proj-imim:
Help with PTPicker?
Dennis S Pedersen 2001-May-01 01:19:15
Hello all:
I've been successfully using PT for several months, and have a number of nice panos to show for my effort. I use it to create large high-resolution files to print out on my Epson 1270 using long 13" rolls of paper. But I recently ran into a pano that just won't behave:
My goal was to simply have a nice wide shot of my car (from the side) in a scenic setting. But since I didn't want the distortion typical of panos shot with normal or wide lenses, I used my Nikon CoolPix 990 on a tripod with the 3X tele lens converter attached. I didn't use a special pano head though, as it hasn't been necessary on any of my other panos. In fact, I've been able to hand-hold with good results.
I shot 6 overlapping shots and tried to stitch them together with PT. But even after several tries, and lots of tweaking, I still don't have a pano that works well. One of them was close, but had some misalignment and some distortion. Most of the time I've noticed that when I run the "Optimize" command in PTPicker the "Optimizer Info" progress window shows either a huge variation between control points (as in "9202.51"), or it shows very small numbers like "3.34536e-43". In every case where I've seen numbers like these, my resulting stitched panos are of poor quality.
My guess:
By using the tele lens, any small error in selecting control points is compounded hugely when optimized (in contrast with wide-angle lenses where the control points are less critical). But my substantial efforts at refining my control points tells me that I may not be able to select them with the needed degree of accuracy.
Anybody have any other theories, or have any advice for me?
TIA!
--
Dennis S Pedersen
On-line portfolio:
http://www.rahul.net/dennisp/