Messages

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Face and Body Scanning / Re: Best Camera Choices for a rig - budget cameras?

« on: November 08, 2018, 12:42:26 AM »

I guess you mean Canon 1100D and Nikon D3400...? In that case Nikon has a great advantage in megapixels (24mp vs 12mp).  My belief is that any camera above 12 or 14mp can do a very fine job (the more, the better, obviously). Most people here will suggest buying better prime lenses for the task, but being on a tight budget I think you can manage to get good results with the kit lens. Other factors you should consider before you invest in one system or the other are, having your cameras AC powered instead of using batteries, being able to shoot in sync and download images remotely, and light... The more light equals less noise, so better results. 8 cameras can get you pretty far in head scanning, but forget about doing full body scanning for now.  Good luck!

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 25, 2013, 12:23:21 PM »

Here's the script Chad, check it out.

http://chdk.setepontos.com/index.php?topic=10837.0

I'm just about to load it in and do some testing.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 25, 2013, 03:20:07 AM »

You said it! The shirt is amazing! But the face is just so so...

I've realized that any highlight on skin is a big source for trouble. I think I'm going to need makeup for the following shoots. ISO was locked at the minimum value (ISO 80 on most of them), but the areas with some sweat and oil on the skin were completely lost...

I just got the script from CHDK, I'll report back tomorrow with the results.

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General / Re: Remote Desktop and OpenCL

« on: October 24, 2013, 10:28:54 PM »

My vote goes for Teamviewer too. I even have it on my mobile phone. Works wonders!

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 24, 2013, 10:07:14 PM »

Couldn't agree more with you Chad. Four is just not enough. I tried it on my mates face, to see how much we could get with just four cameras, and it's quite lacking. I was mostly interested in the volume of the face, and it came out quite ok, but there's still a lot of detail that got lost. I shot it in DNG of course, but these cameras are quite on the soft side I guess...

I got someone to help me out on the CHDK forum with a script that does the same thing as the "Remote On", but keeps the ability to transfer images on the usb. I'll give it a go when it's done. Sounds a lot more reliable.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 24, 2013, 12:48:23 PM »

Hi again guys. I've just completed the first test with my 4 camera setup. It's nothing fancy, just a cheap rig with a bunch of Canon point and shoots (two Ixus 105, one Ixus 220HS and one Ixus 85). I've set them up on each corner of a wooden square frame 40 or 50cm appart from each other, connected to a usb hub and shot thru CHDK Remote. It works fairly well and all cameras sync with an almost unperceptible delay. Just switch power on to the hub, cameras focus, switch off power and there you go... cameras shoot with no apparent delay. Looks fine...

But I must admit that I'm quite unimpressed with the results, they're just not what I expected. For now, I've had much better quality scans shooting with one single (and better) camera around my subject, around 20 to 25 shots while my friend stood still... Than the quality out of 4 synced shots with these cheapos. I believe they simply don't have enough resolving power (sharpness) for this task. Obviously this first test comes from only 4 shots, which is just the minimum... But setting up a bigger rig is out of the way right now. Not with these results! My next test will be using both approaches, shooting a few rounds with the rig around the subject in order to get 20 to 25 shots. They won't be synced anymore, but the time to get it done will be much shorter. No more messing around with one single camera... Now every click will be 4 shots at once!

And one more con... It is a real pain to set CHDK on each camera, and most of all... once all shots are done, the worst part is downloading everything to the computer. With CHDK remote on, you cannot access the camera thru usb, so every card needs to go out of the camera and on to a card reader.

Will keep testing to see how to improve the workflow, but  for now those are my first impressions.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 16, 2013, 06:32:57 PM »

Hey hengefjes, I'm a professional photographer and photography teacher...! Need a Photography Basics 101?  Hahaha! just joking... but any help you need, just ask. Everyone at the forum we'll do our best to help you out.

BTW your scans look very good. Congrats on those. I'm sure they can be improved, but for now, I'd just stick to the equipment you have and try to learn the techniques involved in photography and photogrammetry, and try to squeeze your setup as much as you can. It happens very often that people think they need better (or different) equipment to get better results in anything they're doing, and most of the times they are far from using their own equipment to the limit of its capabilities. It's the most common syndrome in photography.

On another topic... I just got a Kinect for Xbox, and been playing around other softwares to scan stuff. Unfortunately the quality is quite bad for scans, but that machine sure has got possibilities in motion capture! I'm really having fun...!

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 14, 2013, 04:01:47 PM »

hengefjes: Any specific reason to change your equipment? A D90 with the 10-20 sounds very reasonable to me. You get 2mm wider with the Oly setup, but that's an almost marginal gain. I hope there are other reasons you want to change your gear...

On the other hand you say you want to minimize the number of shots on your workflow, and I guess that's not a clever idea. You can try to squeeze as much info on a single frame, but remember that each shot is going to be one single persective of your scene, and from my little knowledge in PS, the more points of view you provide... the better the scan will be. And also, the wider the lens, the bigger the perspective errors and CA will be... and that will cause getting fewer matching points between shots. So as a rule of thumb I'd say the more frames you provide PS, the more info it can extract from your images. Perhaps I m mistaken... but that's what I found out worked best in my scans.

Andy_s: Regarding EXIF data, unfortunately there's always some deviation. I don't think it matters much with exposure values, you get what you get in the picture whether it says 1/125 or 1/142, same for aperture. ISO is known to be way off in most cameras, specially for marketing purposes (noise, sensitivity...). But with focal lenght that can be more troublesome, since PS relies heavily on that info. I'm sure there is some margin where PS can adapt to those inconsistencies...

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 14, 2013, 01:11:43 PM »

If Lightroom has the correct profile for the lens and camera combination the correction will be almost automatically applied. No problems there...

On the other hand (I'm a newbie and just playing by ear) I'm thinking the wider the lens, the more sensitive PS will be to perspective errors and CA. One single frame will contain a lot of perspective information, so the points detected sometimes will be too far a distance from each other to find matches, if there's perspective deviation. Maybe shooting with a slightly longer lens (28? 35?), and thus shooting more frames will probably help getting more matches. Maybe I'm talking nonsense here... Can't help you much, that's simply what came into my mind out of the box. Better get some help from experienced users.

You could try the PS demo and get the camera and lens for testing to give it a try... The software is amazingly capable, so I'll doubt you'll be having too many problems anyway.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 13, 2013, 08:01:19 PM »

Found something... I'm not sure if the diaphragm column refers specifically to having a real aperture... But i guess it's a start

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CameraFeatureTable

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 13, 2013, 06:24:03 PM »

Thx Chad. Already checked those, i really like the S100 i borrowed from a friend. Unfortunately... that's too expensive for the moment.

BTW, is there any list at CHDK (or elsewhere) where i can find which cameras have a real aperture, and not just a ND filter? I remember seeing something similar at chdk some time ago, but can't find it now.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 13, 2013, 05:02:54 PM »

Thanks a lot Chad, that is very handy. Not sure if I'll go the DIY route or not, but I guess a proper power supply will be very necessary.

Regarding DOF and focus... I will only be able to judge once i get the cameras in. Let's hope things turn out right. It's a pity that cameras like my trusty panasonic LX5 can't be synced together. It's small, has a nice sensor and plenty of controls to play with... Unfortunatey, there's no way to shoot it remotely.

As you said, CHDK is totally unreliable in order to set things manually... Menus, menus, and more menus... Absolutely nerve wracking! Let's build up some patience... And regarding the mixed camera flavours, right now is the only thing I can afford so wish me luck!

Thanks guys for your help.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 12, 2013, 08:27:48 PM »

True....!!!

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 12, 2013, 06:44:49 PM »

Well... Lee is the absolute master in this area, his tips are always words of wisdom. But I guess i can manage with a little less quality. His work is impressive, and his hardware too! Maybe sometime in the future i can get close to that, but as of today I'll do my best with the material I can afford. I'm really hopeful the results will be reasonably good, but we'll have to see how everything goes when i get the new material.

Aperture is going to be a tough one to beat, I hope i can force the cameras to get some deep DOF somehow... I'll pump everything with as much light as i can, and should build some kind of DIY dummy batteries for the cams. There are so many things to consider...! I'll keep you informed.

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General / Re: What cameras/lenses are preferable for photoscan?

« on: October 12, 2013, 04:52:52 PM »

Wow andy_s... you're such a source of information! Thanks a lot for all the time you're taking. As you said, right now the best and easiest way to go is the usbremote and usb hub method. I'm not that concerned about exactly precise syncing, I'm not planning to do action scans so a little delay in sync should not be too bad.

I've done tests with only one camera (Nikon D700, keeping my subject still and shooting around it), and the results have been really impresive. A little noise in some areas, and probably not the best definition around the eyes area. There's room for improvement so I'm going to try to rig an Ixus 80 borrowed from a friend (never been a canon guy, have a big bunch of different nikons, sony and panasonic though...), with four Ixus 105 and a S95 that are coming next week. I have big hopes in the results when i rig them up and shoot synced.

Another concern is that I'm not sure if any of these cameras allow aperture control (do they have a real diaphragm?!?) to maximize sharpness all around the subject. Manual settings on CHDK are quite a PITA to set up manually, but I guess I'll manage to get them done.

I haven't had much luck with ptpcamgui, as it couldn't see the camera connected... Thought it might be useful to go that way, but i'm about to ditch it since I believe it's going to be even worse with 6 cameras. The usb hub method sounds more reasonable and reliable. The next step will be retrieving the pictures "auto-magically" direct to the computer... I'll keep you informed about my progress. I think that's going to be a hard trick to pull, so I'd better build some patience in case I have to revert to the traditional card reader method.

Thanks once again for your help.