Fun in the cold
We're having these rather low temperatures around here during the last days, down to -15°C at night (that's only 5°F). Here's my opportunity to prove the LizardQ's toughness! I let our demo system freeze solid overnight outside, including a half charged battery. Getting up early the next morning, it still said -11°C. Switch on, press button, here we go. Just works!
Officially, we specify our panoramic camera down to 0°C. However, customers have been using our system outside in winter all the time. Experience shows operation at -10°C is fine. Below that, the battery should gradually run out of steam, so I'd recommend to keep your batteries warm if you need to do that.
(Note to self: Wear gloves next time. Froze my fingers off on the bare metal of the tripod).
CGI workshop showcasing LizardQ
Matthias Langner of photo4d will again host his successful CGI workshop at Schloss Wilkinghege on February 23th and 24th, 2012. The workshop will feature invited talks by industry-leading companies and individuals. Matthias will showcase the newest software and hardware for your CGI workflow. Don't miss the opportunity to see the LizardQ camera system at work, get up to speed on current CGI tools and connect with numerous creative people working the same field as you do!
PS. This news, among others, was part of our latest newsletter. Read a copy here in case you didn't receive it and subscribe!
Experimental WebGL Panorama Viewer
For those of you who have not seen HDR 'in action', yet, we might have something interesting for you in our sample images gallery.
The summer vacation was long enough to dig out and polish some experimental HTML5/WebGL panorama viewer code and hook it up to our web-site. (It's been waiting to get published since the last Christmas holidays :-)). Please consider it as being an experimental study of how we could bring some of our HDR technology to the web. If you have an up to date modern web-browser with WebGL support you can take a look at the new viewer by clicking on any of the images on the sample images gallery as shown on the left. Recent versions of Firefox and Chrome should generally work, Safari 5.1 only after enabling WebGL support. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer users are left in the dark so far.
After the viewer loaded the HDR file from our server you can use the mouse (left click + drag) to turn around as you might know from other panorama viewers. But you can also use the scroll wheel or the little '+'/'-' buttons on the lower right of the viewer to adjust the exposure setting. This allows you to inspect every detail from the darkest to the brightest areas of the image as illustrated below. Please note, to keep the loading time short, the viewer shows only a preview resolution (2000x1000 pixels) of the 100MP HDR image.
While we were at it, we also included a 'standard' flash based panorama viewer, that shows the tone-mapped versions of the HDR samples. The upside is: you get the full resolution and that in full screen, if you wish.
If you have comments, please feel free to contact us.
Recom uses LizardQ for Lexus CGI
Leveraging the low-light capability of the LizardQ while shooting in LA back in November, recom again has delivered outstanding imagery for their customers. We promised to show the results, see our original news here. Despite the nightly scenery with little light, the LizardQ camera averaged only 1½ minutes per HDR panorama in this production, with a dynamic range in excess of 26 f-stops. Perfect as a basis for stunning CGI!
Read recom's full press release here in English or German.
Full credits:
Client: Lexus USA
Agency: Teamone LA
AD: Kevin Mitchell
Photo + Supervision: Thomas Strogalski
CGI Direction: Thorsten Jasper Weese
CGI + POST by recom
Images kindly provided by recom.
In Love with LizardQ, says recom
Thorsten Jasper Weese, managing partner and CGI director at recom and the German Photographer Thomas Strogalski have just returned from a series of night shifts in the US. Thorsten has been using a LizardQ panoramic camera for the first time and he got himself some serious fun!
We took the opportunity to ask Thorsten a few things:
Q: Thorsten, what made you choose LizardQ?
"Having been a user of specialized HDR cameras for years, I am familiar with the weaknesses of those, especially at low light. Now I had a sizable CGI production with just night scenes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas to manage, for our Lexus customer. It was immediately clear to me I needed a different fisheye based stitching system for this job.
Knowing Matthias Langner for a long time, and having seen the LizardQ camera at his Photokina booth, I just asked him for a ten day rental. It was definitely the right decision. Production of the 16 CGI vehicles and motives is in full swing here at recom. The HDRs are outstanding and we are going to create awesome results for our customer."
Q: What did you like most?
"After getting acquainted with manually setting exposure, ISO and f-stop to my liking, I really enjoyed the speed. Within a few moments, out of the case, snap onto the light tripod, not even a minute and the HDR is done – topnotch!"
Q: What is the biggest benefit?
"It's the quick-paced workflow and the flexibility that comes with it. It makes a big difference if I can ask the police to block the road for a minute instead of half an hour."
Recom continues to rock, and we hope to serve them again soon. Stay tuned for recom's finest imagery, we'll present their final results here as soon as we're allowed a peek!
Automotive Days 2010 in Munich
Autodesk's 2010 installment of their Automotive Days is just around the corner! Set up at the Le Méridien Hotel in Munich on October 19-20, the event is guaranteed to attract the finest visualization specialists, engineers and modelers in the automotive industry. Numerous renowned speakers from around the world will share their insights. See the full agenda here.
LizardQ is on display during the exhibition breaks. A 45 minute talk by m-innovations on day 2 will cover the creation of high quality 3D environments for visualization, a real-world application with strong benefits of LizardQ. Find out how this cost-effective technology can boost your productivity!
Meet LizardQ at Photokina!
See the LizardQ panoramic camera in action at this year’s photokina, Hall 4.1, Booth C043. Matthias Langner of photo4d will be happy to demonstrate what LizardQ can do. He also has a complete CGI rendering environment set up, so you can experience HDR imaging in the context of a real production workflow.
Don’t miss the unique mix of hardware suppliers, software creators and creative users all participating in the CGI Solution Center! Meet your fellow CGI professionals and enjoy lectures and product presentations.
Let us know if you plan on dropping by!
photo4d, Hall 4.1, Booth C043, part of the CGI Solution Center. The photokina is taking place in Cologne, Germany on September 21st through 26th, 2010.
LizardQ at Volkswagen conference
Starting tomorrow, LizardQ is going to be displayed by m-innovations at the 12th Corporate Conference on Virtual and Augmented Reality, held on September 09-10, 2010 at the MMI Braunschweig, Germany. This is a closed-audience event by the Volkswagen Group, with expert attendees mostly coming from the R&D departments of the nine Volkswagen brands.
m-innovations has been invited by Volkswagen for the third time and proudly demonstrates 3D reconstruction techniques and stunning results based on HDR imaging and 3D laser scanning. Pity you can't just go there and attend – you need to apply for a job at Volkswagen and hope they send you to next year's event. Or call us for other demo opportunities!
Why you will love auto-leveling
Auto-leveling is one of the fine and useful goodies we have designed into our product. It is not a strictly necessary feature, but a benefit we don't want you to miss out.
If your job is to go somewhere and take two or three full spherical images, and that's it, you will probably have no issue with spending 30 seconds per location to carefully level your tripod so the resulting image is level, too. However, if your job is chasing through, say, an industrial facility and come home with a hundred panoramas after a hurried day's work, auto-leveling has just saved you the precious minutes that are better spent preparing locations or taking that extra capture.
How it works? You won't even notice. You just set your tripod up, approximately level, but without actually caring (see the picture). While the capture is running, the LizardQ panoramic camera is continuously measuring its tilt, and stores that data along with the raw image files. Later, when processing the images, the LizardQ Stitcher will silently use that tilt data to correct any misalignment. Result!
30 f-stops. Really? Really.
We specify our LizardQ panoramic camera to have a HDR dynamic range of up to 30 f-stops. Sounds dazzling. While you would only use the camera in that setting in deepest darkest night, it is a real-world number. I'll walk you through the math (Danger! Techie babble ahead):
- We start with the dynamic range that we get out of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a single capture. Canon doesn't seem to specify that number, but it has been measured to be approximately 12 f-stops [1]. This is equivalent to 12 bits of analog-to-digital conversion, which is actually done with 14 bits, so 2 bits are noise).
- Now we set the 5D Mark II to its longest capture time, which is 30 seconds. Click, waaaaiiit, clack, we just got our first 12 f-stops.
- This is where exposure bracketing comes in. If we bracket at intervals of three f-stops towards shorter exposure times, we arrive at this exposure sequence: 4, 1/2, 1/15, 1/125, 1/1000 and 1/8000 seconds. That is 6 additional captures, each adding 3 f-stops to our total dynamic range, i.e. 6 times 3 = 18 f-stops, plus the 12 f-stops we got from our first capture, equals 30 f-stops.
Granted, running a "Full HDR" mode capture at night, you have to ask what good it does to have a 1/8000 capture which will probably come out pitch black anyway. The answer is, because you can. Most urban night scenery is a mixture of very dark areas and very bright point light sources – this way you get it all. Think image-based lighting and smile.
Another technical note: Actually, we do our exposure bracketing slightly differently - we are capturing the longest exposure of a bracketing sequence twice, with ISO bumped up by a few stops the second time. This probably doesn't get us more dynamic range, but it means that you can use shorter base exposure times (i.e. work faster) and still get excellent results.
[1] See e.g. DxOMark for dynamic range measurement of the 5D Mark II.