Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/London 360 degree panorama

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[edit] 360 panoramic view of London from St Paul's Cathedral

Reason

I had been meaning to take this panorama ever since a previous version was nominated and failed but had been waiting until nice weather and a some free time on my lunch break at work corresponded! This one isn't perfect either (there are minor stitching errors if you pixel-peep closely) but I am pretty confident that it is impossible to completely avoid stitching errors, as parallax gets in the way of a 360 (you're forced to walk around what is probably a 5 or 6 metre diameter viewing platform), as well as movement between frames. I think that this is pretty close to the best 360 you're likely to get from this position - the weather was lovely, the sun was out of the frame (just) and I managed to avoid any blown highlights in the clouds and it is extremely high res (downsampled from 200 megapixels to 50 megapixels - 3 x 17 segments!). Oh, and damnit, it cost me 9.50 quid to get in! It better be worth it!! ;-)

Proposed caption

Blank for the time being - any takers?

Proposal by Chick Bowen:

Panorama of London taken from the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. Built from 1675 to 1708, the Cathedral is still one of the highest buildings in western London.

Articles this image appears in

London, Architecture in London and History of London

Creator

User:Diliff

• Support as nominator Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:52, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support Amazing. My (admittedly inexperienced) eye could not catch the stitching errors. There are some very slight artifacts, but no biggie. All-around wowness. CillaИ ♦ XC 23:15, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support unless someone finds a glaring stitching error. Otherwise, another great pic.--HereToHelp 23:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support no doubt about it. Cacophony 23:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Hoooooo ly crap. --froth^t 04:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• No no no, don't crash my browser...! Ah, better. Strong support; I admit that it is a bit too large for a computer image, but that aside, the panorama is brilliant! I doubt there's a better time to take this panorama than when you took it. -- Altiris Helios Exeunt 05:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• I'm terrible at captions, but here's my (useless) advice: you could try using the filename. "Panoramic view of London from St. Paul's Cathedral" might be good for starters, in my opinion. Now I'd better leave, before I get too carried away by this destructively awesome picture. -- Altiris Helios Exeunt 05:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Not wild about how the sky came out, but that is compensated by the wow-ness of the rest of the picture. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:23, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
  • What do you mean how the sky came out? Whats wrong with the sky? I thought it came out pretty well actually. Its very difficult to get a 360 panorama without a part of the sky blowing out from the sunlight and I managed to avoid that. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. The... detail. You're going to settle personality rights with everyone in this picture, yes? — Ben pcc 20:11, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Just wanted to show that there are some substantial stitching errors. I have no idea how to correct them appropriately, but maybe the photographer can fix them? Puddyglum 21:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
  • As I already mentioned, the stitching errors are due to the effect of parallax shift. In other words, I had to move slightly with each segment in order to circle the viewing platform, and as a result, there are inherently minor perspective shifts across the image that cannot be corrected for. With much smaller panoramas, it is sometimes possible to be selective about the control points to minimise the parallax error, but this photo has 50 overlapping segments and it is virtually impossible to correct for every stiching error. So yes, I am aware that minor errors exist, but they are relatively minor considering the detail level. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support regardless of stitching errors, as it's an amazingly detailed view of the city. Puddyglum 21:19, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Diliff, your pictures never cease to amaze me. NauticaShades 00:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. In regards to the stitching errors. First they aren't that big of a deal...obviously the overall composition of the photo is not detracted from by the minuscule errors. I see that you reference PTgui and smart blend on your user page as the software that you use to stitch your images together. Myself and some of my colleagues have used this software in the past but have switched to Autopano Pro because we have found the overall blending and stitching to be much much better. Autopano does not have quite as many customizable features but overall it is simple to use allowing for fine tuning after the initial assembly of the images. Since you clearly enjoy working on panoramic I thought I would pass along the knowledge. Buphoff 07:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the advice. I did investigate Autopano Pro a while ago (6 months or so?) and from memory didn't find it to be as good as PTGui but I will have another look at it. The blending with Smartblend is excellent as it does its best to 'hide' parallax errors. Obviously where it isn't possible to hide the seam line it is forced to just split an object or person down the middle, but 9 times out of 10 it will create the seam line along the edge of an object so it appears to be stitched perfectly. I don't know if Autopano Pro does this - I know the built in blender in PTGui and Enblend aren't nearly as intelligent about where to place the seam lines but I'm more than willing to be converted. :-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 07:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
    • First off I'll admit that compared with you I'm very much a novice at pano stitching and I never really got to grips with PTGui. However, despite being an el-cheapo completely auto program I've found Panorama Maker 4 pretty good with stitching. Also CS3 now comes with a pretty good stitcher. If you don't have these, perhaps you could upload/email me some images to have a shot at stitching? --Fir0002 08:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
      • • Fir, I recently got CS3 (the price is unreal) and tried a brief test with the photo-merge or whatever its called, problem was, it gave bad horizontals and has no way that I saw to set vertical and horizontal line control points. I was using an equirectangular projection so I dont think thats it. Is there some way to adjust the settings for it so that some control points are editable? just wondering. -Fcb981^{(talk:contribs)} 21:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
      • You're welcome to try but I suspect with that software you won't have much luck bettering the stitching, but maybe I'm being unduely pessimistic. The other issue is the question of file size. Do you really want me to email 51 x 8mb jpeg files to you? Are you still on dialup? ;-) Send me an email and I'll see what I can do about putting the files up on a web server. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:05, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
        • Pano Maker does do a good job, especially if the originals are well taken with plenty of overlap, but unless I'm very much mistaken, it won't handle stacked photos like this (i.e., 3 rows of 17). It just does single rows of horizontal, vertical, or 360°. In fact, I'm not even sure it will handle the 17 alone - there's some limit that I hit on with one pano I was trying to do a while back, I think it was either 16 or 18 original images. --jjron 10:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support, what a great free image.--Svetovid 09:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support Impressive, amazing to see my girlfriends house! --Central Powers 18:01, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support Great! Wow factor = 100% --LucaG 22:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
• Surprise Wikibreak-interrupting Support - An astounding bit of photography. I think the odd stitching error is going to be unavoidable in a scene as complex as this. £9.50? Bargain! --YFB ¿ 11:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support This is a really well done picture. I only wish the constuction had been completed, but it doesn't take away from the picture really. Captain Phoebus 14:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support I look at every FPC but rarely vote. But WOW! This is amazing! Mahahahaneapneap 23:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support - Well i nominated the first one, thanks to diliff for retaking this image. Looks brilliant --Childzy ¤ Talk 10:22, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support per all of the above. Spikebrennan 13:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support. The only thing I don't like here is that it's 360°, because I actually don't like 360° panos. I would have preferred say two 200° panos instead, one looking north, one looking south (or whatever would work best in London), and I would have supported both - then you would really have got your 9½ quid's worth! It may also have avoided those minor stitching errors. --jjron 15:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
• Support, nice! --KFP (talk | contribs) 19:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Promoted Image:London 360 from St Paul's Cathedral - Sept 2007.jpg MER-C 11:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)