When I do a job . . . any job. I take a lot of pictures.
The more involved the job the more pictures.
On some jobs, I might take a thousand pictures.
I take pictures of virtually EVERYTHING.
It doesn't matter how important or unimportant I think the picture is . . . I take it.
Then I take more picture, just for the helll of it.
After all, I have an 8GB sd card and 12MP camera.
I have a BIG camera with a really nice lense for "good" pictures and a really small Fugi camera with a really small lense for all the others.
These pictures have helped me so much in the past(even the "unusable pictures).
Do other surveyors go a little shutter crazy on jobs?
John, try taking video instead.
I used to take lots of photos like you till I tried video, video is the bomb. I found that with photos there seemed to always be that one thing I needed drafting at 2:00am and is just out of frame damm1t.
Video is like taking thousands of photos and I seemed to have less of those damm1t moments.
The other cool thing is that video has audio with it and you can hear the job too, somehow hearing the job helped me remember, almost like I am back standing on the site.
Try it..you'll like it!!
Good Idea! :good:
I think I would like it, but does it compare to 12 MP pictures?
I just want to say one word to you: plastics panorama
I agree, video the site, especially on topos or sites with building, stairs, etc. Walk around after the survey and pan the camera forward, backwards, up, down and every which way to catch different items from different perspectives. Which way did those overhead lines run? Fast forward to that part of the video where you filmed up the pole and followed each line to the next pole. How did those steps join that building and was there a drain pipe running under them? Sit and watch that video as you draft the plat and it is the same as walking back around the site. As for how long it takes, I have filmed dozens of schools, apartment complexes and factories and it never took more than 45 minutes and it can't be argued that you cherry picked what pictures to take.
Take stereo pairs
and then you can stick them in a stereo viewer. Sometimes that really helps.
So how do you take stereo pairs? Take a picture then move the camera right or left some and take the same picture again. Print them out at the office and look at them through a viewer. Really puts perspective to stuff.
Take video
Thats what we do here and works great.
If you set your camera up on your tripod after you finish gathering measurements, you can rotate the camera around on the tripod head taking overlapping photos. You can then see whatever you could see from that setup. Very useful for detailed site mapping.
A free program that works very well for stitching photos is
Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE)
Imaudigger
Take stereo pairs
Keep up with that you'll have the folks at Trimble "VISION" division
looking you up.... 🙂
> John, try taking video instead....
I take video on every job I do; I also narrate while I'm taking the video. Even though my voice sounds high and nasally, it's a lot faster than writing notes.
Absolutely
Pics, video, sound and GPS location.
Has saved me time and miles of travel.
Micro SD cards are cheaper than a tank of gas.
Must learn the panoramic view, that is great :star:
> I just want to say one word to you: plastics panorama
I really like tinkering with the panorama but I wish you could do a 180 panorama without distorting the picture, I did a panorama pic of my yard and the driveway had a huge curve to it in the photo but was straight in reality.
This was using panorama option on iphone..
ICE looks nice . . .
Now imagine having software that will compute scale if given the scale for things in the middle and a couple of things out from the middle . . . for the entire picture.
For my use, I'm pondering making 2 lasers that will be parallel and 1 foot apart(or so).
I've also pondered three lasers in a triangle, such that when I take a picture, I would have reference dots on the picture.