2 small problems found

[David Rowley]

Hi,

These are quite long standing issues so I thought I'd just report them in case nobody else has noticed. They're not exactly critical must fix things, more of a long term thing that perhaps should be looked at one day.

1. Panorama Times:
When editing a panorama, when it comes to setting the time that the panorama was taken the time zone setting is fixed at my operating systems time zone setting. Today I was reworking some old panoramas that I shot a few years ago in Western Australia (which is GMT +8 if I remember correctly). I'm now in New Zealand which is GMT+12, so when it came to setting the pano time again after using the pano swap button, I set the time to the correct time, though the time zone setting next to the place where the user inputs the pano time was reading GMT+12. There's no way for me to select the Western Australian time zone without changing my computer's time zone setting.

I don't normally pay that much notice to the times of my panos after I upload them as I always take the photo time from one of the photos that made up the panorama, but I once had a user email me about one of my panos. A comment was made about the time being incorrect as he was able to work out that it was sunrise based on the direction the sun was in yet the time didn't match with the sunrise time of that area and time of year... At first I assumed he was mistaken, but on checking the pano he was correct, the time was wrong, but the time I saw was not the same time that he saw, it seemed like this was down to the fact that when the pano is viewed the time is shown in the user's local time zone rather than the one that the panorama was taken in.

Take this pano for example.
http://www.360cities.net/image/sir-frederick-range-australia#67.50,1.82,70.0
With me the time at the bottom reads 10:20 as my laptop's clock is set to GMT+12. I would have set the pano to be 06:20 in the morning while I was in Western Australia.
If I change my computer's time zone to UK time then the pano time on the site reads 23:20 the previous day!

I'm not sure if this is intended behaviour or a bug. It seems weird to report that my noon panorama taken in New Zealand shows as midnight for users looking at it from the UK.

It would be good if we could select the time zone for the pano, or just not have time zones come into it. Though perhaps the time zone still needs to be known for things like sorting our panos by the "taken time" in our account's published pano list. Though I doubt there are many cases where a photographer shoots a pano then moved time zones quickly enough and shot another pano "earlier" than the one he/she took before moving time zones.

2. Photographer's Map http://www.360cities.net/sitemap/photographers/map
The map on it's default zoom says it's showing the top 50 photographers. With the recent introduction of the maestro badge I'd have thought the photographer's lucky enough to have this badge would have been the first to appear on the default zoom. Though I can see that there are many photographers without this badge do appear, and on trawling through a few photographer's profile pages I see that there are Maestro photographers that don't appear. Is this just outdated? Or does it use other logic to decide who the top 50 are?

As I say, nothing too critical, but perhaps someone can look into 1 or both of these one day.

David

[Elena Martínez - 360Cities]

Hi David,

Thanks a lot for this detailed and long report.

I forwarded it to my colleagues and we have discussed both topics and we agree with you. 

Panorama times is an issue that some photographers reported a time ago. And time is very important in photography because it's linked with the light and atmosphere, we know and understand that. We are going to look into this issue and see how we can fix it.

Regarding the Photographers' map, you are right too and we agree with you. If I'm honest with you, I don't know how the map chooses the photographers who appear at the top level. I'm going to find out and we'll fix it in order to show Maestros first, after Experts and then the rest of the 360Cities photographers.

Again, thanks a lot for your interest in 360Cities and for you great report.

Kind regards,

Elena

[Erik Krause]

Am 18.06.2013 16:59, schrieb Elena Mart�nez - 360Cities:
> Panorama times is an issue that some photographers reported a time ago. And
> time is very important in photography because it's linked with the light
> and atmosphere, we know and understand that. We are going to look into this
> issue and see how we can fix it.

360cities reads the GPS coordinates and the time from the file but
assumes it is UTC (or something alike). Usually I tag the files with
Geosetter, which writes the correct time zone as well. Why not use it?

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de

[David Rowley]

Hi Elena,

Thanks forwarding to the team!

Looking forward to the changes :)

David