I wasn’t sure if this should be here or go into the wishlists section:
shame its not a full 360. you cant use it for proper HDRI’s
What do you need the ground plane for?
To put your tripod on silly 
But seriously, that’s really cool and my camera is at the top of the list for compatibility. Oh wait… That thing costs more than I paid for my camera :lol: Maybe I can make one, that price is ridiculous :!:
--Jon
What camera you have and you like it?
Perhaps you prefer a $60k Spheron, or the cheaper alternative (about half the cost depending on your camera - and you’re pretty much screwed if you don’t have a SLR) is a 180 degree fisheye that you gotta comp and correct for chromatic abberations. My old trusty battery-eating Olympus needed all sorts of adapters for a fisheye - totaling well over $800. Plus you can never get the darn thing centered around a pivot and it’s not a true 180 degrees.
What camera you have and you like it?
I have a Sony DSC-V3. I like it overall but I have issues with it. Best price I found for it was at www.butterflyphoto.com BTW.
Well you can’t really compare a Spheron. Doesn’t it build the HDR for you as it takes the images?
Maybe I’m confused from the add. I see it comes with the software also but does it come with everything shown in that second image down?
--Jon
Fits my old e-10…
$795 is just the lens.
this soloution has the disadvantage of lower resolution
you only get the camera res and still have distorted areas because of the reflective object…
so your effective res is even lower
the spheron camera offers much more resolution
you also could try shooting “normal panoramas” with a rotating camera setup and exposure bracketing
it all depends on what res you need (background images/reflection maps vs. hdri for illumination)
mike
The resolution is only limited by the camera you are using. Am I not correct? What res does the Spheron shoot at? The Spheron is more ‘automated’, but doent justify the pricetag if you are a small studio IMO.
as i was saying its not full 360 degrees. meaning there is no top and bottom. it would be ok to use for cylindrical mapping in environment but useless for image based lighting. maybe if you took the images with the device at 90 degrees to the ground rather than straight up then take a pic then turn it 90 degrees in the horizontal plane and snap again then combine the two images you would be able to get a 360 degree envirnment.
I think Jujubees point was that it’s pretty easy to recreate the secondary bounce from the ground so why even bother.
--Jon
because without a top to the image you wont get lighting from above as well as not having good reflection/refractions
Hmm. That sucks. I didnt realize the top view was missing… guess you can always take off the lens after each fstop and stitch it back in afterwards…
Ok… I’ll pay the 60k
--Jon
yep, it is but if you take into account the fact that you still have to calculate the undistorted image from the image you shoot your effective res is lower
and since this system only works with “normal” digital cameras your res is limited to about 12MPixels
to quote from the spheron site:
http://www.spheron.com/spheron/public/en/spherocamhdr\_tech/spherocamhdr\_tech.php
Vertical resolution up to 5300 pixels
Horizontal resolution 10,600 pixels with fisheye lens, otherwise focal length dependent
as i suggested, it might be an option to shoot normal panoramas with exposure bracketing (especially if you are using a laptop to remote control the camera with something like psremote: PSRemote | Breeze Software
)
mike