Panorama view - multiple cameras

**eea_2M** · 08-26-2009, 10:19 AM

I have built something similar - but as addition to the standard mirrors.
Cameras were placed there:

Screen was placed to the interior mirror:

Finally – the looking area is almost 180 degrees:

I found several disadvantages:
1) I have to significantly refocus my eyes to see the objects in the screen;
2) The distances are not correct;
3) In the night the headlights of the cars behind make all system blind;

So, I cannot recomend to replace the mirrors by the screens.

**SjLucky** · 08-26-2009, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by eea_2M

So, I cannot recomend to replace the mirrors by the screens.

If you had better cameras and figured out a way to mark the correct distance, would you?

btw, that was a cool set up.

**soundman98** · 08-26-2009, 09:58 PM

ee_a2m brings up some good points-- everytime you want to look at the screen you would need to refocus you eyes on the screen, and also i wanted to comment a little more on the lens flare issue:
as you can see from his pics (thanks again ee_a2m for those) his auto contrast cameras
look great during the day, but get very poor pictures when there is light sources visible to the lense at night(this would also happen at sundown- if the sun was viewable to the camera)--he doen't show it, but the cameras should have a good picture quality at night with indirect light-- the biggest issue here would be the grain that is added to the image-- most of the time, only a problem when you need to see very fine details in the image.

after alot of experimentation with both auto iris, and auto contrast cameras, i will say that as long as you do not have any space constraints, a auto iris camera(commonly reffered to as a 'box' camera with lens) will do better overall than a auto contrast camera during most daylight hours, and can deal slightly better(only slightly) with headlights, but the auto contrast cameras will do better in dark areas with indirect lighting- becasue they allow larger apertures(to see better at night) and are still relatively cheap (large aperture auto iris lenses get expensive very quickly). both types will do fine during the daylight hours.