Paul Woods

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Last weekend our local Air Force base (RAAF Amberley) hosted the semi-regular Defence Force Air Show. 

Usually I would just take a heap of photos of flying aircraft and leave them on my PC to have a look at every now and then, but this time I thought I would experiment with Microsoft Photosynth. 

For those that don’t know, Photosynth allows you to create 3D representations of environments with the photos that you take.  Pretty cool (Very cool infact!). 

I tried two different strategies to create the perfect Photosynth.  First was to walk around the static displays taking as many shots from as many angles as possible.  If only I had actually read up on how Photosynth “Photosynths” Photos.  I thought it matched edges.  But in fact it matches textures.  I had thought it would work just like a panoramic photo, but it didn’t.  Instead of getting away with a 10-15% overlap, I really needed 50%!  Bummer!  Oh well, here are a few examples that kind of worked.

(TIP – if you use what look like forward and back buttons on the top right hand side of the boxes below you will see all the different synth sets created, not just the photos in the synthiest part of the synth… if you know what I mean!)

Static Display of Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster and Two United States Air Force Fighters

Inside a Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster

Walking around a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion

After spending 3 hours walking around the static displays (some multiple times), the flying displays began.  I thought it would be a great opportunity to see if I can do the “lazy mans photosynth”  I planned to take plenty of photos of aircraft as they flew past, and because it was a beautiful day with a great blue sky – I figured Photosynth would love these photos. 

Well it kind of worked – not across 15 or 20 frames like I hoped, but more like two or three.  You can see my examples below.

I think if I upgrade my camera from a Canon 300d (which does something like 3fps from memory) to something a bit faster (like 12 frames per second) this might work.

Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster in flight

Are you playing with Photosynth yet?  Have you tried anything out of the box like the “lazy man’s photosynth”? If you have I would love to see how you have gone.