A bachelor thesis from Pasha Kuliyev of the Department of Imaging Sciences and Media Technology University of Applied Sciences Cologne focuses of the various methods of acquiring HDRI images and gets into incredible mathematical and physical detail on the various benefits and problems with each method. From the abstract:
In many industrial and advertising applications today three dimensional graphics play a major role in enabling cost effective production workflows. One of the major research areas in the field of computer generated imagery for the last two decades has been photorealistic synthetic lighting of virtual objects. As affordable processing power became available more complex synthetic lighting models could be developed. one of the ese models derives lighting information of a real-world environment from specially processed photographs. In this thesis, two photographic techniques are presented and compared to the third, commercial one in terms of image quality, acquisition time, image processing time and costs.
He compares Mirrored ball acquisition, Fisheye lens acquisition, and the Spherocam HDR product. All of the math behind HDRi imagery is included in detail, and toward the end of his these (page 79) he includes this great flow-chart (shown right) detailing the process required for each technique.
You can download his thesis here, or view it via Google Docs.
via @alba
