Messages

1

General / Re: Areal Photogrammetry with Sony Nex7

« on: January 11, 2015, 02:51:59 PM »

The NEX-7 is perfectly fine. We used it with the 16 mm pancake. The A7R of course is the even better choice due to the larger sensor and 36 MP, together with ZEISS lenses. The shutter release with USB-cable is also great. Only disadvantage is the slower processing speed. It does less than 1 frame per second with JPGs, so continuous firing is the better choice, though it doesn't allow to get GPS-positions.

2

General / Re: Multiple CPUs and GPUs

« on: June 24, 2014, 09:25:13 PM »

I agree. Good choice.

3

General / Re: Benchmarking a GPUs

« on: March 18, 2014, 02:00:21 PM »

Do the latest results from ARF mean that the GTX780i is significantly faster than the 7970 Tahitis with respect to tommyboys results? Until now it was common opinion that it is preferable to buy AMD instead of Nvidia in terms of performance.

4

General / Amazing

« on: November 19, 2013, 12:26:36 PM »

Isn't it a cool piece of software?!

http://3d.si.edu/browser
http://3d.si.edu

5

General / Re: GTX 660 sufficient as GPU?

« on: November 09, 2013, 04:16:33 PM »

As far as I know the AMD 7970 (and most probably its successor R9 280X) doubles the performance of the NVidias for a significantly lower price. Wishgranter knows more about this issue.

6

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 1.0.0 pre-release

« on: October 30, 2013, 01:31:45 AM »

I always use the latest beta versions for production and never had serious problems so I really can recommend to use 1.0.0 from the start. And the actual version again seems to be remarkably stable.

7

General / Re: Computational power

« on: September 04, 2013, 10:43:38 PM »

At least you get a 2cm GSD from 80m above ground, which is really attractive and the images are fine.

In every country the camera industry must cooperate with a company that can do the maintenance and repair of their equipment. Ask your local Sony/Canon/Nikon etc. representation who is doing this job for them! You can as well ask some professional photographers.

Watch this: http://www.gethypoxic.com/reviews-tests-hacks/camera-hacks-and-mods/78-adding-a-wired-shutter-release-to-the-nex-5.html or this: http://www.gethypoxic.com/reviews-tests-hacks/camera-hacks-and-mods.html

For releasing the shutter you first have to shortcut ground and the focus cable (and keep it). Then shortcut ground and shutter. Very simple.

8

General / Re: Computational power

« on: September 04, 2013, 07:46:34 PM »

- No, only JPG.
- Surveying pipes.

- Sharpness could be better of course but is good enough for aerial imaging. Doesn't make sense to pay a fortune for Zeiss & others.
- The best aperture in terms of abberation, distortion and vignetting is definitely 5.6. There is very good tests about this on http://www.imaging-resource.com, which should always be your first choice when buying cameras and lenses.
- We use it up to ISO 1600 without any problems. This is more than sufficient, as we are getting exposure times around 1/2000 and better. No need for any corrections.
- Low light? Depends on how low. I wouldn't fly in dawn conditions but cloudy skies are no problem at all (in fact, clouds are the best you can have as the light is well distributed and there's no shadows).
- Our triggering is very...well, tricky and we are quite proud of this idea. We opened up the camera (by an expert, of course) and soldered 3 cables to the shutter release. They are brought outside of the camera body where we can focus and release the camera by shortcutting the 3 cables. Works great.

In my opinion, the NEX-7 is still the best choice for aerial imaging. I've read that in autumn Sony will come up with a NEX-9 for around 3000 $ which is said to have a full format sensor. Sounds really cool.

9

General / Re: Computational power

« on: September 04, 2013, 03:41:42 PM »

From a Sony NEX-7 with their 16 mm lens. Works fine.

10

General / Re: Siggraph Whitepapers

« on: September 04, 2013, 02:26:29 AM »

Thank you, great! Both are amazing.

11

General / Re: Computational power

« on: September 04, 2013, 02:08:34 AM »

I'm not really sure if hard drive's performance doesn't have a lot of influence on total performance, at least in the early phases of alignment.
Currently I am having exactly this problem of buying which kind of machine for an extreme application of PS which produces tens of thousands of 24 MP photos. When I watch the resource monitor in Windows7 (on a i7 machine with 64 GB), especially in "estimating scene structure", which uses up the majority of processing time in alignment, the CPU load is just around 20%, as well as memory. The hard drives are under full stress for an estimated 3% of total time for a few seconds. I usually process between 1000 and 10 000 photos.

I really wonder if there is a chance to make use of GPUs for processing the alignment, which would by far be my favorite, compared to the alternatives of using many XEONs or say the XEON PHI coprocessor.

12

General / Re: FreeD 3D Replay Tool

« on: September 04, 2013, 01:52:33 AM »

Amazing. But how is it done? The video and homepage don't explain anything. Is it the same method as PS is working with? That would mean incredibly high computer power.

13

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 1.0.0 pre-release

« on: August 26, 2013, 11:16:02 PM »

Sounds all extremely cool! Many thanks. Special thanks for the multitexturing.

14

General / Re: How about Canon EOS M

« on: August 04, 2013, 08:37:14 PM »

The problem concerning the slow focussing seems to be improved now, according to
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/08/01/canon-eos-m-review-firmware-update-finally-makes-this-mirrorless-cameras-af

15

General / Re: Considering new machine - iMac or PC?

« on: June 10, 2013, 11:48:28 PM »

Why do you think so? They haven't published their prices yet. And only one Xeon (even though with 12 cores), faster (but expensive ECC) memory and a maximum of 2 AMDs do not really sound like paradise to me.