PanoBot for CoolPix 995
Please see the disclaimer for more information.
This robot is a great tool to make panoramic images. It is based on the work of Philippe Hurbain.
I found a similar robot on his pages.
He uses a Nikon CoolPix 990 with his robot.
As I bought the Nikon CoolPix 995 I had to
modify the building instructions. This is the result.
The main reasons for the modifications were:
- I could not use the flash using the old design, as the flash has been moved to a different
location.
- In order to place the camera vertical I had to modify some parts, as the batteries were
changed, too.
- I positioned the camera holder more away from the turn table center, so that the camera
rotates around the nodal point. These informations are from the Nikon
website.
I used the values for the CoolPix 990.
Here is the software, programmed in NQC using
RCXCC:
This is one of my first outside panoramic images I made. It shows the "Olympiapark" in Munich.
The robot made five pictures that were combined afterwards.
This is my second outdoor panorama. It is a 360° panorama at the "Imberger Horn"
mountain near Hindelang. The panorama
is made from 10 source images.
This is my third outdoor panorama. It is a 360° panorama at the "Nusche"
near Hindelang. The panorama
is made from 10 source images. The mountain next to the sun is the
"Imberger Horn" where I made the above panorama.
You find some spheric panoramas here...
Note:
To shoot these spheric panoramas I modified the Panobot setup quite a
bit from the original setup from
the building instructions!
I moved the complete upper part, that is connected with
the black bricks (from step 27) to the turntable, five studs towards
the "back" side. That means the lens moved more towards the center of
the turntable. I made a try and error setup, where I moved the setup
one stud by one stud and took two pictures of two vertical orientated
objects some 50cm behind each other with rotating the turntable about
90° between the two shots. Then I picked the setup, where the distance
of the two objects was nearly the same in both pictures.
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To verify the modified setup, I measured the distance between the lens and the turning point
of the Panobot: It is 13mm (magenta in the image) measured
from the small gap in the lens to the center of the pin, that is
placed exactely above the center of the turntable. Red marked you see
some thicker paper I put between camera and Lego, because I had some
problems with my original trigger design.
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If you are interested in B/W photography you can visit the
gallery of my brother.
On his site you find a vertical panorama of the Commerzbank in
Frankfurt
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Markus Matern, October 2002 
