P365 Sep26: Micro panorama with Chibi the cat

In a previous entry, I attempted a failed experiment to use a pinball to take a micro panorama. This time I was a bit more successful (needs Quicktime to view):

People reading this in the RSS feed will need to visit the site to see the panorama.

This is the source photo (scaled down for the blog):

This is far from a perfect result, but it’s a more than adequate proof of concept. This is what I did:

The Set Up

• Took a pinball, which is essentially a large highly polished ball bearing (thanks Jessica!).
• Made sure it was as clean as possible of dust and fingerprints (I handled it only with the plastic bag I store it in).
• Found an interesting subject – Chibi lounging on the couch.
• Tried to place the pinball as close to Chibi as possible.
• Put the pinball back in place after Chibi moved it with his paw (three times).
• Moved it out of Chibi’s reach.
• Set up my camera on the tripod, with the Sigma 400mm and macro extension tubes so the ball filled the frame as much as possible.
• Took a timed exposure to allow me to get out of the shot, and reduce camera shake in the long exposure required due to low light.

The Processing

• Loaded the RAW file into Lightroom.
• Cropped the image to a square just big enough to show the pinball.
• Tweaked the photo for exposure, colour and sharpness – at this size there are sharpness issues. I’ll cover that another time.
• Exported the image to a high quality jpeg.
• Loaded the image into PTGui and transformed it into an equirectangular panorama. I’ll go into this in more detail another time too.
• Filled the bottom of the panorama, which could not be captured in the reflection of the pinball with black.
• Saved the panorama as a high quality jpeg.
• Flipped the image horizontally in Photoshop to correct for the mirror inversion.
• Loaded the jpeg into Pano2QTVR (superceeded version) and exported it to a QTVR file which you see above.

A lot of steps I know, but I wanted to give you a good idea of the process. I plan to become more proficient at this technique, then write a detailed illustrated tutorial about how to do it. For the time being I’m just experimenting.

There are some problems with the panorama, obviously:

The Problems

• Low resolution/detail.
• A black hole at the point opposite the camera which isn’t reflected in the ball
• Severe distortion and loss of detail around the black hole, which appears at the very edge of the pinball.
• The camera is visible in the shot.
• Flaring and glare where bright light sources appear, reflecting imperfections in the ball’s surface.

It’s these issues that I’m planning to work on in order to improve this technique and eventually for a tutorial.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! I hope you liked the micro panorama.