Panorama Photography and
Multiperspective Imaging
Szymon Rusinkiewicz, Tim Weyrich: Technology in Art and Cultural Heritage.
Princeton Freshman Seminar 2006
Acknowledgment: some figures by B. Brown, P. Shilane, P. Debevec, A. Román and H. Lentsch
Overview
• Limitations of perspective projection
• Cylindrical panoramas
• Spherical panoramas
• Multiperspective imaging
Limitations of Perspective Projection
• Field-of-view — lack of immersion
Limitations of Perspective Projection
• Field-of-view — lack of immersion
• Wide-angle imaging
– Potential distortion
– Extreme perspective does not look “natural”
Extreme Wide-Angle
• Up to 185° field-of-view
• Technically demanding
• Prone to distortion and
vignetting
Limitations of Perspective Projection
• Field-of-view — lack of immersion
• Wide-angle imaging
– Potential distortion
– Extreme perspective does not look “natural”
• Viewer position fixed
Changing Position of Viewer
• In real scenes we can
move our viewpoint
• Changing viewpoint
provides us with
– Additional detail
– Depth cues by parallaxis
Cylindrical Panoramas
• Address the problem of
– Limited field-of-view
– Distortion of wide-angle perspective
• Replace projection plane by cylindrical
canvas:
Cylindrical Panoramas
Panorama Paintings
• Large canvases
• Sometimes within
cylindrical building
• Augmentation by
scenery in front of
the painting
Bourbaki Panorama, Luzern, 1871
Panorama Acquisition
• Multiple images
– Rotating camera
– Ideally: very thin stripe images
• Panorama by stitching
images together
• Requires common
center of projection
Stitching
• Problems remain
– Lens distortion
– “Wrong” projection within each image
– Differences in color and contrast
• Stitching software
–
–
–
–
–
Compensates for lens distortion
Aligns images (registration)
Warps images into cylindrical domain
Smoothes out image boundaries
Adapts color and contrast
Catadioptric Cameras
• Mirror optics
• Single-shot acquisition
of hemispherical
panorama
• Raw image shows
distortion…
Catadioptric Cameras
• Desired projection is obtained by un-distorting
the acquired image
• This includes cylindrical projection:
Viewing Software
• Presents panorama as a perspective view
• Interactive change of viewing parameters
– Pan
– Zoom
• Still restricted to single view-point
• Commercial and free viewers exists
– Quicktime VR, Live Picture Viewer, …
Spherical Panoramas
• Restrictions of cylindrical projection remain
– Depiction of the “poles” (floor and ceiling)
– Fixed view-point
• How would we capture floor and ceiling?
– Acquisition?
– Representation?
Spherical Acquisition
• Stitching
• Or: take an image of
a mirrored sphere!
Representations
Spherical reflection
Projection onto cube faces
Viewing Spherical Panoramas
• Most viewers support spherical panoramas
• Un-warp depending on representation
Live Demo
Multiperspective Imaging
• Artist create multiperspective paintings
• Can we acquire multiperspective images?
Multiperspective Imaging
• Experiment:
– Place a person on a revolving chair
– Take a video of the head while person is revolving
– From each video image, take central pixel column
– Glue all columns together
• What do you get?
Multiperspective Imaging
Multiperspective Imaging
• Can you modify a pinhole camera to create
such an image?
• How do images look for general movements
of the video camera?
Multiperspective Imaging
Multiperspective Imaging
Pushbroom
• Fix the camera on a moving vehicle
• Has been used to create movie back-drops
Relation To Perspective Images
Rays across
top of image
Single-point
Perspective Image
Center of
projection
Picture Surface
Ray directions on image corners
Relation To Perspective Images
Pushbroom
multiperspective image
Camera path
Cross-slits Images
[Zomet 03 ]
Cross-slits Images
Camera path
Cross-slits Images
Camera path
Cross-slits Camera
• Replace pinhole by two slits
• Or simulate it using a video camera…
Cross-slits Images
• Cross-slits images [Zomet 03]
Zomet 2003
Cross-slits Images
• Appearance similar to central perspective
• Allow for “impossible viewpoints”
Zomet 2003
Generating Cross-slits Panoramas
• Work by A. Roman et al. 2004 & 2006
Video