Brad Ideas - Not entirely fair review of the Gigapan imager - Comments

Shutter delay parameter needed.

neuperg on gigapan.org — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:24:10 -0800

I wish the gigapan had a preshot delay parameter to allow the paltform to stabilize before releasing the shutter. Obvious benefits are related to normal shooting and shooting at night with the longer shutter times where essentially no movement can be tolerated.

Please ...please just one more parameter.....!

Hmm... I have a Beta. If a newer release of firmware has this feature, please post.

larger cameras

neuperg on gigapan.org — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:06:08 -0800

I managed to to adapt the Beta gigapan to my LUMIX FZ18 a couple different ways. Method 1 would allow even a DSLR to work with the Beta.

1) Flip the entire platform upside down and have the servo actuator at the back. OK, now the servo is not high enough to acctuate the shutter from behind the camera. To solve this add a 6" length of 1x 1 x 1/16 aluminum angle (from Ace hardware) with 3 sensibly located holes drilled using a hand drill. One end of aluminum angle is bolted to the housing hanging below the platform and the other end protudes up above the platform and y attach the servo assembly to it. In summary, 3 holes in the aluminum angle, a couple machine screws and you are done. No permanent change to the mount. Totally reversible.

2) Add a 3/16 thick aluminum plate to extend the back of the original platform. Drill hole in new plate for the camera. Peel the rubber from the original platform and put it on the new plate. Works for the LUMIX FZ18 but not likely for larger DSLR. Yes this requires a couple holes drilled in the original plate. I used #8 screws and taped the aluminum plate as I wanted to have maximum freedom to use other camerad by not having nuts on top of the plate.

Battery life on Gigapan

neuperg on gigapan.org — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:48:14 -0800

I have done a 1200 shot pano and then a 220 shot pano on a single set of batteries. Although voltage seemed ok, I did not risk doing another as I was shooting 8000 miles from home and would not get a second crack at it. I also have shot panos with 320, 360, 280, 220, 220 in an afternoon. Yep I logged them to better understand duracel alkaline battery life. An external 9V supply with alkaline D cells or NiCd's would do a lot to help extend life but still not take the risk out of ending up with pano interruptus. Teh only way to avoid tha t is to profiel and understand your batteries. Adding external power is easy to do because the battery holder connection to the PCB is connectorized and accessible.

IF the gigapan has been sitting for a while and the batteries have "unsagged" or floated back to a peak voltage, the voltage can look "good" on the gigapan display. Then after a hundred or 2 hundred shots you end up with lack of shutter acctuation as the bateris have sagged again. I would suggest ignoring the "good" designation on the Gigapan and learn the discharge profile of the brand of batteries that you are using. Profile them so that in a rested condition you know the minimum voltage you can go to for a pano of X shots. Keep in mind that temperature factors into this as well. At cold temps, most battery types do not perform as well.

ITEMS AFFECTING CURRENT CONSUMPTION THAT YOU CAN CONTROL

The positioning of the servo arm related to the camera shutter release can have a significan effect on current consumption. If you have a very small or no gap between shutter button and the arm, then it releases immediately. But it means that the servo cannot acheive its target mechanical set point (as commanded by PWM for the gigapan controler) and it will goes into a stall condition for the entire durration of the button press (shutter hold time). With a tight gap, the shutter release servo on the gigapan is a stalled DC motor for that duration and consumes lots of current. A few ways to deal with this.

1) Shorten the shutter hold time setting (on the gigapan menu) to diminish the time duration of the big current spike while the shutter is pressed and the servo is stalled. Yes there are limits to how short this can be and if you opt to use AF, it is not a good option since AF needs a longer button push.

2) Alternately, introduce an appropriate air gap between the arm and the button so that the servo does not go into stall condition when your shutter release is fully pressed. This takes some experimentation and you need to be careful that it maintains alignment (gap tolerance) as a slight increase in gap can result in lack of shutter release. Yes, introducing the gap will shorten the effective shutter hold time but you can compensate by increasing the shutter hold time setting on the gigapan. Because you have carefully calibrated the gap, increasing the hold time is less of an issue becuase you are not in stall condition on the servo. You can aleviate the gap tolerance issue by introducing a compliant material on the arm or making the arm itself out of a compliant material like spring steel stock. There are a lot of degrees of freedom in the design. You can play with the length of the buttom pusher arm, You can also revise the "horn" (little plastic arm) on the servo to introduce the gap and also to give it more mechanical advantage (to reduce current). Be carefully of friction as you decrease the horn length and increase that mechanical advantage. Where the horn contacts the metal may need polishing and the radius of the contact point on the horn many need increase to avoid plaxtic devormation. The slickest way to do it would be to have a small bearing to act as a roller on the end of the horn... check out your local hobby shop to get these bits.

The bottom line here is that the shutter release current draw can be significantly less if the servo acheives its desired "set point" of where the gigapan has told it to go. This can be accomplished by careful mechanical settings with the existing design or vastly improved by finessing the design of the current shutter release system.

Universal solution

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:17:45 -0700

I am certain that there is no good universal answer.

Nodal point

brad — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:32:27 -0700

If you are shooting an entirely distant scene, so much so that you don’t need to spin about the nodal point, than the existing pano head designs are all a poor choice as they are much bulkier and heavier than they need to be, and they can’t support a very heavy camera because of the long moment arms required and the vibrations that happen.

Building a panorama head without nodal point spinning has been treated as a “what would be the point?” problem, though there is a sub-sector of the market that would like it.

It might be interesting to look at designs which can be reconfigured for short moment arms when you are doing a distant shot. But sadly, I find a shot that is entirely distant is rarer than you would think, especially if you start doing 360 degree shots or sphericals. For single-row panoramas, it is more common. For single row, a motorized mount is either very simple or barely worth it.

There may be no good universal answer.

Nodal point

Mediavets — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:27:17 -0700

No Parallax Point (NPP or Nodal Point) doesn't matter much when shooting distant subjects with long focal length lenses.

Moving things

brad — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:24:35 -0700

Moving things other than clouds are an issue. I think many popular large panoramas are popular because they have some action in them, people are doing things, it is not just a static landscape. The inauguration is a good example, possibly only because most people are sitting.

Now the gigapan takes an up-down first approach so shooting the matrix, which has some minor advantages but is the worst for motion because most motion is horizontal, including clouds. And clouds can be blended in any event without ruining a picture, while people and vehicles are much harder.

With distant cities, one of the things that gigapans do is actually include the people in what would otherwise be a shot without enough resolution for them.

I may try the Orion at some point. I have seen robotic servos that are fast, accurate and able to move 10lb objects, and they are getting cheaper. The killer as you say is also needing time to stabilize wobble after you move on a long lens. This is why lens collar mounting is important, the moment arm is way too long without it. I wonder if a 3 servo approach might work better to avoid the long moment arms. For this approach you would have a lens collar mount and it would be on a linear track servo to move it backwards and forwards to put the nodal point in the right place after moving the tilt servo, because an off-nodal tilt servo can have a shorter moment arm. I will think about this.

Speed and weight

Anonymous — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:58:32 -0700

Brad,

I agree that Merlin/Orion is not the speediest of robotic heads.

OTOH if as you correctly point out the most valuable application for robotic heads is using longer focal length lenses, then such lenses mounted on DSLRs are relatively heavy and there's s limit as to how fast one can move them and such setups require a 'settling' time after each move. The Rodeon VR head is faster but it costs 10X as much - 3,700 Euros! Pixorb is faster but that costs US$10,000!!

The most typical application for robotic heads is to shoot high res. mosaic panos of distant city/landscapes - moving clouds are likely to present the greatest challenge in such scenarios; and if shooting a mosaic comprising hundreds of images the challenge remains regardless of how fast the head movement is.

Merlin/Orion is quite happy to accept mounting of lens/camera via a lens collar mount in landscape orientation, after all the mount was designed for use with telescopes.

I'm not sure what the Epic 100 weighs; Merlin/Orion is not as heavy as it looks and if it was any smaller if would further restrict the range of pitch angle that can be acheived.

To reiterate I believe that Merlin/Orion+papywizard offers an unrivalled 'bang for your buck'.

I agree with you that you really don't need a robotic head for panos comprising 30 images or less.

Speed and weight

brad — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:22:46 -0700

My last examination into this showed some concerns. One was that it possibly was even slower than the gigapan, and I think the gigapan is too slow. Secondly that it was heavier and bulkier, and I think the gigapan is too heavy and bulky.

I do like the ability to tell autopano pro about where the shots were. I wish I could easily do that even for my manual pan heads, as it often insists on thinking the camera twisted when it could not possibly have.

I have begun to think that any kind of automatic pano mount for gigapans from SLRs should be designed around lenses with a tripod mount on the lens. You can get collars for many lenses that don’t have these built in, and I would bet you could make generic collars for various diameters of lens as long as they have a spot to be held. you could also make foam mold collars to hold the lenses at their nodal points. This is primarily for long lenses. An automatic mount isn’t nearly as valuable on short focal panos which you can do quickly on a manual mount as they are under 30 shots.

Merlin/Orion as a robotic panohead

Mediavets — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:22:23 -0700

This project is completed and there are now over 100 users of the system.

The system works very well and is less expensive to put together than the Gigapan Epic.

Shutter can be triggered via wired remote connection or via IR, from the camera control port of the Merlin/Orion.

The system is driven by the free Open source Papywizard software, written in Python, which runs on Nokia Internet Tablets (the N80 can be bought used relatively cheaply), Windows and Linux.

Connection between the Papywizard host system and the Merlin/Orion mount/head can be a wired serila connection of a wireless Bluetooth connection. There are two alternative plug-n-play Bluetooth adapters available for the Merlin/Orion head.

The Autopano Pro and Giga stitching software has explicit support for the Merlin/Orion+Papywizard robotic pano system which uses data recorded during the shoot to assist with the placement of images when sticthing so that even 'featureless' images such as clear blue sky images get placed and stitched correctly.

Inciudentally Autopano pro and Giga also support the Gigapan robotic heads.

IMO the Merlin/Orion+Papywizard system - especially when combined with Autopano Pro or Giga - is the best reasonably low cost robotic pano head system available.

Andrew

Not universal

brad — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:01:55 -0700

That is my point. The shutter servo seems “universal” to you but it limits what cameras you can put on the unit, quite seriously. It would require some redesign to make it go further from the camera.

To be fair, it is hard to deal with large cameras. You need heavier duty equipment, not just bigger. And long moment arms are going to mean vibration unless they are very heavy duty. In fact, even the mirror slap on an SLR is too much, so you want to work in mirror lock mode. I don’t know if you can program the gigapan to work in mirror lock mode but it turns out you can simulate that with live preview mode. To use mirror lock mode via USB is not possible right now. USB control programs end up having to use a second shutter control that plugs into the wired remote control on the camera.

Note that the wired remote control is another option for devices like the Gigapan. There are various companies who make USB adapters for the wired remote because of the problems with USB control (mirror lock and rapid fire) which could be used. And on the newest DSLRs they have finally realized they should support infrared firing which is another option and requires no plug in hardware.

On the plus side, we can hope that the camera companies wake up to what people want to do with USB control, and allow full access, and standarization of it.

Re-checked the gigapan device...

Gelfod — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:16:17 -0700

Wow, you're right.
It does not say so in any of the other reviews, but the shutter servo assembly is really close to the camera. That 'Epic' device will only take small compact camera's and nothing else.
Any slightly serious camera, like a Canon G-series or a superzoom from any brand requires the much more expensive Epic-100.
This is a showstopper for me. The Epic needs a mod or else it's just pointless. If you get such an expensive device to make high quality panorama's you should not be restricted to the smallest of the compact camera's.

I still like the servo-shutter as it is universal and anyone can work it out on their own. USB support sounds good in theory but is far more complicated than you might think. The variety in models and protocols make it hard to offer one software package with universal support. Gigapan would find itself constantly maintaining and updating their software to fix bugs in specific models, and to keep track of all the new camera's. In addition they would have to install an update-feature on their device, and open a service center to help customers who wiped their device. All that is simply not their businessmodel.

But the main point of the review holds very true. The Epic standard model is sadly only designed to support camera's with anything resembling a decent lens, and the Epic-100 is just so much more expensive.

Ideally, it would have metal wheels, a much more adjustable shutter-servo and a counterbalance to accomodate larger camera's.

Incomplete not biased

brad — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:19:37 -0700

To be strict I say the review is not fair because I did not get to completely examine the product — because of its own problems — not because of a bias. If I have a bias it’s that I would dearly love a product like this.

I realize that USB control is not nearly as easy as it should be. However, I have used software that does it. What I try to point out is that the use of the shutter servo is also a choice that limits what cameras can go on the unit. The use of USB would also limit what cameras could be used, but for the cameras that worked, the result would be superior — confirmation of when the photo was taken, ability to time photos, ability to set camera parameters and ability to look at exif data to confirm camera parameters are correct. USB control is a question of software (not trivial) but involves minimal per-unit hardware costs. Servo control requires minimal software but has higher per-unit hardware costs. One can of course make a unit which has a servo as an add-on. (USB control requires a USB controller which is fairly cheap, but he big issue may be whether the microcontroller in the unit is up to the USB task.)

The time between photos can be adjusted but it is still rather slow even at the fastest safe speed, or so I was led to believe.

I don’t think it’s that much of a sin if the gigapan works only with a set of fixed cameras, unless the set is too tiny. Truth is, it costs more than most of the tiny cameras and it is much bigger and heavier than them, and it’s hard enough to put the camera on and off that there would be a strong temptation just to buy a camera just for the gigapan. Indeed, the right move may be to design a unit around a particular camera which is low in features but has a decent lens, and can be controlled by USB in manual mode. It’s interesting to ponder if such a unit might cost a fair bit less than a general unit, enough less to justify adding the camera. Especially if it’s a slightly older camera, as the gigapan doesn’t need the features of new cameras, such as extra megapixels beyond reason, super-tiny size, fast start-up etc.

Too negative

gelfod — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:28:37 -0700

Too negative.
In all fairness, Brad states it's a biassed review.
But a lot of his grievances might (would) have been overcome if he would have had a chance to get used to the device, and if he had had a camera that would have fit.
For example, the time between photo's can be adjusted, but if the device breaks before you can give that a try... it's a negative outcome.

Also, Brad thinks that a USB control to the camera would be better than the shutter-servo. Again, it is clear he's had problems getting the servo to work reliably - it takes time to get to know the device and Brad didn't have this time.
Let me just say that when it comes to USB control of camera's, every brand, make and model is different. Trust me, I have tried. USB support would guarantee total failure as the whole gigapan would work with a fixed number of camera's and nothing else.

Hard to say

brad — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:43:15 -0700

There are some very expensive automatic pano mounts. One method, used by a model that was around for a while was to have a single-line camera that would rotate and scan the scene. That works for static scenes, though, you can’t have motion.

Right now the best approach in terms of portability and speed are the various lighter spherical pano mounts — panosaurus, nodal ninja, king pano and a few others. Just get a good technique and you can shoot faster manually than the gigapan, and you can more easily carry it and set it up.

But the automatic shot is still very attractive since it is less likely to make errors (barring shutter press errors.)

Gigapan has a SLR version with USB shooting control in the works, they say. If I were them I would make that one, and then I would make a gigapan with a built in camera. Why? Well, the cameras are cheap, and you would not need a shutter servo. In fact, if you could convince a camera vendor to cooperate, you could put the control software on the camera itself, making the unit plus camera cost not much more than the current unit. No need for a complex mount as you only have to support the one camera. Alas, it has to be a zoom camera as nobody makes a standard long fixed focal length cheap digicam. But you might pick a slightly older model, one you can get a bulk order on at around $100 per camera. You don’t need any features in the camera really — just USB shooting and a decent lens.

Not entirely fair review of the Gigapan imager

brad — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:17:03 -0800

This is an unfair review of the “Gigapan” motorized panoramic mount. It’s unfair because the unit I received did not work properly, and I returned it. But I learned enough to know I did not want it so I did not ask for an exchange. The other thing that’s unfair is that this unit is still listed as a “beta” model by the vendor.

I’ve been wanting something like the Gigapan for a long time. It’s got computerized servos, and thus is able to shoot a panorama, in particular a multi-row panorama, automatically. You specify the corners of the panorama and it moves the camera through all the needed shots, clicking the shutter, in this case with a manual servo that mounts over the shutter release and physically presses it.

I shoot a lot of panos, as readers know, and so I seek a motorized mount for these reasons:

I want to shoot panos faster. Press a button and have it do the work as quickly as possible
I want to shoot them more reliably. With manual shooting, I may miss a shot or overshoot the angle, ruining a whole pano
For multi-row, there’s a lot of shooting and it can be tiresome.
With the right shutter release, there can be lower vibration. You can also raise the mirror just once for the whole pano, with no need to see through the viewfinder.