SONY DSC HX60V Nodal point is where?

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 12:15 PM

I think the Nodal point is just in front of the lens, when the camera is off, i.e thats the turning point i am using... but.. it may be further out or further back toward the sensor.. does anyone know about where it is on DSC HX60V so i can create better panoramas using still shots and stitching software. Or ( since i understand there may be a secondary Nodal point, ) a better way to find the Nodal point myself, other than by trial and error? i have the means to move the camera by degrees or less on its mounting in all directions, so i can get it turning about any circular point... and thats the reason i want to know the Nodal point so i can exclude parallax.

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 12:37 PM

this tells me.. its a great bit of instruction.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0HaRZi-FWs

but i cant figure out how i can set it precisely... the lady just uses a visual point.. and if i cant reproduce that with the Sony DSC HX60V i have an error.

**Manfred M** · 24th May 2015, 12:51 PM

First of all welcome to CiC. Would you mind completing your profile (at least your first name and where you are from) on your profile, by clicking the "My Profile tab on the top of this page.

First of all the no-parallax point or entry pupil (nodal point is technically not correct, although it is commonly used) is only important if you are very close to the subject you are photographing. I've done quite successful panos by handholding my camera or just rotating it on a tripod head.

I don't have a full pano head and just use a long bar on my tripod and set it up using the tape on the window method shown on this web page. http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm

The entry pupil can (and does) vary based on the focal length on a zoom lens, so there isn't necessarily a single number for a lens. You'll have to test to see how this works for a superzoom like yours. Just make sure that you correct for lens distortion prior to stitching. Superzoom lenses tend to have a lot of distortion, especially at either end of the zoom range.

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 04:40 PM

i still cant get the Sony to make a useable panoramic image yet.. i think its a parallax or level error... its not obvious until one has taken the picture and can see it on a bigger screen... then one can see that for some reason one image to next are not using the same parameters.. maybe its an auto focus problem.. i can post some pictures i took today, after taking great care to level the camera.. and i cant see a parallax error using the you tube method ive given... its frustrating. but i cant give you an image yet without storing it on my website... since you need a url.. i use two software programs, Autostitch and PanoramaStudio2Pro Autostitch can make a 360 degree panorama from the pictures.. no problem.. but PanoramaStudio2Pro has errors in alignment.. it cant align even two of the pictures together both programs had 43 pictures to make the pano with.. One cost me nothing.. ( Autostitch ) and the other cost £60.. and was doing fine until i started using the Sony.. i will set my profile as i want.. in time.. not yet. i will load some of the pics onto my website, and provide links.. but in effect you can see my profile here... http://www.incony.org

**Manfred M** · 24th May 2015, 05:07 PM

When shooting panos I turn off all auto functions including focus, white balance and exposure. Any changes to any of these three parameters will give you unusable images.

1. If you use autofocus between frames, there is no guarantee that the camera focus will be identical and that can throw off any hope of alignment between adjacent frames. I will focus on an appropriate point and then turn off my autofocus;

2. Auto WB may change the WB settings between two frames; think about how the camera might change the WB settings for areas that are in open light and in shaded areas. Again, two adjacent frames may not align properly. I will pick a default WB setting (daylight, cloudy, etc) or more likely will work from the RAW data and use the same colour temperature parameters to all the images in the sequence I am using;

3. Exposure - the light will vary from one side of the area of a pano to the opposite. Exposure can vary from frame to frame and again result in issues when you try to bring different frames together for a pano. I will survey the scene and will pick an ISO, shutter speed and aperture value that will be used to shoot the entire sequence. You certainly don't want any aperture changes between two different shots as the depth of field in the shot will change. Changes in ISO can leave unwanted side effects as well, but not nearly as much as aperture changes. Shutter speed changes (so long as they are not too extreme, will usually have the least undesirable impact. As I said before; all of these are easily controlled if you shoot on manual.

As I said in my previous posting, superzoom lenses are notorious for barrel and pin-cushion distortion, so this can also cause you grief unless your software can compensate / correct for these errors.

I do 100% of my panos using Photoshop, so can't comment on the software you are using. As I've said before, I've done handheld panos that were not 100% level and I most certainly did not rotate around the no-parallax point, and they have still turned out well. The only downside is I had to crop more than I would shooting off a level tripod.

This is one of my hand-held panos:

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 05:30 PM

i understand, GrumpyDiver i am trying to deal with a particular circumstance that has only come about from using the Sony DSC HX60V and why i make that the specific topic reference.

In effect i seek to know the parameter settings for making 360 degree panoramas on this camara, using software freely available on the web.. like this...http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autos...utostitch.html

http://www.tshsoft.com/en/panostudiopro_index

Until this moment i did not have a problem making panoramas, so i need to know what parameters i need to set on the Sony DSC HX60V to make panoramic images taken one frame at a time about a 360 degree view..

like these http://www.incony.org

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 05:33 PM

if i cant get a specific answer - about the Sony DSC HX60V, but only those that show what you can do with other programs and other cameras.. then its not the answer i want..

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 05:44 PM

This is the panorama i am having problems with.. this is a version that i was eventually able to put together, using both programs i use... Autostitch and Panorama Studio Pro... but its far from perfect.. and that is why i want to know the parameter settings for the Sony DSC HX60V, and where the nodal point is.. etc..
http://www.incony.org/360Panorama/Ho...Panorama1.html

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 05:56 PM

I will give a hint.. Sony say the camera cant make the image you see... but dont say why..

Dear

Thank you for contacting Sony support regarding using your DSC-HX60V on a tripod.

In regard to your inquiry, I can confirm that this unit is not compatible with any tripod and we cannot guarantee its functionality this way.

Should you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Yours sincerely,
Nouran Ahmed
Sony Customer Support
Sony Europe Limited

hi folks,
newbie, with a Cybershot HX60V

Most tripods come with a quick adaptor shoe that is used to attach the camera to the tripod.
It has a 1/4 inch UNC screw thread to do that...

BUT...that point of fitting, is not where the cmos lens in the camera needs to be for good parallax free, panoramic images of 360 degrees because as it is.. the camera lens does not turn about its centre point.. it goes round in a circle .
I havent found an off the shelf solution yet,that allows one to make the lens ( and the cmos chip ) the centre point of rotation.. ive got to make my own shoe... and fitting.. that is adjustable.. but why the hell isnt metric the chosen screw thread? ever tried getting a quarter inch UNC bolt off the shelf ?

and why do camera makers use that position of fitting on the camera?

**Incony** · 24th May 2015, 06:28 PM

OK so ive uploaded the pics of the new panorama i took today, with the Sony DSC HX60V and its this camera i want to know the settings for.. you can see the pictures, used to make the panorama, here.. i need to know whats wrong and how to set this camera up.

**Manfred M** · 24th May 2015, 07:04 PM

First of all, your camera is not necessarily one that one of the active members of this website use and then the type of images that you are doing are quite specialized and even if they do own one, it is unlikely that they have this data. I am not aware of any camera manufacturer that provides this type of technical data and the only database I've found on the internet is:

http://wiki.panotools.org/Entrance_Pupil_Database

You will note that your camera is not listed. While two of my cameras (which are more common than yours) only one of my lenses is in the database. My Panasonic GX7 and the lenses I use with it are not listed. I had to work out the no-parallax point on my own. The link you provided and the one I provided give the instructions as how to do this. I suspect you are going to have to work this out yourself.

In general the no-parallax point is NOT the tripod mount point. I use a long rail plate to rotate my camera around the no-parallax point. Normally I would expect this to be the case with pretty well any camera. In my case, I use an Arca-Swiss compatible plate that works with my tripod and L-bracket. It is not a full pano setup, but works well enough for what I do.

http://www.kirkphoto.com/Long_Rail_Plate__LRP-1.html

This is my pano setup (at least one of them)

If your old camera happened to be built so it rotated around the no-parallax point, it was definitely the exception and not the rule. Tripod mounts tend to be where the camera manufacturers put them and I've seen some that are not even on the centre line of the lens.

I suspect that you are looking for a simple solution; but suspect it's not as easy as what you are looking for.

To give you the answer you want, I would need to have your camera in my hands and set it up and take the appropriate measurements.

**Manfred M** · 24th May 2015, 08:21 PM

I've looked at your images and the three things I mentioned in thread #5 appear to have been done incorrectly.

Your exposures vary from frame to frame (different shutter speeds); while I haven't looked at each image the exposures will not match edge to edge on overlapping frames and based on the scene itself; I strongly suspect that the White Balance (WB) has varied through the various frames (as you are shooting sRGB and auto WB I have no specific colour temperature data I can refer to), however my experience suggests that the camera will come up with a different WB in shaded versus open areas and the WB will vary, depending on the direction you are shooting (cooler skies in the north than in the south), etc.

You are shooting fairly wide angle around 24mm Full Frame equivalent, so impact of rotating around the no-parallax point should not factor greatly in this image. A longer focal length would have produced more obvious artifacts.

This is a pano that comes from the Photomerge functionality of Photoshop CC 2014.

I certainly see technical issues with the image, but these really have nothing to do with the pano but are related to how you shot. If your camera clock has been set correctly; 2:11 PM is not the best time of day to take this type of image as the lighting is quite poor (the light is coming from above and is quite harsh).

**Incony** · 25th May 2015, 09:03 AM

Thank you, GrumpyDiver your input here is valuable, maybe you and i can resolve this problem... i can set a lot of the parameters on the camera.. but often the time of day has no option.. i have to use the time i have.. i have a link for the settings i can change here.. in particular the functions... Fn.
http://download.sony-europe.com/pub/...0V_Help_EN.pdf

But i made a big jump forward this morning with PanoramaStudio2Pro - when one has loaded the images one wants to use .. it asks if one wants to set the focal length and horizon point. if one says yes.. it can use the info from the EXIF of each picture.. and that is where it starts the problem in alignment.. since if i say no... and dont use the EXIF info.. it made this...http://www.incony.org/360Panorama/Ho...Panorama1.html

So.. its the EXIF info that PanoramaStudio2 has a problem with.. i can set the data to use.. - i can configure the FOV etc.. that PS2P uses.. but at least this mo i understand why Autostitch didnt have a problem and PS2P did... since i dont think Autostitch uses the EXIF.. Knowing what the problem was means i was able to make another pano from another view.. without problem..

But i still need to set up the camera properly.. yesterday i used intelligent auto for scenery.. and auto focus.. i think that isnt the best way .. i need to set particular functions myself.. and as you say, the white balance is just one function that i need to consider.. and the shutter speed varies at the moment from frame to frame.. its on auto.. i need to consider that too.. and a lot of other techniques.

SO.. now i can use the program i want to use - PanoramaStudio2Pro, because it allows me to create and share web page images as they should be seen.. with the viewer... not a static image... since a static image has the wrong perspective - which unless i reduce them to fit.. like your above image is.. would be as big as 45MB which this one is..http://www.incony.org/360Panorama/Ho...Panorama1.html and though it flawed, because as you correctly say, its not set up properly.. knowing its not the camera position that is the problem its the settings used.. does mean that i can share the specific settings as i learn them.. and help others who use this camera to take panoramas.. but... i would like to know how, and what effect the nodal point has on these images i make with this camera.. and why the EXIF data gives a good pano program a hiccup..

it is sad, the response i got from Sony was...

**Incony** · 25th May 2015, 10:16 AM

this is the set up for the Sony i am using for fixed horizontal 360 degree panoramas

its basic.. but is reliable. i can set the camera at any position about the tripods centre of rotation, and lock it.
tilt isnt really used, i need to go round in a level circle, i am not making spherical panoramas, i just want as much detail as i can get..

**Manfred M** · 25th May 2015, 10:46 AM

First of all, panoramic photography is considered an advanced part of landscape photography as the photographer needs a lot of technical and compositional skills to pull of a decent looking pano. Based on your comments and responses, I suspect that you are a relative novice when it comes to photography.

First of all, let me demonstrate what rotating a camera around the entrance pupil / no-parallax point does for you. The following image was taken when I was just starting off shooting panos and rotated my camera on the tripod head, rather than around the no-parallax point.

Note how the railing and wall in the extreme foreground appear to curve. This is a direct result of camera rotation that is not around the no-parallax point. More importantly, notice how anything other than these parts of the image that are close to the camera are in fact fine.

After seeing this, I went out and bought a long rail plate (mentioned in posting #11, above). Notice how straight the railing in the foreground is in this image:

That is what rotating around the no-parallax point does; no more, no less and the reason I suggest that this is NOT your problem in the image that you have posted. It has nothing to do with the software or the fact that my shots are not displayed in software or take a full 360° view.

To address a few of the points you bring up in your latest posting. Time of day is not a camera setting; time of day is when you were out taking the picture. Landscape photographers will generally NOT do any landscape photography during the middle of the day because of the characteristics of the light; on a sunny day it tends to be harsh, cast heavy shadows and generally produces photographs that don't look particularly good. The optimal times for landscape photography are around sunrise and sunset. Landscape photographers refer to images shot just before sunrise or just after sunset as "blue hour" as this is the colour of the sky and photos taken during this period tend to be predominantly blue in tone. A lot of landscape photographers don't shoot during this period, but do their work in the period just after sunrise and just before sunset. This is often referred to as "magic hour" or "golden hour", because the light is diffuse because the sun is so low in the sky and shadows are soft. There is a good reason one sees so many "sunset shots"; the lighting in beautiful.

EXIF data is the data the your camera has recorded about the image; the settings in your camera used for the specific image. Advanced photographers will sometimes look at this data to see why their images turned out the way they did. I expect that is what the software is doing. So the EXIF data isn't the cause of the hiccups in the software; the hiccups are likely being caused by the shot (and hence the EXIF data) being outside of what the software can normally expect.

As for the response from Sony; you were dealing with their help desk and likely asked a question that they either did not fully understand or because they gave you an answer that you were not expecting. Questions about panos is quite specialized and this is not something that they would expect to get. Don't forget, all Sony did was design and build the camera; you are the camera in a way that the designers would NOT expect to see it used for. I wouldn't want to suggest that the camera can't be used the way you want to, but suspect it might not be suitable (my answer makes some assumptions on the level of manual control you can get as well as the optical characteristics of the lenses that are typically used in superzoom style cameras. Your camera has a 30x optical zoom; high quality professional zoom lenses tend to have a zoom factor of less than 3x because of the inherent distortions associated with a long zoom design. My experience with this type of camera is that there is a lot of pin-cushion / barrel distortion in inherent in the design (most noticeable around the edges of the image). This makes it very difficult for a stitching program to assemble a panoramic shot.

If you want to be a good panoramic photographer; you need to first be an excellent landscape photographer. You also need to understand how to set up your camera and shoot manually (without any automation) and of course you need the right equipment. When I shoot panoramas, this is the only time I shoot with my camera 100% in manual mode (studio shots with studio flash is a close second, but I do use autofocus in that setting).

**Black Pearl** · 25th May 2015, 01:35 PM

Manfred has covered this very thoroughly but I will add that you seem to be obsessing on one minute point and sadly missing the larger picture. Frankly I would forget all about no-parallax points and concentrate on getting the basics right.

You absolutely must take your camera off auto and learn to set the exposure (and focus) yourself or you are never going to succeed. A look at the files you posted links to have the exposures varying by up to three stops, from frame to frame and no amount of software trickery is going to align that amount of variation. The camera used in automatic is shooting using its widest aperture which is its worst for sharpness and aberrations which is making life even more difficult. I would also say the lens isn't particularly well centred showing higher levels of distortions in the top left corner to the rest of the frame.

Set the top dial of the camera to M (Manual) then use the exposure meter, the rear screen and the histogram to get a good average exposure for the entire sweep of the panorama and don't alter it as you compile the sequence - note what Manfred also said that the time of day is critical and not something that you can sweep under the proverbial carpet or you will never get an acceptable exposure across the entire sequence. I would also suggest using a smaller aperture (larger number) to increase both the overall sharpness and the depth of field then to help with the distortions inherent in large range zoom lenses allow for a much larger overlap to help the software blend them together. One last thing you should turn your camera to a portrait (upright) orientation so you capture a greater top to bottom height thus reducing the pencil thin resulting final image.

**Saorsa** · 25th May 2015, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by Incony

OK so ive uploaded the pics of the new panorama i took today, with the Sony DSC HX60V and its this camera i want to know the settings for.. you can see the pictures, used to make the panorama, here.. i need to know whats wrong and how to set this camera up.

there are more.. just change the digits i.e the next one is 15

but if you cant, here are all the links..

Those two images are not taken at the same focal length. The size of the shed and the gnarly tree are completely different in the two images. I don't think any software could do that merge effectively.

If you need to move your camera off dead center on the tripod there are any number of focus rails at low cost that can do the job. Finding the exact point can be done by trial and error.

**Incony** · 26th May 2015, 04:46 AM

Thanks Guys, Yes i need to get it off auto, and set up manually... that said, i am not looking to sell, or make absolutely perfect panos... just be able to improve the ability of the software to align the pics, and avoid the curving effects... i seek linearality.

the time of day will remain opportunity driven..

so i am going to see what i can set up.. and yes, i can see that turning the camera by 90 degrees to vertical is going to improve the abilty to align., since the wide angle errors will be top and bottom... no longer left and right..

next post will be the result of those changes... and what effect they have had.. i am going to choose a view i can locate the camera in the same place... and see the effects of different light and time..over several weeks - since i can then judge one pano against the previous.. and set the Sony to do what i want on demand. since i can store the settings.. and call them up..

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