CTV News Feature

Peter Grainger of CTV News BC interviewed Ronnie Miranda and featured the GigaPan technology and his various works. For the news feature which aired on Nov 17, 2010, Ronnie created a 1.8 gigapixel panorama of West Vancouver.

Related Article: GigaPan Turn ‘Where’s Waldo?’ Into Child’s Play

VIDEO

BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Coquitlam 360°

Coquitlam 360° is a 5.7 billion pixel image of Coquitlam, BC. The image is made up of 666 photos taken on Oct 21, 2010 from the rooftop of the Levo building.

Tri-City skyline captured


A Port Moody man took scenic photography to a new level last month in creating the first ever 360-degree panorama shot of the Tri-City skyline.

By Gary McKenna – The Tri-City News
Published: November 16, 2010 3:00 PM
Updated: November 17, 2010 7:11 AM

A Port Moody man took scenic photography to a new level last month in creating the first ever 360-degree panorama shot of the Tri-City skyline.

Using a specially designed computer program, Ronnie Miranda, a graphic designer and 3D animator, spent hours "stitching" together close to 700 images taken from the top of a building in Coquitlam’s city centre.

"The technology is basically used for education and research," he said. "It was developed by NASA and they used it for the Mars Rovers expeditions."

The images were selected from 1,000 photos he took using a GigaPan robot. With the help of the machine, shots from all angles are taken from one location, which can then be puzzle-pieced together using a computer.

The final product is a computer image that allows the viewer to see a 360-degree view of the region, something Miranda said has not been done before.

"We just shoot," he said. "I go up to the highest point and look for the best view."

This is not the first time Miranda has used the technology. Last summer, he shot a 240-degree skyline image of downtown Vancouver from the 58th floor of the Shangri-La, B.C.’s tallest building.

Since then, he has shot the Olympic Oval in Richmond, the ice rink at Robson Square and Ferguson Point at Stanley Park, along with several interior room and lobby shots of the Shangri-La Hotel.

His next project is expected to take him to Georgia, where he has been asked to shoot a football game using the GigaPan imager.

Vancouver West End

Vancouver West End is a 10 billion pixel, 100° West-to-North view of Vancouver, BC Canada. The image is a composite of 816 individual photos taken on May 8, 2010 from the 58th floor of Living Shangri-la Vancouver using a GigaPan EPIC 100, Canon EOS Rebel T2i and a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM.

This image was intended to be part of Vancouver 12 Gigapixels. The 2 Gigapan images could not be stitched together due a lot of misaligned photos caused by a broken EPIC 100 during the shoot which also affected image sharpness.

Making of Vancouver 12 Gigapixels

DESCRIPTION

Vancouver 12-Gigapixels is a 240° East-to-Northwest view of Vancouver, BC Canada taken from the Living Shangri-la Vancouver skyscraper, the tallest building in the city.

The image is a composite of 1608 individual photos taken on April 10 and May 8, 2010 between the hours 11:30am – 3:30pm using a GigaPan EPIC 100, Canon EOS Rebel T2i and a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM.

In print form, the image is 96.4 m x 16.0 m (316 ft x 53 ft). Roughly, it is 5 stories high with a width 88% that of a NFL football field.


DETAILS

  • Dimensions: 273,298 × 45,474 pixels
  • Pixels: 12,427,953,252
  • No. of images: 1,608 @ 18 MP/image
  • Size: 34GB (Photoshop PSB format)
  • Shooting: 210 mins
  • Stitching: 3 weeks
  • Rendering: 3 hrs 45 mins *
  • Public Availability: June 4 2010

* On an 8-Core Apple Mac Pro (2 x 2.8Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor), 18GB RAM, 2TB HD, Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3

SHOOTING

My initial goal was to create a complete 360° GigaPan view of Vancouver but it was physically impossible to do so. A total of 3 groups of images were shot from 3 different locations on April 10 and May 8, 2010 between the hours 11:30am – 3:30pm from the 58th floor of Living Shangri-la Vancouver, the tallest building in the city at 201m (659 ft).

The images were captured using the GigaPan EPIC 100, a Canon EOS Rebel T2i and a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. Each photo was 18 megapixels in 25MB RAW+JPEG format. During the shoot, instead of an SDHC card, the photos were saved directly to an IBM ThinkPad 1.4 Ghz Intel Laptop with 2GB RAM, 80GB HD running Windows XP Pro.

All photos from the building with the Canadian flag (left side) to the right side were shot on April 10, 2010 starting at 11:30am PDT – and against the sun. By 1:00pm PDT, the GigaPan imager was shooting towards the west (the right side of the image) and the sun’s movement obviously changed the lighting of the view. Photos from Port Metro Vancouver (on the extreme left) to the Canadian flag were shot on May 8, 2010 between 2:00pm – 3:30pm PDT. The first location was on a balcony with a South to Northwest view. And the 2nd location was by the dining room 16 meters (50ft) away from the balcony and through a glass window with an East to South view.

STITCHING

Stitching and rendering was done on an 8-Core Apple Mac Pro (2 x 2.8Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor) with 18GB RAM, 2TB HD, Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3.

Because each group of image had a different setup, differences such as light levels, parallax, shadows and weather conditions were obviously present. It was possible to merge only 2 of the 3 groups. The 3rd group had to stand on its own.

AutoPano Giga, with its Smartblend feature, seemed to be a good choice for stitching the 2 image groups. But the process turned into a nightmare. APG v2.06, v2.07, and v2.08 would either freeze or randomly crash. It was also very slow. Bottom line: AutoPano Giga had too many issues and was totally unreliable. After a waste of a week and a half of my time, I gave up on APG. If the Kolor engineers themselves did not use Smartblend and required the help of Intel when creating Paris 26-Gigapixels, why would they include it and expect other people to use it on standard computers?

Instead, applying Occam’s Razor, I went back to the basics: I simply used GigaPan Stitch and Adobe Photoshop CS5. GigaPan Stitch may not have Smartblend (or maybe it does) but its definitely stable and reliable – even renders much faster than APG! Rendering took only 3hrs 45 mins. Alignment of images was more precise.

CLEAN-UP

Clean up was done with Adobe Photoshop CS5. To open or save a 75GB PSB file with layers took over an hour each time. I was pushing the limit of Photoshop CS5 and the Mac Pro. The cleanup process had to be carefully planned out and structured to minimize mistakes and to save time. I had an AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6Ghz Desktop, 4GB RAM, 2TB HD running Windows XP Pro that allowed me to do advanced tests on a scale-sized image while Photoshop was processing the larger image on the Mac. The whole process – which took about 10 days – may have been very slow and tedious especially in dealing with large files but it was definitely dependable.

The final flattened image was 34GB in PSB format. This was sliced and diced and 26,200 smaller tiles were created. Uploading a .RAW file to GigaPan.org took 16 hours and uploading the tiled images to Gigapixel.com took 6 hours.

VIDEO

CREDITS

The entire image was created solely by Ronnie Miranda as a personal project. He was neither sponsored nor commissioned by any company or individual.

Special Thanks to:
Shangri-la Hotel Vancouver
Ed Brea, General Manager
Jeff Froehlich, Director of Sales & Marketing
Eleanor Mah, Senior Sales Manager
Ryan Fowler, Security
Sureena Parmar, Concierge
Ms. Maggie Wang

Richmond Olympic Oval

Shot two 360° GigaPans of the Richmond Olympic Oval today. Each set consisted of 312 18-megapixel photos for a total of 624 photos which took 3 hours to complete.

The Oval was the venue for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Speed Skating events. Most of the banners and decors have been removed. But some will remain as part of the Olympic legacy.

Special thanks to Mr. Aran Kay (Assistant Manager, Communications & Brand Development) for making the shoot possible and to the helpful staff members (below).

Shangri-la Hotel Shoot


Ronnie explains to Jeff Froehlich, Director of Sales & Marketing, how the GigaPan works.

April 6 – The first of several days for the  Shangri-la Hotel Vancouver GigaPan shoot. It was a long 12-hour work day that started at 10am. Today’s shoot:

  • Orchid Suite (day and night scenes)
  • Conway Room Foyer
  • Conway Room (360° plus 2 views from different angles)

Next shoot will be on the 11th for the hotel’s Lower Lobby.

Special thanks to:

  • David Bachtel, Events Manager
  • Zoran Kovacevic, Night Manager
  • Stephane Moutte, Chef Concierge
  • David Musson, Director of Security
  • Michael Shumas, Guest Services Manager
  • Aleksandra Vukojevic, Director of Rooms