Hi,
Has anyone else using a fisheye lens discovered rings (most evident on blue sky backgrounds) on their outside panoramas? I use a Canon 5D with the Canon 15m fisheye. I've found that on a few of my panoramas, there are light rings on the sky. I've checked the original photos (especially the zenith) but haven't found the rings present, even when I apply any of the usual adjustments - curves, exposure, shadowing, saturation etc. Thus, it leads me to believe there might be something going on in the stitching process. Especially seen as it also happens when the zenith is left out. Could it be to do with the camera settings when shooting. i.e, aperture too low / exposure too high? Or, is it down to the distortion of the lens which is corrected during the stitching? I'm using Realviz Stitcher Unlimited 5.5.4 to stitch. The fact that it doesn't appear on every exterior pano confuses me a lot! If anyone else has experienced this phenomenon, it would be brilliant if you could shed some light.
 
Best,  
 
Chuck

Hi Chuck!
 
Possibly it is the result of the render settings. Typically rings (aka "banding" ) occurs when using low quality JPEG (high compression) settings. You could check for this possibility by rendering to Cubical or Spherical images in TIFF (preferably 16-bit). If there is no banding in this rendering situation then probably JPEG compression is the culprit. Try a higher quality JPEG setting. Also, your exposure correction can play a role in this (vis-a-vis JPEG) if you have increased the contrast.

chuck i use the same lens and camera and do not see the banding.