Reprojected Oktoberfest like Bavaria sees it

This stereographic reprojection shows the Oktoberfest from the Bavaria statue. The original panorama has been made from inside the head of Bavaria. Bavaria is a hollow bronze statue that can be ascended in the inside. It is located next to the Theresienwiese, where the famous Oktoberfest takes place since more than 200 years. See the original panorama here.

Reprojected Oktoberfest like Bavaria sees it
Reprojected Oktoberfest like Bavaria sees it

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Nikon Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 AI-s and Novoflex NEX/NIK

The Novoflex NEX/NIK adapter makes it possible to mount Nikon lenses on the Sony NEX camera line. Read more about the lens here.

Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AI and Novoflex NEX/NIK

The Novoflex NEX/NIK adapter makes it possible to mount Nikon lenses on the Sony NEX camera line. Read more about the lens here or here. On the Novoflex homepage you find an adapter finder here.

The Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AI is a manual lens. The Novoflex NEX/NIK adapter is also only a manual adapter. However this is not a problem with the Sony NEX-5. You just have to be aware of some things.

  1. Make sure you enable the shooting without a lens: Menu → Setup → Release w/o lens → Enable
  2. Before you continue make sure you have Firmware ≥ Ver. 04 installed! Check this using Menu → Setup → Version. When you have an older version installed download the latest version from the Sony support site here.
  3. Enable the MF Assist function using Menu → Setup → MF Assist → 2 Sec
    You can choose between No Limit — 2 Sec — 5 Sec.
  4. Enable the Peaking Level using Menu → Setup → Peaking Level → Mid
    You can choose between Low — Mid — High.
  5. Choose your Peaking Color using Menu → Setup → Peaking Color→ Red
    You can choose between YellowRed — White.

Switch your camera to A- Mode (aperture priority) and use the MF Assist button to get a perfectly sharp picture even when shooting the lens wide open with f/1.8!

Oktoberfest with Tilt-Shift effects

Some months ago I stumbled across a post on Sonyalpha Rumors. The Lensbaby Tilt Transformer with the possibility to mount the Lensbaby Composer Focus Front or Nikon lenses on it. The local photography store had it in stock and I bought it right away! First without a Nikon lens, but shortly afterwards I bought two of them. You see the results in the following images.

Oktoberfest Tilt-Shift Effect @ 24mm
Oktoberfest Tilt-Shift Effect @ 24mm

See additional information for this Nikon lens on the Sony NEX camera line in this post.

Oktoberfest Tilt-Shift Effect @ 50mm
Oktoberfest Tilt-Shift Effect @ 50mm

See additional information for this Nikon lens on the Sony NEX camera line in this post.

Oktoberfest Lensbaby Effect
Oktoberfest Lensbaby Effect
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Reprojecting equirectangular images for a printed presentation – Scripts

During our talk about “Reprojecting equirectangular images for a printed presentation” in Palmela and Vienna we presented two scripts you can use to reproject images using a so called Droste – effect. See some examples in these posts.

Here is a short overview over the software we used, you can consider this as the required runtime environment for the scripts:

Software Version Platform
The Gimp 2.6.11 Windows; Linux; Mac
Mathmap Plugin for The Gimp 1.5.3 Windows; Linux; Mac
Adobe Pixel Bender Toolkit 2.5.449694 Windows; Mac

One of these is a script for the Gimp’s Mathmap Plugin. The other one is a script for the Pixel Bender Toolkit. The problem with the original two scripts is, that the parameters they use have different names and they are implemented differently! E.g. sizes are pixel sizes in one script and percentages of the image size in the other script. I wanted to be able to use the same parameters in both environments. So I started to bring the scripts back together.

The main motivation for this was to be able to work on large files. The Pixel Bender stand alone version has a size limitation depending on your graphics card. This may be a maximum of 2048×2048 pixels or like in my case 4096×4096 pixels. When you want to process larger images you have to switch to The Gimp. These size limitations do not apply there! The Mathmap rendering on the other hand is really slow compared to the Pixel Bender. This is because Mathmap renders the final image and the preview on a single core of your CPU. The Pixel Bender toolkit renders both on the GPU!

This table shows links to the original scripts (Mathmap V10 and Pixel Bender V1.1) and the modified versions with exchangable parameters (Mathmap V11 and Pixel Bender V2).

Script (Download link) Version Link
Droste for Mathmap (Original) V10
Droste for Mathmap (PixelBender compatible Version) V11 This article
Droste for PixelBender (Original) V1.1 Homepage
Droste for PixelBender (Mathmap compatible version) V2 This article

See two screenshots of some sample settings using Mathmap and Pixel Bender and the original and transformed image:

For an example workflow on how to generate a Droste spiral effect from a 360° panoramic (or equirectangular) image image read this post.

Acknowledegements go to the following persons, who started the first versions of the scripts: Mathmap: breic, Josh Sommers; Pixel Bender: Tom Beddard
You find further information about the Math behind the Droste effect here and here.

Bad Hindelang with Tilt-Shift effects

Some months ago I stumbled across a post on Sonyalpha Rumors. The Lensbaby Tilt Transformer with the possibility to mount the Lensbaby Composer Focus Front or Nikon lenses on it. The local photography store had it in stock and I bought it right away! First without a Nikon lens, but shortly afterwards I bought two of them. You see the results in the following images.

Bad Hindelang with a Tilt-Shift Effect @ 24mm taken with a Nikon lens on the Lensbaby Tilt Transformer
Bad Hindelang with a Tilt-Shift Effect @ 24mm taken with a Nikon lens on the Lensbaby Tilt Transformer

See additional information for this Nikon lens on the Sony NEX camera line in this post.

Bad Hindelang Tilt-Shift Effect @ 50mm taken with a Nikon lens on the Lensbaby Tilt Transformer
Bad Hindelang Tilt-Shift Effect @ 50mm taken with a Nikon lens on the Lensbaby Tilt Transformer

See additional information for this Nikon lens on the Sony NEX camera line in this post.

Bad Hindelang Lensbaby Effect taken with the Lensbaby Composer Focus Front
Bad Hindelang Lensbaby Effect taken with the Lensbaby Composer Focus Front
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