"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

> That's about right, my camera's 7.2Mp and I can juuuust get it focused at full
> zoom from about half a meter away, although I can't get it to focus full-frame.
> I'm getting 1700 pixels square after cropping. Perhaps I'll try the focus
> override - forgot about that.

Oh - one more thing I forgot; if your camera has an actual aperture (and many of
the Canon point an shoots don't) try to set it to the smallest value to increase
the depth of field.

> I think it's stainless steel, so I shouldn't have any problems. I've never had
> stainless steel rust before except through wet contact over months. Where on
> earth can I get it chrome-plated, and how much would that cost?! :)

I thought mine were stainless steel, but maybe they were just steel...

Chrome plating is usually a function of how big the object is - and a ball
bearing is pretty small. There's often a minimum charge involved though. Mine
was about 20 pounds because of that minimum. If I were to do more balls, I'd
shop around to find if someone could do it cheaper. Just look in the yellow
pages for chrome platers in your area.

The only tricky part of how to mount the ball in the chrome plating tank. I got
them to weld a wire onto the ball and hang it into the tank. You end up with a
spot that's, but that can go on the bottom. I also got some small bubbles on
the opposite side, but there's enough clear area to take a good picture.

> > I use HDR shop to convert the images from spherical mirror projection (i.e. the
> > HDR photograph) into Latitude/Longitude format, then do the stitching in
> > Photoshop. I think there is an HDR version of GIMP - Cinepaint? Everything is
> > much simpler to do in square lat/long format, and POV can use the resulting
> > images just fine.
>
> Actually the blending is very straightforward in HDRShop, I can knock up a mask
> in the GIMP in about 5 minutes. I don't have Photoshop, so I am limited in my
> retouching facilities. I should see if Cinepaint works under wine...

Using Photoshop (or something like Cinepaint) is just a preference I have, but I
do find it easier to manually touch stuff up in lat/long format.

Cheers,
Edouard.

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