Panorama Photography Forums 360 Rage

[Henri]

Hi everybody,
I'm curious about your input on this:
what is the better lens on a non full frame camera (in my case a Pentax K10d), a 8mm or 15mm sigma? And why?

As I understand it, the image of a 15mm falls over the entire sensor so you get a "normal" rectangle picture and with a 8mm the image fit's verticaly on the sensor so you see the curved top and bottom edge of the image.

But how does this influence the stitching tools and which one comes out sharper or just better?

[mhc1]

hi henry,
both lenses will make a great job.
you have to consider if your work will be for the internet (active VR) or print and also: how far you want to zoom in and the filesize you will accept.

Pentax K10D is 10 MP - comparable to the Nikon D80/200
that will make a full sphereical 360 x 180 with 4 shots and a resolution ab. 7600 x 3800 px with an 8mm.
a 10mm Nikon generates 10600 x 5300 but needs already 7 or 8 shots.

when you use ist for the Internet, the size will be reduced to s.th. about 3000 x 1500 -> so 8mm would be more then sufficient.

the 8mm is very convenient when stitching with PTGUI or HUGIN - the 15 mm need a lot of shots more - looks like a multi-row for me. (15mm x 1.5Crop= 23mm)

what you have to consider more is the sharpness, CA and vignetting of the lens - just look for sample images. 8mm fisheyey are more sensitive in this issue.

the Sigma 8 or Peleng 8 are wide spread in the pano-community and users are very pleased with their results.