Honest opinions please.

Slavik

XenForo moderator
Staff member
As part of the services I offer to my local customers, people requested virtual tours of their businesses.

So, I invested in some equipment, and went and did a first shoot on Wednesday, doing this one free of charge to get used to the equipment and fortunately, can go back every day to tweak settings etc.

Anyway, this was the result after much playing and working, this is about as good as i've managed to get it thus far.

http://p8ntballer-forums.com/bon/output/toilets_unwrapped.html

Now honestly, if you were a business, would you buy that? I'm not sure I would, but maybe im being over critical?

Especially when, if you compare to the samples on the vendors website, http://www.pano-pro.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=22

So... would you buy it or not? Litterally, be honest, because I either A) need to work out why my quality isn't as good as it needs to be and fix that or B) Send the equipment back, and use a more traditional stitched image style get up.
 
I think it looks alright. Doesn't look as clear as the vendors website. The light coming through the windows on the first frame doesn't help.
 
Exposure looks wrong and possibly too much compression as the finished wrap-around looks blurred and poorer quality than the ones on the vendor's site.

Personally I wouldn't buy it - I'd want it re-doing as I don't think it's clear enough. Sorry. :(

Perhaps it's a matter of settings - since all the different points have the same quality look and feel? Night, day, bar, takeaway - it doesn't seem to matter.
 
Presumably the lens fits to your camera body and you get a RAW or JPEG that you then feed into the panorama software to get the 360 degree view?

What's the quality of the original image - before it goes into the pano software?
 
Exposure looks wrong and possibly too much compression as the finished wrap-around looks blurred and poorer quality than the ones on the vendor's site.

Personally I wouldn't buy it - I'd want it re-doing as I don't think it's clear enough. Sorry. :(

Thats what I thought.

These are the raw input files... as you can see and zoom in, the quality of the raw photo isnt *that bad* I dont think at least?


Scratch that, will upload seperately for full file
 
I don't think it is clear.. so it looks like a low quality image, that was until I zoomed out completely.

Is there a setting to start the image zoomed out to the maximum?
 

Look at the extremes - the windows - they're over exposed so it might be worth manually dialing the exposure down when you try again - maybe do 3-5 shots at half-stop reductions to see if that improves them? Or maybe use the circular crop tool in PS to reduce it before converting it?

The quality looks okay on the original though, so I think they're probably losing finished quality during the conversion process.
 
The thing I hate about panoramic shots like that is the warping that occurs as you scan across near objects. Shots like that are great for realtors, but I'm not sure it has a useful application outside that arena. I could care less what a business looks like. I just want good service from 'em.

Unless you're certain about recovering your costs with something like this, I'd give it a pass.
 
Make your starting point, bar in the evening instead of starting us at the toilet.

Agree with this - it doesn't look great at the moment, but if you took the shot in a more appealing place and got the exposure correct then it would look much better :).
 
Slavik, I presume you are aware of this, but what you are doing is very similar Google Map Business Photos: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/businessphotos/

It's become very popular in my local city, and I got to know one of photographers. She needed to be approved by Google first, but was then allowed to submit business for google maps, while charging clients for same.
Even the local churches used her services: http://goo.gl/maps/nx9Ui

Yea, unfortunately in my local area you can't sign up... I tried a few times :(
 
The resolution and quality just isn't as good as it should be IMO.

I take it from your JPEGs above you are using a sort of 360 mirror to do this? These are always going to be lower res. You're better using a fisheye and a nodal ninja (or other pano head) and stitching the images which you can do with free software. Here's an example of some I've done for clients using this set-up on a Canon DSLR:

Margam Abbey
Inside a sandwich shop
Inside a fireworks shop

Even with Google coming into this area there is still scope for this service for those who want better quality 360s for their websites.

Edit - and just a personal thing, but I hate when auto rotate is set to "on" :)
 
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