Panoramic help needed

[UKbob]

Got a client in Woking, Surrey, who wants her Indian restaurant interior shot and integrated with her website, so that customers can view the interior in 360 degree format.

I said Id shout out to possibly help find her a photographer, thought id put it to you lot first.

Weve never done it before, but Im quite sure its not more than a couple of minutes work for us to integrate the image/file into her website... piece of cake, that just leaves the photography to be done, and which format/software to choose.

What I do remember last I looked into this, was the maaahoosive difference in terms of quality, between the various panoramic applications on offer. They varied from absolute rubbish, to average, and there were one or two camera lens + software offerings which were clearly far more sophisticated, cleaner, sharper, offering smoother image rotation, a better view (up and down) and a few had the ability to zoom in.

Two questions then:
1) Does anyone know which are, say, the 2 best solutions?
2) Does anyone here have the kit (referred to above) and time to do a job in Woking, in perhaps 6-8 weeks time? Or know anyone who could help? It wouldnt be a big job (I shouldnt imagine) Id guess the restaurant would need one, perhaps two shots. I dont know yet, as its still being built.

Thanks in advance for any info you lot have to share

[S. Gonzales Esq.]

Hi Bob

Never done any full 360 degree stuff I'm afraid, but have done plenty of stitching things together to give approx 180 degree views. It sounds like you've looked into this a bit - I also found that there were cheap and cheerful solutions that just didn't cut it quality-wise (ipix, for example), and high-quality solutions that I could never justify the cost of.

The best system I've seen is here and is staggeringly expensive.

Your best bet might be a specialist in shots for estate agents - never heard of one on PH I'm afraid.

If you can talk the client into something a little less immersive, give me a call.

Cheers

Tony Gilbert

Edited by S. Gonzales Esq. on Tuesday 22 January 23:03

[fastfreddy]

I've done a lot of this in the past.. The big question is how much they want to spend vs. what quality they expect and how big they want it to be on the web page.

The cheap and cheerful approach is a single-shot mirror system which could probably be done for less than 100 of your finest quid all in by an estate agent/virtual tour type.

I concentrated on the high end stuff which involves taking multiple shots with a decent camera and specialised pano gear and stitching using software which was specially developed to do the job but not easy to master unless you wanted to do it seriously. As always, the quality of the final result depends largely on the experience of the photographer/stitcher.

You also need to consider what type of viewer you want to use - QT, Flash, Java applet etc. as this can have a bearing on what solution you use to make the pano in the first place.

I might be able to offer my services as I am local to Woking but I wouldn't really be interested in the cheap & cheerful approach as there is always someone at that end of the market willing to undercut on price, which is why I got out of it as a business in the first place! PM me and I'll happily have a chat to you about it anyway if you like.

Cheers, Fred

[stigmundfreud]

you really want a panoptic for this. I cannot find the link or what not that I was looking for but most come with software to integreate into a virtual tour for websites. I am sure somewhere near you will have the service you need.

[Scho]

I make high res panorama's for print and VR.

Some of the print stuff can be found here: http://www.rickschofield.co.uk/commercial/index.ht...

Drop me an email and i'll send you some VR over.

[e-mail]

[White Fly Swater]

what you realy need is a panohead and a bit of software from http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch...

the panohead is the difficult (read expensive bit) because you have to rotate your camera around the nodal point not the mounting screw (see http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/tutorials... I have made a cheep one (cost a couple of quid) and am looking to develop this but work is getting in the way!!!

sorry for the pause - had to go and get it and photograph it !

here it is


and here nude



have a look here for a panorama of the lounge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22104785@N08/

[Scho]

White Fly Swater said:

and here nude

slick!

[stuthemong]

Lots of questions to answer really.

IMO you should go for a flash 9 based viewer, such as flashpanoramas.com , I now prefer them to all other viewers out there from a quality / user installbase tradeoff.

You should pay a little bit of money and get someone who is not using a rubbish one shot system / doesnt really know what they are doing.

I know a lot of panoramic photographers around as I sell kit to them, but the stuff I sell is high end so form guys I know you'll not get much joy under around the 500quid mark for two panoramas I wouldnt have thought (by the time travel and proper post processing is factored in.) - if this level is about where you are aiming I can almost certainly manage to put you in touch with someone if you want, PM if so.

You can get someone to do it for less as mentioned, but you pays your money and takes your choice type thing, the quality difference is marked!

Kindest,

Stu

EDIT, and this is slick (OK, I'm like a proud parent :red: )

Edited by stuthemong on Wednesday 23 January 12:46

[UKbob]

Fantastic food photography tony Very nice work.

Thanks for all the replies, links and suggestions. Definitely not looking to get any kit myself, and I got the impression from the client (we didnt talk much about the photography side of things) that it probably was a one shot lens/photographer she was after. She wanted something like the panoramic on the main page of this site:
www.jaipurrestaurant.co.uk

Is there a better word for the lens/system used, than panoramic, and that system (im fairly sure) does use one lens, correct?

[UKbob]

re: budget, its a new restaurant with not a great deal of surplus startup capital, and the budget would be pretty tight, unfortunately.

[fastfreddy]

If it's IPIX (or similar) they want at IPIX prices then there will be loads of people willing to do it at a knock down price. Just Google for 'virtual tours', 'Ipix' etc. and choose someone local.

IPIX and one/two shot systems will limit you to the sort of quality that site is displaying. Not particularly good IMO but it's horses for courses I suppose.

IPIX went bust last year so who knows what the support is like now. They didn't make themselves very popular in the VR community, by dishing out lawsuits and defending their 'patents' with threats and legal action. Eventually, having driven down price expectations to ridiculously low levels they ran out of money. How we laughed.

Luckily, there are other alternatives to IPIX which are one-shot systems. You could even rent the kit and do it yourself. Try www.hireacamera.com and speak to Guy there who is very helpful and I'm sure will do you a good deal.

[stigmundfreud]

whilst this is an interesting thread surely this is a prime example of the client leading the experts rather than the other way around?

clients usually want whizbang whereas potential viewers aer hardly ever impressed by such things. A restaurant would benefit in no way (that I can see) in such a system. Some well taken photos would be much better. Good luck but I'd be strongly advising the client against feature for feature sake and explai that most users might not even have the tools to view the images.

Ask her if she would like her shots in hdr instead

[fastfreddy]

stigmundfreud said:

whilst this is an interesting thread surely this is a prime example of the client leading the experts rather than the other way around?

clients usually want whizbang whereas potential viewers aer hardly ever impressed by such things. A restaurant would benefit in no way (that I can see) in such a system. Some well taken photos would be much better. Good luck but I'd be strongly advising the client against feature for feature sake and explai that most users might not even have the tools to view the images.

Ask her if she would like her shots in hdr instead

Of course, it would probably be better from OUR point of view (as photographers with taste )

But restaurants, hotels and estate agents have been 'sold' the benefits of VR for several years now and they will all think that's what they need to keep up with the Jones's. Top Table was one of the first restaurant websites in this country to use VR and I'm sure that has something to do with it. Personally, even though I am a fan of VR as a photographer, I still wouldn't use it myself for certain applications and I agree that this is probably one of them because unless the VR is done to a very high standard and integrated really well into the website, it can actually make the space look worse than it does in real life.