360x180° Panorama Tutorial - Pt.1: Shooting the images

Part 1.

In this tutorial, I'm showing you my three favourite panorama shooting techniques, all using an 8mm fisheye lens, both on full frame and crop cameras. Virtually all of my panoramas on http://www.pano.ie are shot using either of these methods.

The first two use a so-called "philopod" -- a string rather than a tripod -- whereas the third technique involves a tripod and panorama head (the Nodal Ninja 3 in this case). The advantages of using a piece of string rather than a tripod are clear: It's fast (takes virtually no time to set-up), it fits in any photobag (just wrap it around the lens), it saves you from lugging around a heavy tripod+panohead, and it's much more inconspicuous.

To read more about the brilliant "philopod pitch variation technique", see here: http://wiki.panotools.org/Philopod_pi....

I will also record a number of screen casts about how to post-process and stitch the images from this tutorial together to create the full 360x180° spherical panorama with no tripod in it, and do some retouching.

This is part one in a whole series of tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...

Thanks for your interest and stay tuned!

Florian

PS: For those who need it, I also went through the trouble of adding subtitles to the videos... Click on the [CC] icon to enable them.

• Category

  Howto & Style

[Christopher Goh]

Hi Florian, If I'm using a 5DII, which panoramic head do you recommend getting?

[elfloz]

If the lens is not too heavy, you can get away with a Nodal Ninja 3, otherwise a 5 or 4.

[Touchprod]

Hi there. Great Tutorial by the way. I am looking at doing interiors of Private Jets. These would be Spherical Panoramas. What would be the best lens to achieve this close quarter shooting. Also how would you do transitions from say one room to another and hot spots. An example of what I mean is found at the virtual tours at cutwaterboats d o t c o m . Thanks for your help..Duncan Wood

[elfloz]

Duncan, you need a well calibrated panoramic tripod head for that, then any lens (as always) will do (see part 8 of this series). Your options for virtual tours are endless, KRPano, Pano2VR, FPP, etc. are commonly used software for that.

[beckermanphoto]

Am embarking on pano journey because I was asked to do a 20 foot x 8 foot mural (actually two of them). It will take several rows of 25 images. No questions yet. About to purchase one of the Ninja Nodals - prob. the one that can hold a 200mm lens. Anyway - just wanted to thank you for a clear series of videos about this. Dave

[elfloz]

You're welcome :-) You really need the biggest Nodal Ninja for that lens...

[elfloz]

Doesn't matter, as long as it's a sturdy enough one ;-) This one is the 055XPROB I believe.

[qw1564]

thanks, cool explanation

[Rudhin Menon]

thanks

and the lights bulb above the garden shuts in accordance to the camera clicks at 2:23 and 2:30 :D