auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Please show us your 360० Panoramas Movies and Images
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Peter Taylor
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auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by Peter Taylor »

I ve been asked many times recently how our camera kit deals with a dark night / outdoor scene - with cars n street lights etc…

So thought I d also share this sample test with you guys on here – it’s a site where the street lights are pretty useless and it was raining too.

no post stitching needed, full auto hdr capture – full raw 32-bit image data, res - 50 megapixels. By default it’s a single equirectangular image data file – but can also output as a cube map too.

Sorry it’s just a quick film of our viewer tech, filmed from my mobile phone – I ll try to do a proper HD screen recording later.

An even lighting throughout, no shadows - night into day…

http://youtu.be/2M9KtLni3x0
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by wgipps »

Ive been looking at your site and work. Quite impressive Peter. I dont know that there is anything in market that does anything like this - is that fair to say...it is unique? My google search doesnt seem to be able to find anything similar, but i am a long way short of being an expert on these sorts of things. Ill email you for a price (but if there is nothing else like it im a bit fearful of your reply!!) :lol:
Does anyone else out there know of a similar system to this?
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by colhum1 »

wgipps wrote:Ive been looking at your site and work. Quite impressive Peter. I dont know that there is anything in market that does anything like this - is that fair to say...it is unique? My google search doesnt seem to be able to find anything similar, but i am a long way short of being an expert on these sorts of things. Ill email you for a price (but if there is nothing else like it im a bit fearful of your reply!!) :lol:
Does anyone else out there know of a similar system to this?
The iSTAR by NCTech
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by dhirota »

What separates the Spheron VR system from the other spherical/panorama HDRI imaging systems is their calibrated LED lighting for short range (I believe 10 meters) in total darkness environments.

We have been using the Spheron VR camera with our Z+F scanners for the last 7 years, the last 4 years with the LED lighting, called Scanlight. There are two rows of 20 LEDs on either side of the Nikon lens, that are calibrated with an internal sensor, that maintains a constant illumination over time. There is an adapter available that places the nodal point of the Spheron VR lens (usually a 16mm Nikon spherical lens) at the same location of the Z+F scanner, which allows easier merging of the HDR image and the laser scan.

We also have another spherical/panorama line scanning camera that will produce spherical images of over several hundred million pixels, but it does not have an integrated lighting system for total darkness. I do not believe that the iStar camera system from NCtech has an integrated illumination system either.
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by Andrej »

Hi Colhum1
The iStar sounds good but we had it and there very disappointed. Maybe in a couple of years time it will do what NCTech promised.


@ dhirota

How is the work flow with the Spheron VR system? How does night scan colour looks more than 10m away?

Regards Andrej
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by dhirota »

We have not used the Spheron with the LED lights outside in the dark, so I cannot answer the question about beyond 10 meters. You should look at Peter Taylor's video to get an idea of outside use of the LED lighting.

The simplified workflow is the use of multiple tripods with the Z+F adapter on the Spheron and alternatively swapping the the Z+F scanner and the Spheron. For projects with uniform ambient lighting without the quality requirements for the imaging, we have used the Z+F M-Cam camera with our Z+F 5010 and Laser Control to merge the images and scans in batch mode. The Spheron requires a manual processing to merge the images + scans with Laser Control. You can also merge the images using other software from the Spheron equirectangular (10,000X5,000 pixel) images and the laser scans.

I believe that using the Z+F Laser Control software gives better results if using images+scans than some of the other alternatives.

Since we have received our Z+F 5010c, we will use the internal I-Cam camera for most of the image collection. Please refer to my earlier posting of the Z+F 5010c HDR images in both dark and under tree canopy conditions.
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by Rob Ault »

We have been intensively scanning the HMS Victory (as on BBC Countryfile the other week) as well as using a HDS 7000 we have been using the Sheron on a mount to give us photography from the same position. The images we are getting are excellent especially in areas like the hold where there is little light and a mixture of very dark beams and white ceilings. We did have a look ay the iStar but it was not good enough for what we needed (although with a bit more development it could be good).
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by colhum1 »

Robin, congrats on the Victory project. Viewed the short video of the scan data on your site, super, would love a copy of that data...:)
I've been using the iSTAR for several months with our Leica C10.
Now, in my line of work I sometimes have to use it at night and with the right ISO settings the images are good.
I know that they are developing an external light source.
A big plus for the iSTAR is its form size of 10cm x 10cm.
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by jedfrechette »

Doesn't the Spheron have something like 25 stops of dynamic range? What's the dynamic range of the iStar, or other spherical cameras like the Ladybug?
Jed
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Re: auto 360° camera HDR used at night

Post by Jason Warren »

Ladybug5-slide1.jpg
Not heard of the Ladybug... has anyone used it?


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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBMoAKFbwqc[/youtube]
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