Help with camera setup?

[MeHoo]

I shoot with a Canon 7D and most of my images that I'm trying to process were shot with the 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS lens.  For some reason when I load them into photoscan and align them, they stretch out in the "z" depth really badly.  Images shot the same day with the 5d MK2 do not do this.  Is there a calibration step that I am missing?  Is there some calibration file I can load for a 7d?

Do I not have enough coverage and parallax?

Also can someone explain to me real fast.. when masking images, do you want the UNSHADED area to be the area that gets processed, or the shaded?  I assumed the unshaded area is what gets processed.

Everytime I try masking, this problem gets worse.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Kjellis85]

Can you upload an image series from the 7D to test?

[MeHoo]

Unfortunately no, I can't.  Sorry.  I'm wondering if it has something to do with the fact that the images were shot with a macro ring light.  Do light changes like that mess the calculations up?

[FoodMan]

Can you try the same set of images with PScan 0.8.4....? I have had problems aligning cameras with 0.8.5.. stretching the points in Z...

see my post here...

http://www.agisoft.ru/forum/index.php?topic=322.15

[Wishgranter]

if no photos then no help from us 
100times heard or one time to see with own eyes - try to understand that comunity here is ready to help YOU, but without preciously seen what is happen don?t expect OUR help.........

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello MeHoo,

Have you tried calibrating this macro lens with Agisoft Lens?

[MeHoo]

Wishgranter, I'm not about to send you an NDA.  I can't upload photos because I CAN'T.  Not because I won't.

Appreciate the lecture, though.

Alexey, thanks for the reply.

I will try this tonight. 

Foodman, I will also try other versions of the software tonight as well.  Thanks for the ideas.

[FoodMan]

I used a canon 5D markII with a macro lens.. and 0.8.4 worked perfect aligning the cameras, while 0.8.5 failed.. so no idea why, but that is a fact..

Alexey, I will also try the Agisoft Calib Lens to see if that helps...

sorry to highjack this thread..

f/

[MeHoo]

I tried using lens to calibrate and got worse results than doing it normally.  I gave this another go and shot differently.  Instead of orbiting around my subject, I did pan sweeps then moved then pan swept, then moved.  This produced a series of images in a straight line, looking straight forward instead of constantly changing angles.  It appeared to work better, but the color of the object (dark grey) is now causing PS to ignore half of the faces on it.  I also can't seem to get multiple sides of the object to align.  If I process all images at once, I get a bunch that align wrong and since I can't see each images' contribution to the scene, I can't very well select those images easily and reprocess them.. and since I also can't seem to get multiple chunks aligned together, I am totally clueless as to how to get a single subject processed.

I'm still battling this app, trying to find the right combination of tips and tricks.  The manual and tutorials are very unhelpful unfortunately and leave much up to the guessing phase.  :/

One question I'm still up in the air on, is whether or not flash photography works, and if a constant or variable light source is better.  My goal is to use cross-polarized flash to get perfect diffuse maps generated with very little retouching needed to remove specular highlights/shadows.  As we use this software at work to generate meshes for films, I've purchased it for myself at home to learn better.  Not being able to set markers in the images, and having to actually put tiny markers on the physical subject is wildly inconvenient and I think the biggest reason for my frustrations thus far.

I have yet to get chunks to align together as well.  Seems that feature at least on the standard edition is rather useless.

Another question I have is about Depth of Field due to aperture settings.  I'd assume that shooting a macro lens at f/2.8 is not ideal, but if I can't get flash images to work, I'm struggling with being able to hot-light everything in order for it to work.  I'm not shooting anything outdoors in daylight currently.  Is a smaller aperture like f/11+ better or does adding in more background detail cause more problems?

Any help is appreciated as always.

[FoodMan]

Best is to have your subject you are trying to scan in focus... I use it only inside, with f22 iso 100, large diffuse lamps.. so around 2" pose .. just use a nice solid stand..

Yes I have to say I am finding align chunks somehow useless if one cannot set a few markers to help...

f/

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello MeHoo,

It is recommended to have the whole object in detail by not only a small area to be focused at. Like FoodMan has already suggested using smaller aperture is better for depth of field increase.
Unwanted background could be masked but sometimes including background improves the alignment (only if the scene is still and object was not moved relative to background).

Now we are implementing feature that shows selected points from Point cloud in photo point view mode and also Filter by markers option in Photo pane. I think it will be in the next 0.8.5 update.

Maybe, it will be more effective if you've got samples of image datasets similar to the object you've got (shot by the same lens with the similar aligning problems). So we could give you more specific recommendations according to the images we'll actually could see and try to process by ourselves.