Panorama Stitching with PTGui+PanoTools

For the past couple of days I’ve doing a little research on what I need to create a decent panorama via image stitching.  

I started with the hardware and so far the only relatively-cheap (under $200) panorama heads I can find with decent reviews are: Panosaurus, KingPano, and Nodal Ninja.  The problem with these inexpensive heads is the lack of Arca-Swiss compatibility and weight restrictions (average capacity is around 4 lbs).  These reasons pretty much swayed me away from these products–although if Arca-Swiss compatibility is not an issue, I would have gone with the least expensive Panosaurus.

I would love to have the complete Really Right Stuff complete pano kit or even the not-so-complete kit, but I’m not really planning to do a lot of panorama shots…yet.  My Tripod already has a bubble level (for level horizontal panning), so I am opting to buy the Kirk Long Rail Plate.  I will buy this instead of the equivalent RRS product because it’s cheaper and the Kirk one can be pivoted.  The RRS MPR-CLII, however, has a ruler built in.  It’s debatable at this point.

As for the software, at first I looked at PTAssembler+PanoTools (PTAssembler is a GUI front end for PanoTools).  While it’s really cheap ($35), I found it very unintuitive and the UI is not quite polished.  It also doesn’t support 16-bit outputs.  Automatic panorama creation can be done with AutoPano and EnBlend, but in the end this frankenstein of a software isn’t really as good as I thought–not to mention it’s dog-slow, too. 

The only other software I looked at was PTGui, which is also a front-end GUI for PanoTools.  At around $80, I can hear my wallet whimpering, but judging on the output (it can support 16-bit) and ease of use (not to mention a lot faster than PTAssembler), this will probably end up in my library of software.

I know there are other software out there, but I can’t imagine any other software that can best PTGui.  There’s RealViz Stitcher, but at around $400, I wouldn’t care if it’s 10 times better…although reviews show that even this mega-expensive software is trumped by PTGui in automatic panorama creation.

I will keep this updated when I purchase the hardware.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 7:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Photography, Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.