flawlessly. 


If you want more info contact me direct.

Bruce Anderson / MGI - Japan wrote:
> 
> We may have to tackle taking a panorama on top of a hi-rise building in
> the upcoming weeks.  The problem is that the building is long and thin,
> with possibly some kind of obstacle in the middle.  I have not seen the
><snip>
> 
> Any ideas on this, anyone had similar experience?
> 
> Cheers
> Bruce