How to flatten a fish eye picture (with python)?

Question

I've found programs to turn fish eye pictures into flat ones. I'd like to learn the process behind the scenes. Can someone share their knowledge about the technique?

Answer 1

First of all, you can't create a stoty-tellng video with a fish-eye lens. (well) nothing wrong with wide angle lenses. Those lens are interesting for wide shots...but to tell a story with your video you need cut-away video.

Adapt youself to cut aways. An artist photojournalist will step back and capture from a distance. I taught my photography staff to back-off, when you feel your video capture is unclear. Close your eyes and photograph what you hear.

Ask a random person if it's okay to put a wireless microphone on them and hit record. (from a distance). The audibles will define your direction.

Fisheye lenses are for skateboarders.

Answer 2

Hm... You can and you can't do that... Depends how well you want to do that, because fish-eye + very short focal length will produce one unsolvable problem: objects from different distances will be captured with wrong proportions. (check any video explaining what zooming, change of focal length really means)

You can flat them, no problem, just turning a circle into a square, but only in such a way that you are flattening what was captured on the image.

In practice, you have a landscape, everything is in infinity - no problem!

Architecture, problematic, because of the depth of the scene - some parts will be fixed, others will be ruined even more

Car interiors - I've tried to work with Sunex fish-eye, 5.6 mm, and after some frustrations turned to Canon 10-18 mm, normal wide lens.

In conclusion: flat or not flat, it will have drawbacks no matter what kind of math you apply