DIY Panoramic Tripod Head

UPDATE: I upgraded to D700 camera with Nikon 16-35mm thus the design of this panoramic needs update. I post pictures of the new version here
I've been in love with Panoramic ever seen I hold the camera. The camera, lens limit so much once the beautiful scenery is captured. Panoramic let viewer see the whole different level of photo. It let photographers take viewer to wherever they want in a more realistic way.

Then I found out something even better than 360 pano. It's the wee planet with 360 x 180 view. Sweet! Now you can see a completed place in one picture, one kinda weird looking picture. I did an OK job on these wee planet pics. But every now and then I got a miss match pics. Which lead me to search for a solution and that is NODAL NINJA . These guys make one hell of a tripod head for pano photography with a cost of an arm if you still have any left from buying camera gears. If not, they take either left or right foot too. (or $180-$530) for this

What the heck? So I decided to build my own :) why not ?

HOW:

Material list:

+ Aluminum 1/8" x 1.5" x 36" ($9)

+ Epoxy or any metal glue ($5) (Optional)

+ 3 x 1/4" screws and 1 nut

+ Washers (metal and rubber - I cut my old belt for rubber washer)

Tool list:

+ Precision ruler

+ Marker

+ Something to cut the aluminum with. I would have use my all time favs dremel. But I decided to go "pro" and use the real tools at work.

Cutting:

Follow these cuts in the drawing for L plate and I plate. The washers are optional. If you can find some that meet your needs then save time. Be very careful bending aluminum. A sharp tight corner will crack it faster than you can blink.

Marking and get ready to cut.

Here are the parts after cut / pre-assembly:

BOM:

+ Cut Aluminum parts

+ 3 Screws: 1 cut short, 1 long, 1 with plastic head

+ Washers: 3 small, 1 large, 3 rubber, 1 retaining washer

Assembly:

I have long screw go thru small washer, bottom L plate, small washer, then retaining washer.

Rotating joint has plastic screw go thru top L plate, plastic, large, plastic washer I plate then nut.

Camera mount has short screw, small washer, I plate then another plastic washer. This screw is a little special :). It's the long screw got cut down from 2 ends. Notice that once the swing arm go all the way down, the shot screw head can go in between 3 washers gap.

Completed assembly.

Completed assembly on tripod

With my old N65 try out.

Tada. Finished this thing a little late and haven't get time to try it out. It's a fun fast, easy project.

So I just got time to try this unit out. It's wobble a little due to the hight of L plate and the material itself. The top portion of L plate and I plate can get down from 9" to about 7" (if you are not planning on using anything other than Tokina 11-16mm). Other than that, it gives a good set of pics that stitches very well in Hugin. Here's example:

Revisit: San Francisco Pier 7

I had a post about this location before here but SF is a heaven for traveller, photographer. Places don't grow each day. You just never finish discover this city. Even the same place looks different at the revisit.

I stop by this place a little late this time. After sunset so it's hard to take good pics of the city. It's completely dark. So I got just these two

Both with D90

Using Tokina 11-16mm

Exposure: 20

Aperture: f/3.2

Focal Length: 11 mm

Exposure Bias: +1/3 EV

Using Sigma 105mm

Exposure: 10

Aperture: f/9.0

Focal Length: 105 mm

ISO: 200

Exposure Bias: +1/3 EV

Chicago's Bean

What: It's Chicago Bean in Chicago Millennium park. I've been wanting to go here ever since I came accross it Flickr. Finally had a change to drop by Chicago for a day. That's all I ever wanted :)

When: I was there on mid Aug 2009, walking around the park the day . Check out the city online before you head there. Tons and tons of things to do. I think the city really shows off her beauty by sunset. OR maybe I'm just the sunset person (or maybe I never get up early enough for sunrise to be liking it). Anyway, this shot was about 8:00 pm. It was after sunset and dark. I think it'd be nice to be there around July or so for the Lurie garden flower shots.

Here's a day picture of the bean:

Here's a night picture of the 1 of the port within walking distance from Millenneum park with a little help from PS:

Where: I was standing at the corner of the bean in order to get the bean and the whole city light. Also if you can, come to the corner of Monroe and Columbus, look toward the Pavilion at night. It's beautiful.

How: I used my Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm for whole view of the city, Nikkor 18-105mm sometime during the day for zoom as needed, and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 for some night shot, and Sigma 105mm macro in Lurie garden. AND tripod!!! I had a really hard time for not bringing 1 due to its size. BRING TRIPOD BY ALL MEAN.

Here's why I brought macro lens

Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco

What: Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco

When: I was bored on Sat night so my cousins and I headed up to SF around 1am. Not that I recommend taking picture of SF at 1 am. I think sunset would be the best time for any city light pictures. That's when all the lights are on yet the sky still give enough light on buildings for a perfect picture. So these are in complete darkness.

Where: If you do a search "Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco" on google you get this location easily. If you go from Lombard st, make a right onto Lyon st. It's VERY easy to miss this turn so get your GPS with you. There are few nice location around this place. Either park along the lake or make a left to get into the parking lot and walk into the building. BTW, you be seeing some raccoon if you get there late enough.

How:

Gear: I brought all my gear with me (just in case) but ended up only use D90 (of course) and Tokina 11-16mm with a little of 18-105mm. Some serious tripod. I had with me Manfrotto 055XDB with 808CR4. This tripod set did a great job BUT when I tried to do a wide capture of the ceiling, it didn't let me go low as I wanted. If you have tripod that let you go as low as 8in or so would be better. I ended up had the camera lay on the ground on top of my jacket in order to get this one

Settings: I set as follow:

Exposure:	8
Aperture:	f/10.0
Focal Length:	11 mm
Exposure:	0.00
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	+1/3 EV
Flash:	No Flash

With WB set to K=2600 (lowest). If you have some kind of wired or wireless remote, bring it. You'd save time from waiting for timer to go off.

I did all the shoots in RAW and Normal Large. .

Process : Didn't do much on this set. Only open raw in PS and playing with the color a bit. Also did a filter Fractalius on this 1

DIY Ring Flash for macro works

I've been busy with my summer fun lately and unable to update this blog. My free time pour into this ring flash project also (bad move).

What:

So I had my Sigma 105mm macro lens for sometime now and unable to get some good pics. I can't waste money on such good lens and not get the most out of it... So I decided to make myself a ring flash so I can get some serious macro works done. So here's the completed ring flash

Side view

Where: Most of the measurement, mock-up sample were done in my room. and the real cutting part in my back yard. Well, I have no real work bench or garage area to work with.

When: It takes some good 15-20 hr out of my life!

How: DO NOT DO IT!!!! PERIOD! check WHY below!

If you still come back to HOW after reading WHY... then here we go.

NOTE: I'll not go into much detail as these are pretty popular on google, flickr search plus I don't want anybody spend time doing this.

You'll need:

- Acrylic sheet

- Something to cut the sheet with ( I used my dremel)

- 5 min EPOXI or hot glue (works better and leave little mess)

- few nuts and bolt

- Aluminum foil or foil tape

- A plastic bowl and a plastic cup.

SAFETY GLASSES AND EAR PLUG if you are gonna use dremel. DO NOT START UNLESS YOU HAVE THESE ON!!!

Some dimensions to call out when buying:

- Diameter of the cup (Dc)should be bigger than your lens so it can fit in right.

- Bowl diameter (Db) is depended on how thick you want your ring to be. Thickness of the ring is Db-Dc. Mine is about 1.5" to 2" thick.

- Total Acrylic sheet area needed . I used 1x2 ft.

Procedure:
ALL DIMENSIONS DEPEND ON YOUR LENS, CAMERA, AND FLASH. I'LL JUST GIVE GENERAL DIRECTION.

Try to make paper model if you have time and wanna make it a perfect toy:

- Cut a hole at the bottom of the bowl enough to fit the cup. Cut out bottom cup as well.
- Cut the side of the bowl about 1-1.5 in. thick and little less than half circumference of the bowl.
- Cut Acrylic sheet to make top tube connecting to flash. Looking from the front, x depends on the width of flash head, y depends on hight of flash head, and z depend on how far you want the ring to extended to. I had my ring extended so that I have room for my hand on focus ring and that the lens can move freely inside the cup.
- The hard part is try to cut acrylic sheet for the front tube. Bottom tube should match the whole on side of bowl you cut earlier. Top should have x of the top tube. Make another sheet to create an angle ~45 for flash to bounce from top to front tube.
- Make an extended metal rod or thick sheet to support the ring going from bottom ring to bottom camera. Bolt it to the ring flash. Free the other end so when in used, you can attach it to the camera using the tripod plate with bolt
- Cover all sheet with foil tape.
- Cover inside bowl and outside cup with aluminum foil tape.
- Glue them together using hot glue gun.

Compare with paper model

Front view

Back view

Side view

- I cover the whole thing with black duck tape so no light can leak out.
- You'll need some type of diffuser for the ring. I didn't want to spend any more on this project so I cut a 2 gal plastic milk containder and use it as diffuser. Work pretty good.

Almost finish

Here are some example to compare:

Bolt with SB-600 flash

Bolt with on camera flash

Bolt with Ring flash

Bluetooth withSB-600 flash

Bluetooth with on camera flash

Bluetooth with ring flash

Why: I found cheap clean ring flash version on ebay for around $40 (keyword: ring flash d90 (or your camera) sb-600 (or your flash) ) even before I started this project. BUT my handy self said "NOOOO, I must build it myself with all the time I THINK I HAVE". After $20 plus into this project and it's only somewhat half way done, my "engineer and development dept." started looking at "financing and accounting dept" and go sh!t... Now if this mess up, I have $20+ worth of junk and another $40 to spend to get a some-what real flash ring from Mr. China. SO ... DO NOT DO IT, GET IT FROM EBAY/MR. CHINA and go out have fun w/ macro unless ...

Oh and here's another WHY you should NOT do it. While cutting the bowl I had a small plastic particle flew into my left eye, in the MIDDLE of it because I was lazy to put on the safety glasses for a tiny trim on the bowl. Second time, it went to the corner of my right eye even with the safety glasses on... hurt like hell! I had to poke my eye with a q-tip both time to get it out. Oh and neck got burn a little from the melted acrylic sheet when cutting with dremel. It melted, flew and stay on my neck, couldn't dust it off cuz I was holding the dremel or I'll cut my ear off with the dremel... so Again DO NOT DO IT. Unless you have some kind of laser cutting tool or planning to do it out of FEDex shipping boxes.

Update: I got something in my right eye again!!! Doesn't hurt as much but couldn't get it out. Had to come to work the following day to use the eyewash station. Damn the water hurt like hell!

How to create a Wee Planet

What: Wee planet aka Stereographic projection, pano 360/180 projects a sphere onto a plane. I will not go much into detail of this projection but rather how to create such image.


When: This particular piece was taken at around 4pm July 8th 2009. The mid summer weather in Yosemite gave a clear blue sky.

Where: This was taken in the middle of Mirror Lake, Yosemite National Park, CA


How:
Gear: I bought with me Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm, light weight tripod. Tokina 11-16mm because it's wider thus you would need to take less picture to create wee planet. BTW, you would not need to have DSLR or something fancy to do this. I've seen people with point n shoot camera get a better planet than I do. After all this only the second planet I'm making.

Setting: Depend on what camera you are using and change the resolution. But at the end, the software only process picture at 1600-1063. So I set Small/Basic for my camera. I had this all done using Program mode. Many people suggest use Manual so you have consistent light for your series. But I think that just make some are over and some under exposure.

Shooting: When doing this, rotate you and camera around lens, not lens and camera around you! Best way is to lean lens on tripod grip pointing upward. Shoot continuously 1 after another with about 30-50% overlap. More is always better as you can remove the access later. Go from 3-5 degree (straight down is 0 degree) up to about 130 or until you cover all the objects. Go left to cover 30-50% and go down to ground again. Keep doing this until you cover all the surrounding. I normally do 5 per column and go for 8-9 columns.

Process:
1. Resize: If the photos are not 1600x1063 or smaller, save yourself sometime by doing batch edit because Hugin doesn't like big pics and resize it very very very slow. I used Photoscape to resize in batch. This is a free software and the most easy to use I've ever seen.


2. Load: Click load image and load all the photo you just resized in step 1. No rocket science yet! Depend on which lens you use to change the lens configuration. I used Tokina 11-16mm and didn't have to change anything.

3.Align: Click Align and wait, wait and wait... What Hugin's doing now is trying to find control points of the overlap between the 2 images. I think it does a pretty good job. It'll eventually miss some such as the 2 ground images where it's all same color (carpet, cement floor).


4. Manually find control points: Here come the rocket science part... j/k. Go to Control Points tab and select the 2 photos that having problem with control points. Say left side is 0 and right is 1. Manually click on left or right side and find similar location on the other side the click ADD. Find 5-10 control points per pair of photo. Go back to first tab and click align again. If still does not work after many time repeating this step, just remove whichever photo that is giving you trouble (hopefully you had more than enough to cover all the area.)

5. Equiretangular: Once successfully align, preview window will pop up(if not Ctrl+P should do it), you will get a Equirectangular like below.

6. Stereographic: At bottom left corner, select change Equirectangular to Stereographic. At this point you'd get some weird image. Don't panic. Adjust bar at the bottom of the image. Pull to about 10 notch from the right and you'd see your planet. Left click mouse on the ground at about where the camera was or until the planet's lay out the way you want it to be. Right click to adjust turn planet. At this point, you'd see something like the below picture. Excited? but not as clean as you want it to be.

7. Clean up: Uncheck as many images as you can under Display images as long as it does not make major change or shift your master piece. Go back to Hugin window, under images tab, delete corresponding images. Number in Displayed image is the number under column #. Close preview window once completed.

8. Stich: Go to tab Sticher and make selection as showed below and click stich now. Wait, wait and wait...

9. Touch up: Open TIF file Hugin just generated (see below) with PS and edit: color saturation, erase your feet showed at the center if it's there when you do 0 degree ground pic. And tada ... you have yourself a wee planet!!!