ExposureBlog

I’ve always believed that it’s important to get as much information about the incident site as possible. In the past that involved videos, photographs, and even 3D photos.  Lately, I’ve been using panorama photography to convey information about the sites.  Combined with the Apple software application QuickTime, the viewer can move the field of view—just as though they were standing at the site.  Pretty cool, and it often beats standard photos for transmitting information about the site.  

But making a panorama isn’t as easy as snapping pictures on the digital camera while turning in a circle.  For one thing, the pivot point must be exactly at the “entrance pupil” or “nodal point” of the camera lens.  Otherwise, the software won’t be able to line things up correctly and the panorama will look strange and broken in places.  There are a number of gadgets available that one can attach to a tripod (essential equipment!) to ensure the camera rotates around the nodal point.  The one I use is a $199 gadget called the “Nodal Ninja.”  It showed up at my door in a beat-up cardboard box with VERY few instructions.  But it works.  And some of its competitors cost a lot more. 

Software

Most consultants doing safety work probably have Photoshop CS2.  It’s a great tool to examine photos up close and to extract almost-invisible information from a scene.  Photoshop CS2 also has a panorama function.  It’s just not something I recommend using.  Photoshop CS2 doesn’t really mind warping the scene a bit to make things fit, and that’s not always a good thing under all circumstances.

There are quite a few dedicated software packages that take separate shots and “stitch” them together to make a panorama.  I’m a registered user of several panoramic software packages, including Smoky City Design’s Panorama Factory, RealViz’s (very expensive) Stitcher 5.0, Hugin, and  PTGui 7.  Basically, the various stitcher software packs all do the same thing: they analyze the photos, then stitch them together to produce a panorama photo—a long, narrow image that you can import to QuickTime (using appropriate software such as PanoQTVR) or just publish as-is. 

Which do I consider the best?  Probably PTGui 7.  It’s easy to use, has a very simple interface, doesn’t hog your system (as RealViz products seem to do) and is very inexpensive.  Last time I looked, PTGui 7 was only $115.  Moreover, the response time on customer service is remarkably fast—in my case about 10 minutes. 

If you’re a safety professional and are considering panorama, you’ll find quite a few resources over a wide range of prices.  All produce workable panoramas; but you should understand that a high price doesn’t necessarily correlate with high quality. 

As someone who has both a PC and a Mac, I’ve used Stuffit for years.  Stuffit is a little utility that does two things very well: it compresses files and it decompresses folders and files.  Stuffit is great if you have to send a big group of files to a client—put em all in a folder, compress it with Stuffit and then email.  Very easy.  For years Stuffit was made by a company named Alladin Software.  So I was a little surprised when I received a Stuffit upgrade offer from a company named Allume.  Well, generally, upgrades are a good thing, so I sprung for the $19.95, downloaded the zip file and installed it.  Except. . .I had to first UNinstall my trusted earlier edition. 

So I did.  Then I discovered that the new Stuffit (version 9), um. . .didn’t really work on my machine.  Given a file to decompress, Stuffit would churn for minutes and minutes and the result was an empty folder.  I tried using it on earlier stuffed files and the same thing happened.  Now, as someone who archives a lot of documents, this was not good. 

I went to the Allume site and discovered that they are actually a company called Smith Micro.  That was both news and a weird coincidence.  Back in the mid-90s there was a great program called Hotline. All it did was catalog phone numbers.  Click on the number and the phone would dial (via the modem.) Very cool and essential to anyone who uses the phone a lot.  When Windows 3.1 showed up, Hotline came out with a Windows version.   Then, for reasons unknown, they vanished off the planet.  The company that made Hotline was named Smith Micro. 

So, did my old friend Smith Micro sell me a copy of Stuffit that didn’t well, unstuff?  Maybe, but not likely.  Regardless, I unloaded the new, helpless version of Stuffit and reinstalled my old version 8–which I had bought at Microcenter a few years ago.

Now, Stuffit 9 might work on some computers, but it didn’t on mine.  And if I hadn’t kept the old CD of version 8. . .well, I guess I would be trolling the “Stuffit 9 help forums” looking for answers.  Not a good way to spend company time.

Couple of morals here: 

1. Just because it’s an upgrade doesn’t mean it’s better,
2. Beware when a software company changes names
3. Beware when there’s no phone number for tech support–only support forums.
4. Always keep an installable copy of your software on a CD.