Forum Moderators: not2easy
I am looking at developing panorama views of rooms for my site. I have done a search and found some good tools, but have not found anything which actually answers my question.
The basic problem I have is I cannot use a tripod to take the panoramas as they are too bulky to carry around in my line of work. Hence, I have to take 4+ quick photos with my digital camera (canon powershot a70, FWIW) and stich them together at a later point.
Would not being able to use a tripod impact me at all?
To avoid the use of a plug-in I am planning on using a java-applet system.
Would not being able to use a tripod impact me at all?
Absolutely. If you want quality panoramas of a small space like a room, with clearly defined horizontal and vertical features, you absolutely need a tripod - one that will completely lock out tilt movement while allowing you to pan freely.
I would also recommend more than four photos - in fact, I doubt your digital camera is capable of covering 360 degrees of rotation in just four photos.
For a non-distorted panorama, you'd definitely want to use a tripod and take at least 8 images (with a much less severe wide angle effect) to really minimize distortion in the final image...
May I also suggest that using a cxommonly available plug-in system will probably provide much faster load times than a java applet. I'll rarely wait around for a java applet to load for any reason, but a QTVR panorama doesn't take much longer to load than any other popular multimedia file formats.