How "MY" 360° views are made!

How I make my 360° x 180° panorama scenes.

There are a number of methods people use to create 360° virtual reality scenes. Firstly, it should be understood just what the terms; "360° Panorama Photography" & "360° Virtual Reality Photography" actually mean, as there are a number of self proclaimed "Professional VR Photogrphers" going around who evidentlay dont seem to know. The referance to 360° is to indicate the full sphere of a scene is covered, though this would more accurately conveyed as 360° x 180° being all around and all the way up or down & showing the complete spherical view. Convention and ease of use allow for the actual degrees covered by the photographer to be shortened to just plain old 360° (or 360° VR etc, etc,).

The camera (with lens attached) should be mounted onto the tripod pano-head, which in turn is mounted upon the tripod ;) The "pano-head" is quite an important piece of equipment, though arguably not essential. The head allows the camera/lens to rotate around the optomum no-paralax point of the lens, this is a different posision from that a normal tripod head would give. Where a normal tripod head would rotate the camera around the film plane (or digital sensor) of the camera, the pano-head rotates the camera around the no-paralax point of the lens. This posision needs to be established prior to taking the photos and it varies from lens to lens, but once the optomum posision is found, the setting can be noted for future use.

With the camera all set to the optomum posision, it is time to take the photos. All camera settings should be set to manual; white balance & exposure. The white balance can be set to anything as it is easily corrected later, but it should not be set to auto as this can change the colour balance mid shoot which would be messy. The file type should be set to RAW ( jpeg, or jpg can be used, but I preffer RAW as much more can be done with the files later ) The pano-head will have the correct detent ring fitted for the lens I am using as different lenses requires a differing set number of shots to cover the full sphere. i.e. the Sigm 8mm requires 1 row of 4 shots around, plus one down for the nadir, to cover the sphere and the canon 18-55mm requires three rows of 10 shots, plus another up and another down to cover the same scene. (more about this later).

For now I will describe using the Sigma 8mm lens (as it is easier and quicker). With the exposure correctly set and the camera correctly mounted on the pano-head, (the head can be tilted 5°+ up to eliminate the need for a zenith shot) it is time to correctly ;) take the photos. However! the lens should be correctly focused too!!! Use manual focus! With the Sigma 8mm being a fisheye lens, it has a very wide depth of field. With the apature set to f8 everything from a few inches to infinty will be in the zone of acceptability of focus with the focus set to about 1 metre. Using a cable realease and mirror lock to avoid any camer shake or vibration, it is now time to take the shots. Take one shot, then move the camera to the next setting which is 90° clockwise (going the other way can unscrew the pano-head) take the next and the next and the last. Thats it, photo taking complete,,,,now to process the images.

Open the images in Photoshop; Camera Raw, and adjust the images to suit your scene or tastes, keeping where possible the same settings for all images. Take care to adjust for chromatic abresion (those annoying bands of colour that tends to cling around areas of contrast). Then once you have processed your files to your needs, save as TIFF.

Open these images in PTGui and after the program has allocated automatic control points, go through each linked image and delete any control points that are obviously dodgy, i.e. areas or features that may have moved between shots, on people walking, clouds or branches/leaves etc,. Then optomise the control points ensuring the lens shift option contained under the advanced menu is checked. Output a smaller file in jpg format to have a visual check for any remaining errors then once happy with the stitching process, output the final file at the resolution you require (6000x3000 is a good size for full screen presentaion). You will now have a equirectangular image.

Open the equirectuangular image with Pano2VR,,,,,,,to be continued :-)

360° Cities