Outback Virtual Tours

Hi Wayne,

Sorry we missed you. We did bump into Anthony Kilner from 4wd Monthly though at Innamincka & a couple who had hired an Adventure Camper in Adelaide from Paul (One of the Adventure owners). We were only in 'town' for about 30mins.

Then a couple of days later we were at the river crossing just out of town and who was there shooting pics, Ant Man again, then a few minutes later a guys drives across the water & it's some guy Paul knows from Adelaide.

It's a small world out there.

Hope to catch you next time :)

We'll be in the Grampians in late October then hopefully on Fraser in early December. Just FYI ;)

Aaron.

Yeh funny who you bump into isn't it. I met JohnR and his mate in a 100 series up there. They were heading for the Birdsville meet I think...

I was just telling my mate Rob from the campertrailer group about the link and he said you were at Copeton and therefore a fellow campertrailer lister. So you must have been up there after the Copeton thing were you, i was there instead of it,
It is a small world.

Spot on Wayne,

I was at Copeton Waters, but I didn't get a chance to shoot any Virtual Tours which was a shame. My wife and I were there 'road testing' our 5 week old boy to see if we'd be able to take him on the very quick outback work trip with Adventure Campers. (4000km in 8 days)

In the end we decided it wouldn't be much fun for my wife or little boy so they didn't come along. It was a good decision, but a shame as well. The greenery and flowers everywhere were incredible.

Thanks,

Aaron.

G'day Norm,

I'm on dual screens as well, but I have them mapped as 2 separate screens instead of 1 big one. A mate has his dual setup like yours though, and I've seen the Virtual tours on it before, they do look great :)

How are they done.... In short with 3 separate shots at 120 degree intervals on a high resolution digital SLR + fisheye lens.

Here's the full detail of my setup if you're interested:

Kodak SLR/n (Full frame nikon body digital SLR, 14 Megapixel)
Sigma 8mm fisheye lens (180 degree view circular image)
Manfrotto 303SPH - Spherical Panoramic Head
Manfrotto MDEVE - Tripod with leveling base for head

Shoot 3 shots at 120 degree intervals & sometimes multiple exposures

Process & Stitch Images in:

Photoshop CS2 - crop & convert RAW images to Tif's
Noise Ninja 2 - Noise reduction (I think I missed this step)
PTgui - Stitch 3 images into 1 Equirectangular image.
Photoshop CS2 - Contrast blend, colour correct etc
Panocube - Convert equirectangular image to Quicktime Cubic VR's.
Dreamweaver - build the webpages to display the results.

Thanks,

Aaron.