Posted by ryanjackson on Feb 18, 2010 in 360 Panoramas
Click on the above image or here to see my interactive gallery of Northern Lights Artwork by Elmwood Elementary School. Interactive Gallery and time lapse video by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Last week I had an assignment to photograph kids painting the northern lights. I photographed a bunch of the art and recorded some of the students explaining their artwork. I remembered that I had a few thousand frames of the northern lights that I had shot last fall that I never used for anything. I put the images into a time lapse video using Quicktime Pro and then set them as the background for a panorama. I used to use Flash Panorama Player for my panoramas but now I am enjoying krpano which I find has more options and supports video panoramas.
Watch a time lapse in 360-degree Video ….that’s right…a 360-degree video panorama! Click on the image to the left.
Watch a time lapse of the Murder of Crows sound exhibit being set up at the Art Gallery of Alberta. 98 speakers are set up over a two week period. Time progresses all around you as you click and move your mouse to look all around.Video by Ryan Jackson /Edmonton Journal.
To build make this 360-video I had to build a special rig with three cameras. I used this before for my Indy Panoramas back in the summer. The rig consists of three old Canon 1D d-SLRs with three Peleng 8mm fisheye lenses in a 120-degree offset pattern. The three cameras are wired together to be triggered by an intervalometer. The rig is super heavy and annoying because triple cameras means triple the things to go wrong. If the shutter speed or focus or anything is wrong on one off the cameras then the whole panorama is ruined.
The 1D cameras can only handle 2GB Compact Flash cards which is around 2000 images. I set the intervalometer to trigger the cameras every two minutes which meant I had to change the cards every two days. In total nearly 30,000 images were taken (10,000 per camera).
For post-processing the images, I used Photo Mechanic to organize the images by time taken. I had set the clocks on the cameras to be 1-second apart so when Photo Mechanic sorted the images by time taken, they would go 1st camera, 2nd camera, 3rd, camera, etc.
I then renamed all the images so the files went 0001, 0002, 0003, etc.
I use PTgui to stitch all my panoramas together. It has a great batch process where you can setup a template for your first panorama and then it will auto stitch the rest of the panoramas in file order. This meant that (0001, 0002, 0003)–>Panorama1.jpg , (0004, 0005, 0006)–>Panorama2.jpg
Needless to say this took HOURS and HOURS to process but I just let my laptop chug away overnight for three nights until I had a folder filled with thousands of stitched panoramas.
I then looked through that folder of panos with Photo Mechanic and removed all the boring images where nothing is moving or being installed (ie. at night time, during lunch break, days off, etc).
I then took the folder of usable panorama images and put them into a video using Quicktime Pro’s “open image sequence.”
I set the frame rate to 12fps so that 1606 images would become a 2-min:13-second video.
I then told Quicktime Pro to export the video and I used the Adobe Flash Video Encoder Plug-in to export the video as an .flv Flash video file using On2 compression, 2000×1000 resolution, 12fps, 1200kB/s bitrate. This made about a 20MB video file.
I purchased the panorama player krpano which supports video. I only had to alter a little bit of the .xml code to add a full-screen button and a play/pause/stop button. I plunked the krpano files on a server and embedded it in an iframe in a story page.
The whole project was pretty cool. I hope to use this camera more in the future but as you can see, it is A LOT of work. There are other, far easier methods of doing 360-video but you have to buy expensive cameras and lenses. For this setup I only had to buy a couple more 8mm lenses and use The Journal’s old 1D’s. My rig only shoots stills and you have to make them into a video… for real video check out CNN’s 360-degree video from Haiti. Pretty crazy!
Here are the images of my DIY 360-degree video panorama camera.
This is the second of three blog posts on the Art Gallery of Alberta supplement that I worked on.
Click on the image above to go to the Interactive Tour page. The amazingly talented Donald Allen at The Journal did all the Flash code for this and I did all of the 360-panoramas. I shot almost all of the panoramas with a Canon 1D Mark-III camera and a Peleng 8mm fisheye lens. I’m going to need to go back and re-shoot many of the panoramas as construction was still underway when I made these.
Here are some of my favorite still images I shot over the last month. The night ones were shot from the roof of a nearby office building with a Canon 5D, 24-105L, and a tripod.
AGA employees and their friends and family walk through the new Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton on January 9, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
A view inside the new Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton on January 26, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
The National Post also ran my photos front page and did a nice spread on the inside.
Raphael Matos gets turned around after making Turn 1 during the first lap of the Rexall Edmonton Indy Race in Edmonton on July 26, 2009. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Will Power, winner of the 2009 Rexall Edmonton Indy Race in Edmonton on July 26, 2009. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Click on the above image to view a 360-degree panorama of mechanics working on Firestone Indylights cars for Dillon Battistini and Pippa Mann during Rexall Edmonton Indy in Edmonton on July 26, 2009. Three separate photos were stitched together to create the image. Panorama by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Click on the above image to view a 360-degree panorama of Indy driver Tony Kanaan’s pit crew during practice at Rexall Edmonton Indy on July 26, 2009. Three separate photos were stitched together to create the image. Panorama by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Click on the above image to view a 360-degree panorama of the winners circle at the Rexall Edmonton Indy on July 26, 2009. Three separate photos were stitched together to create the image. Panorama by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
All of the above panorams were taken with my “crazy rig” panorama camera. Three 1D’s with three Peleng 8mm fisheye’s all linked together. This allows me to push one button and all three cameras shoot at the same time allowing an instant 360-degree panorama. The rig ways a ton and there are a million things that can go wrong (all three cameras have to be the same settings, cords all have to work, batteries all have to stay charged, focus has to be the same, etc) but it allows me to make a 360-panorama without a worry of subjects moving between frames. Edmonton Sun/SunMedia photo by Jordan Verlage
Canadian Soldiers with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry hang out in a LAV-3 in a replica of Afghanistan’s Camp Nathan Smith at CFB Wainwright in Wainwright, Alta. on June 10, 2009. The replica base is used to train soldiers for the real thing. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Canadian Soldiers with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry hang out in a LAV-3 in a replica of Afghanistan’s Camp Nathan Smith at CFB Wainwright in Wainwright, Alta. on June 10, 2009. The replica base is used to train soldiers for the real thing. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
A UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopter takes off at Air Field 21 during Exercise Maple Guardian at CFB Wainwright in Wainwright, Alta. on June 10, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Barbed wire is coiled around the guarded entrance to a replica of Afghanistan’s camp Nathan Smith during Exercise Maple Guardian at CFB Wainwright in Wainwright, Alta. on June 10, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Tents set up at a simulated Kandahar Air Field during Exercise Maple Guardian at CFB Wainwright in Wainwright, Alta. on June 10, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Click on the above image to see a 360-degree panorama of a simulated camp in Afghanistan at CFB Wainwright.
I’ve been nominated for a News Photographers Association of Canada Picture of the Year Award for my Sitting Volleyball Video! The winners will be announced on April 25th in Toronto. Wooooo!
Take a 360-degree panoramic view of the Edmonton Oilers dressing room. Mouse over the jerseys to learn about each number. Panorama by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
I spent WEEKS on this panorama. 2-hours here and there to figure out how to embed the HTML text hotspots and then eventually input all the pictures and information. Thanks to Joanne Ireland for doing the research on each player for her story that ran in today’s Oilers Supliment. I eventually want the panorama to contain all of the Oilers numbers and the names of every player that wore an Oilers jersey. Baby steps though… this one took long enough!
Driver Grant Ritchy takes Journal photographer Ryan Jackson for a spin in a two-seater Dallara Indy car on Edmonton roads on Wednesday July 23, 2008. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
The Journal’s Ryan Jackson climbs into the INDY car with his 360 degree camera kit. Photo by Nick Lees/Edmonton Journal
I did some 360-panoramas of the new Art Gallery of Alberta construction site in down town Edmonton. Click on each image to view the panorama. You will need Flash installed to see them.
Posted by ryanjackson on May 12, 2008 in 360 Panoramas
I have been fascinated lately with 360-degree panoramas combined with sound. The first one I did was for the memorial of Jennifer Noble who died in a tragic school bus crash.
I was in Chicago last week for a video training workshop and on my last day I got to have a little “tourist time”.
Click on the images below to view the panoramas. Click and HOLD your mouse to move around.
You will need to have Flash installed. Also be sure to turn on your speakers as they have sound.
Overhead train. Panorama by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Old church. Panorama by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
All of these Panoramas were shot hand held with a Peleng 8mm fisheye lens and a Canon 1D Mark-II camera. Audio was recorded on an Olympus DS-40.
I used PTgui to stitch the images together and Flash Panorama to create the panorama for web.
Four separate images were taken and blended together to make each panorama. The view from the Sears tower was actually made from 21 images taken with a 24mm lens. Since they were shot hand held, and there is about a second time difference between each image you may see some misaligned seams or streaks.
