Forum

Topic: Macro Gigapanning / Small Steps???

So how small a step can Gigapan take? With Macro, of course, really small steps are super important.

Also, since Gigapan is designed for large photos primarily, are there problems caused (primarily by focus) by Gigapan taking photos in an arc rather than all in the same horizontal / vertical plane?

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Monitoring Threads

Monitoring is not performing as intended. We will remove the checkbox for the time being. Sorry 661, and everyone else who was relying on the “Monitoring topic” functionality.

Topic: Gigapan Mechanism / Bluetooth or Wi-Fi?

Probably your best bet would be to use an eye-fi card (http://www.eye.fi/) or to get one of those expensive wireless transfer setups for your camera. Eye-fi now has a free smartphone app so you can stream images from your camera straight to your phone (or over 4g on your phone, straight home to your computer or server), but judging from the numerous complaints on their forums I wouldn’t count on it actually working.

Topic: General Gigapanning / estimate number of photo

If you calculate this stuff a lot it helps to make an excel spreadsheet to calculate number of images for a given zoom and field of view, etc.

This is a helpful calculator for figuring out the FOV degrees covered by a DSLR with a particular lens on it.
http://www.howardedin.com/articles/fov.html

Topic: General Gigapanning / Tripod Poll

After years of using a crappy lightweight tripod I finally bought one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Slik-400DX-Tripod-Quick-R… I’ve been very happy with it. quite sturdy, not too heavy or expensive. Seems to work fine even with my Epic Pro.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Web site speed

Jason, you should be noticing some speed improvements already. Much of it was due to post launch pains. We did acquire a new performance reporting tool, and development time is being allocated to optimize several areas of the website performance.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Monitoring Threads

661 I’ll follow up on this. It should work as you expect it to.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Website Fixes

Although I haven’t posted a list, numerous hotfixes have been applied. A new list of fixes will be available soon.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / 'Edit' post and 'Reply to Topic' button blues

Totally agree too! I’ll see if we can get a fix for this sent in for testing this week.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Google Earth Layer

Props to 661 for setting up the surfing page, even though it’s been a while since the page was up. It’s the first time I’ve seen it.

As for GS layer for GE, I don’t have the details on when and how, but I know that it won’t be long before it’s available again.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / 'Galleries' in 'Groups' do not allow adding Gigapans

Thanks for that clarification post jason. The Galeries will be getting some love I can tell you that! :)

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Can't access profile and other observations

Regarding private gigapans, yes, they are private in the scope of public searches on this website. Since they don’t appear in public searches, they also aren’t available to search engine bots that are looking through gigapan.com or gigapan.org. However, as Jason pointed it out, once a private gigapan’s URL is posted on another website, search engines may find it there.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Can't access profile and other observations

William, the Plus membership requires at least one public gigapan. So, in order to upgrade your membership from Free to Plus, your uploaded gigapan has to be Public. Other then that, your member profile page should show ‘plus’ as your membership subscription level. Please let me know if your are still experiencing this issue.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Tripod Poll

If you can find a used wooden tripod on eBay, they’re cheap and very sturdy. Here are some ideas for homemade mounts:
http://tnphoto.com/giga/
You might be especially interested in the triangle mount. Most of my vacation panos are done with it.

Topic: Embedding / Limit to number of embeds?

Hi John, there is no limit to the number of embeddable gigapans. The language dealing with limits will be removed shortly.

Topic: General Gigapanning / Godzilla size gigapixel

To add to Phil’s posting, when you save the pano in RAW, Stitcher puts the size of the image in pixels as part of the filename (“sample10345x54321.raw”). Make a note of it. Use Photoshop to open the file. You will need to enter the width and height in pixels, that it has 3 channels and no header. The image will be huge and it will slow down your system, but Photoshop will let you edit it. Layers, cloning and tonal controls all work. When you’re done, flatten all layers and re-save the image. It will take several minutes to save. You cannot open the RAW image in Stitch but the free Gigapan Upload <http://gigapan.org/cms/create-upload> will do it. There is no limit on the size of RAW image you can upload.

Topic: General Gigapanning / estimate number of photo

Francesco,
After you have made a few panoramas you can compute the size of the pano based on the number of images. You can also compute the number of images necessary to make a pano of a given size. Just divide the size of each pano (in gigapixels) by the number of pictures. For instance, my 14-megapixel Canon G10 stitches to about .00765 GPx for each picture. Thus, to make a 1 GPx pano, I must shoot approximately 130 images. This isn’t exactly the question you asked but may be useful.

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Bug: Can't add/remove featured gigapans/members to group

Roger, just to clarify, are you trying to add gigapans from a featured groups page (http://www.gigapan.com/groups/landing_page) to your group’s gallery?

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Fewer people viewing Gigapans

Yes, the most recent GigaPans should be more visible, and more easily accessible. A fix is in the works.

Topic: Digital Cameras on Gigapan / Epic 100 remote port with Nikon DSLRs?

Quick update on this —

Unfortunately, there’s a more fundamental problem with using the Nikon D5100 with the Epic 100; the diameter of the lens I’m using is too wide and it’s not possible to align the sensor with the the main rotation axis.

Said another way, the D5100 doesn’t fit on the Epic 100 :(

So, I’m returning the D5100 for a Panasonic Lumix G3 and going to try to follow the instructions here to create a usable remote shutter connector: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=…

— Joe

Topic: Web Site and Forum / Cancel & remove membership

What is the process to cancel my membership and remove my account information?

Topic: General Gigapanning / Godzilla size gigapixel

Danny. You can shoot in RAW on the camera but before putting the pics into the stitcher you have to save each one as a jpg or tiff.
Once stitched use the “export to…RAW” option in the stitcher menu (File→Export To→ RAW)

The scratch disk is where Photoshop puts all its temp files while working with an image. I have had some images with over 100GB of temp files which have filled up my c:\ drive (assuming you are using a PC). This causes Photoshop to not be able to process the file any further and you lose all your edits. This is a major annoyance. If you are using Photoshop for windows click on either file or edit go down to preferences and I believe the setting is listed under performance or something like that. My Photoshop computer is not here right now so I am sort of guessing. You can get a cheapish 1TB external drive for about $100.00

The final file is HUGE !! some of mine have been in the 50GB range.

It is fun to do so is worth the effort

Topic: Stitch / Purchased Used EPIC Series

Is the license transferable. I have the software on two computers but I plan to replace one of them. Am I able to deactiveate the software from one computer and activate it on another (similar to photoshop etc). If not could this be a future enhancement ?

Topic: Digital Cameras on Gigapan / Epic 100 remote port with Nikon DSLRs?

I know the manual for the Epic 100 says it’s only compatible with the Canon E3 connector. However, is there an adapter that will allow it to work with Nikon devices?

The goal is to hook up a Nikon D5100 via the Remote Port on an Epic 100.

Is this possible or will I have to hook up the mechanical button pusher?

Thanks!

— Joe

Topic: Stitch / Editing in Stitch

Can I crop within the stitch app or do I have to export, crop then upload?