Fisheye to Spherical Panorama - FREE with Hugin!

#sunexfisheye #hugin #spherical #360panorama #stitching
Start to finish example of full spherical panorama image stitching with full frame fisheye lens where you see the entire circle of the outer lens element within the recorded portion of your photo frame.
This is an example using the Sunex 5.6mm full frame fisheye designed for cropped sensor cameras.
It offers 185 degree field of view. That's right, it sees a little bit behind itself. Three images equally rotated affords 180+180+180 or 540 degrees of viewing, meaning a substantial overlap for panorama stitching while also shooting a minimal amount of photos for a minimal amount of processing time needed.
We use Hugin free panorama stitching software here.
The images were made with a canon EOS T5i camera. I show you in JPEG with single images, but you can complete the same thing with HDR created from raw for instance.
Using Image Masks in Hugin is an important part of this process. I'll show you how to do that, and correct distortion here.
Thanks for watching and please subscribe for more!
/ cgardinerphoto
[WEBSITE] www.cgardiner.ca
[INSTAGRAM] @cgardinerphoto
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[@botbeamer]

Thanks so much for this video, was going to buy a whole 360 Camera or a gyro but this does it for me, yes it's a bit of extra work but worth it for someone in the automotive industry

[@cgardinerphoto]

thanks for watching and I'm happy to hear its been helpful for you!

[@RC-Heli835]

It's amazing you can capture so much area with a fisheye lens! I'm wanting to get one for a Canon T5i as well.

[@Lhopsecker]

I've been researching programs to stitch panoramas for virtual tours and appreciate your video. Looks like Hugin is a good way to go. I had to laugh though, because my first project for creating a virtual tour is for a labor and delivery suite, lol.

[@cgardinerphoto]

happy to hear the video has been helpful. thanks for your comment! and sounds like you're off to a great start already ;) all the best.

[@martenberkman1320]

Hey Chris, I am interested in turning a single circular fisheye into equirectangular 1:1 aspect ratio image, for use in 180 degree VR (ie no stitching required, just the barrel distortion correction). Any advice for doing that in Hugin? I tried, could not determine a workflow, but I probably do not understand Hugin well enough. With the adjustments available for panoramic stitching, it seems it would be capable for a single image..

[@martenberkman1320]

Actually, I was able to figure out, simply have to configure the assistant panel: Assistant: load image (36 mp full frame FX sensor nikon d810 circular fisheye, cropped square to edges of circle); set as full frame fisheye; focal length 8 ; focal length multiplier 1.18; set image sliders to vertical and horizontal FOV 180; click align, click create panorama (since only one image is supplied, it ignores the stitching function) , set pixel dimensions to desired level up to original image size, save .pto first, then image is exported. Voila! I processed a left and right fisheye of same scene, put together as side by side 3D in photoshop, they came together beautifully as stereo 3D VR in the Quest 2 headset. Thanks for introducing me to Hugin!

[@cgardinerphoto]

hey! happy to hear your success story! you're using Hugin for a process I haven't, but that's great that its working for your use case. I've got a quest myself and this sounds like an awesome idea to try myself. Thanks!

[@trippymchippy8586]

Hello there, how do I get the correct actual focal length. I'm using the TT Artisan 7.5 f2.0 on a fullframe EOS R :)

[@cgardinerphoto]

where we see the "lens type" portion of the files screen, you can set the crop factor to match that of your EOS R and 7.5mm for focal length, and ensure its the proper lens type and that should get you what you need for a successful stitch. Thanks for your comment!

[@trippymchippy8586]

@@cgardinerphoto Hi Chris, thanks for your reply. I was up until about 3am trying to get this to work but in the end, I found out that it's around 8.32mm as the TT Artisan is technically an APS-C lens. I also gave up on Hugin as there's a current bug which does not display the preview properly. It's known on the forums. I found something called Panorama Studio 3 Pro for £59 and I have to say it's excellent. I have Pano2VR Pro (which cost me £400) so I only needed a basic but reliable stitcher. It really does work well (as good as PTGui imho, I was testing the free trial) whereas I couldn't get a single pano out of hugin. Anyway, thanks for the reply, subbed! :) P.S. You may want to take a look at Panorama Studio - it's little known but great value.

[@AlexanDrMoskalenko]

Hi, thanks for the tutorial. So how do you fix these stitching seams - is it all Photoshop (clone stamp?) or it's possible to stitch without seams in Hugin (more control points, optimizing, etc)?

[@cgardinerphoto]

Hey there. Thanks for your comment. In the case of a fisheye lens like this one you should be able to make a mask of the usable portion of frame and come back from hugin with zero stitch lines. The lines may show on preview but should be automatically smoothed out of the actual finalized output image.

[@SirShadeSquamous]

Not sure what I've done wrong, but I can't get Hugin to create any control points.

[@cgardinerphoto]

hey thanks for your comment. -did you make the control point search the first step you do when the images are dragged in? -are you using this fisheye lens, or one similar as well - it does have a tough time grabbing them in some scenes. -are your images in HDR format / bracketed? I've found that also challenges the search with finding the points it needs.

[@morvshe]

Why you have 3 photo? How to shot with fish eye?

[@cgardinerphoto]

the lens shoots about 185 degrees width, so to make 3 shots at 120 degree rotations gets you a sufficient overlap for nice stitching. Using a nodal ninja is a good start too or some other device to rotate your camera around its aperture pupil -- makes for the best alignment. Thanks for your comment! good luck with it.

[@winniekf]

I have a Samsung Gear 360, a dual fisheye consumer camera. And Samsung decided to stop supporting the app. Now I have a working camera that can take fish eye photos and no app to stitch them together. Hopefully I can figure out how to use this software, since I am not tech savvy and have no experience with photograph. Thanks for the video.