Greg Seitz
New member
Hey guys, I wanted to share my experience with the Gigapan Epic 100 and the Nikon D5000.
The Epic 100 is a robotic pano head that automatically shoots the scene for you. You set it up by mounting the camera and then panning the horizon to the top and bottom of the frame to tell it the field of view that your lens has. Once you've set the lens field of view you then proceed to pan to the top left corner of your pano and then to the bottom right. After that it begins to shoot the pano for the number of rows and columns required to obtain the photos needed for the panorama.
The Epic 100 has a weight limit of 3lbs which is pretty much exactly where the D5000 combined with the 70-300mm VR are at. It's really more aimed at mounting point and shoot cameras but overall I've found it works quite nicely with this setup as long as you have calm conditions to avoid camera shake. The D5000 doesn't have mirror lockup but it does have a 1 second delay you can set which seems to be just enough to avoid shake.
So, with that said I thought I'd share a quick and dirty 250 megapixel pano I shot. The whole thing probably took about 10 minutes from the time I set up the tripod and it began shooting. I uploaded the pano to the gigapixel site and you can zoom and pan within it to get an idea of the level of detail.
For some reason the gigapan view will let you zoom in closer than the actual resolution and it looks pixelated. To see the real level of detail I created a snapshot of a bus within the pano that you can click on which will zoom you to a bus within the scene. The snapshot is just under the pano so if you click on it you will zoom to that detail level.
Oh, and one more thing, I'm finding the D5000 to be a great little camera when I don't want to haul one of the bigger guns with me. The focus system on it absolutely nails focus on all my lenses with complete consistency and overall it's a blast to use. One of the funnest camera's I've used in a long time!
Here is the pano:
http://share.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=22331
Enjoy,
Greg
The Epic 100 is a robotic pano head that automatically shoots the scene for you. You set it up by mounting the camera and then panning the horizon to the top and bottom of the frame to tell it the field of view that your lens has. Once you've set the lens field of view you then proceed to pan to the top left corner of your pano and then to the bottom right. After that it begins to shoot the pano for the number of rows and columns required to obtain the photos needed for the panorama.
The Epic 100 has a weight limit of 3lbs which is pretty much exactly where the D5000 combined with the 70-300mm VR are at. It's really more aimed at mounting point and shoot cameras but overall I've found it works quite nicely with this setup as long as you have calm conditions to avoid camera shake. The D5000 doesn't have mirror lockup but it does have a 1 second delay you can set which seems to be just enough to avoid shake.
So, with that said I thought I'd share a quick and dirty 250 megapixel pano I shot. The whole thing probably took about 10 minutes from the time I set up the tripod and it began shooting. I uploaded the pano to the gigapixel site and you can zoom and pan within it to get an idea of the level of detail.
For some reason the gigapan view will let you zoom in closer than the actual resolution and it looks pixelated. To see the real level of detail I created a snapshot of a bus within the pano that you can click on which will zoom you to a bus within the scene. The snapshot is just under the pano so if you click on it you will zoom to that detail level.
Oh, and one more thing, I'm finding the D5000 to be a great little camera when I don't want to haul one of the bigger guns with me. The focus system on it absolutely nails focus on all my lenses with complete consistency and overall it's a blast to use. One of the funnest camera's I've used in a long time!
Here is the pano:
http://share.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=22331
Enjoy,
Greg