As many have probably discovered, thee are scenes in which it is extremely
difficult to position & adjust the camera. I am currently working at just such a
case: a view of a landscape, requiring a large camera angle to convey scale -
but there is also an important object close to the camera, near the bottom edge
of the picture.
Now, this is a bad situation: if I use the standard camera, which maps the image
to a plane, the image gets stretched near the edges.
If I use panoramic or any other non-planar mapping with a fixed viewpoint,
straight lines get bent - and very much so when camera angles are large.
A third type is the cylindrical camera with non-fixed viewpoint. But while this
eliminates distortion of straight lines, the view is orthographic in one
direction.
Neither of these really do what I need.
I'm wondering if an ellipsoidal projection might help overcome this problem.
This camera type should offer control over the eccentricity of the ellipsoid,
giving projections ranging from cylindrical to spherical (as in Mike's patch).
Somewhere in between there might be an acceptable solution to the pathological
case described above.
Sorry 'bout the rambling. Comments?

Margus

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