Anyone tried to create their own HDRI's with DSLR?

[cgrant3d]

I've been thinking lately it'd be fun to try to generate my own HDRI environment images with my Nikon DSLR. Has anyone tried this before? What was your experience like?

[re:FORM]

I made the mistake of taking too many exposures, too late in the day.... by the time I'd gone round 360degrees, exposures that were overexposed when I started, were completely black by the time I finished. Result? A total waste of time.

I was going to stitch the photos together, so I was going for the uber-high res approach. You would probably have alot more joy with a chrome sphere.

[dapeter]

I've made a few... I have both a chrome ball and a panoramic tripod head. The chrome ball is quicker, but without using HDRShop to comp the 2 - 90 degree views of the ball you get some distortion.

The panoramic head is definately the way to go, but works best with the widest-angle lens you can get. As far as Nikon's go, that's 10.5mm (I still haven't gotten one, probably will soon). Using the Nikon 17-70mm lens that came with my D70 means taking 6 pictures every 30 degrees... so over 100 shots go into the final HDR. With the 10.5 you can get away with 6 pictures every 60 degrees, plus 6 straight up and 6 straight down. Takes a while, but the quality's really high.

[panthon]

I was waiting for a new hdr thread to pop, now that vray has this cool and sometimes overlooked dome HDR mapped light. I´ve made a few HDRs too with a non-reflex cam, a sony DSC-717 and a chrome ball. I havent needed more thant 180 degrees because we tend to render cg elements which will be integrated in a particular live-action shot and we dont really need 360º for that. This way taking the photos and merge them into one single HDR image takes no more than 20 min. Photoshop CS 2 will do it automatically and will correct any minor disalignments between each photo. Photomatix is a good alternative too.
The thing is u wont get all the dynamic range u need to create sharp shadows if you are trying to adquire an image from a direct sun lighted place.
For more info regarding this issue:

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/skyprobes/

An option i ve found to be efficient is "helping" the image to get that high range you need to create nice and complete Image based illumination with domelights by "painting" more intensity into the sun. Here you can get a tutorial about this. I ve tried it myself and it works nicely

http://www.cgtechniques.com/tutorials/synthhdr.php

Hope it helps!

[k-arts]

Hi there

we are about to buy:

Fujifilm Finepix S3 Pro with a Fisheye 180° Nikon AF-D FE 2,8/16 Fullformate.

Is that a good combo? Or should it be 4 times 90° ?

Money should not be the major priority! But it should work as nice reflection as well!

We were able to thest the SpheronCam, but 45000€ is a bit too much ^^

so anyone have a comment on 180° fisheyes on DSLR capture?


thanks

Lisa

[panthon]

Re: Hi there

We were able to thest the SpheronCam, but 45000€ is a bit too much ^^

You'd better use it a lot if u bought that...Maybe u can rent it?
I am also interested in that fisheye lens technique. Would it be better than the old chrome ball method?

[k-arts]

Re: Hi there

You'd better use it a lot if u bought that...Maybe u can rent it?
I am also interested in that fisheye lens technique. Would it be better than the old chrome ball method?

Yeah sure, but that would be around 1000€ a day.

Do that a few times you call a decent DSLR system your own!

And yes i think it is better then the chromeball. For instance ther is not camera you have to cut out!
But actually thats why i made that post. Maybe someone has experience in both Chromeball and fisheye.!!!!!


PLS SOMEONE ANSWER

[Clifton Santiago]

About a year ago, I sent a young photographer on site and had him shoot a site with the Nikon 10.5 fisheye. He took 5 shots, 4 horizontal (N,W,S,E) and one upwards. He took 5 (1.5 steps apart) exposures for each shot, and with the RAW format in the Nikon software I was able to get 1 additional exposure (at half step) on either side of the exposures, for a total of a 15 exposures for each shot. Then I took these into Realviz stitcher to stitch the panorama. Then used the resulting panorama template to create all 15 panoramas. Then compiled them into an HDRI in PSCS2

The results were satisfactory, but it was a pain in the ass. Now I just hire an architectural photographer in London who owns an HDRI SpheroCam. The resolution is way higher with twice the dynamic range. He only charges £750/day.

[DanielBrew]

Did you all see this?

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...ight=canon+slr

I don't know if there are similar applications for cameras other than Canon but with a laptop, a DSLR and a fisheye lens you should have half a SpheronCam for a lot less than half the price .

Dan

[dapeter]

Well part of the problem in the US is that Ipix owns the patent on unstitching 180 degree fisheye images... there's not a lot of software out there I've found that will do this, other than theirs. And of course they want a rediculous amount of money for it. Plus, you still get quite a bit of distortion as you move towards the edge of the lens, plus chromatic aberration.

I've wondered if a way around this would be to take some 180 degree fisheye images, planar map them to half a sphere in Max, and render a panorama with Vray. Then take these, stitch them together, and make an HDR. Still a lot of work.

I think the 10.5mm is probably the best option for really high-res (without going to the Spheron). I use PTGui to stitch them together - you place each exposure's images into seperate folders (and name them all the same), stitch one set of exposures, then copy the PTGui file into the other folders. As long as you have a pano head all the images will align and you only need to do the actual stitch once - the other times it already knows all the math so it just renders. Then I create the HDR using Photomatrix Pro.