The tech world is coming up with attractive gadgets and technologies every day. The term we have heard for quite some time; 360 photography! If you spend a lot of time on social media like Facebook, then you probably have already seen a 360-degree photo or a video.
Though there are numerous types of the same technique, you should understand at least the basic idea behind the same.
That is exactly why I crafted this article. Here, you are going to read the idea of 360 photography, and how to make one and the uses.
What is 360 Photography?
Many a time, you were in a position not being able to capture the beauty of a single scene in one photo, right?
What do you do in such a situation? Most probably, you will end up taking multiple pictures. Or, you switch the camera to panorama mode.
But now, you don’t have to do both the things as 360 photography has everything you need.
In a typical panoramic photo, what the mechanism does is depicting everything in one photo. But in 360 panoramic photography or simply 360 photography, you will be able to see the entire surroundings like you stand at the center. It’s as the landscape is recreated virtually.
The advantage of such a method is that beautiful places can be stored in memory and later viewed so that whoever is viewing such imagery can experience a virtual tour of the area. The user will be able to scroll in every direction to get a look of the surrounding.
What’s more impressive than a 360 photograph is a 360-degree video. These videos are captured using specialized equipment, as standard smartphone cameras or point and shoot cameras cannot record images in every direction. The 360 video is an excellent experience I must say because not only you can rotate and pan the picture in all direction, but it is also moving. These are recorded using cameras which use multiple lenses attached in every direction so that everything surrounded the camera is captured and recorded.
The technique has got different names such as 360 panoramic photography, VR Photography, 360 spherical photography, 360 virtual tours (which I will talk about later).
When it comes to 360 photography, maybe we can divide it into two different types. There are those spherical type 360 images, which you can pan around in every direction and see everything. It’s like rotating a globe or a sphere from inside. Then there are these flat 360 images, in which you will only be able to pan the picture left or right. It is limited because the image is captured by moving the camera in the horizontal direction. You can do this easily with your smartphone. It’s exactly like taking an 180-degree panorama, except in here you will be panning the camera a whole 360 degrees.
How to Take a 360 Panoramic Photo?
The easiest way to 360 photography is to get a 360 camera. If you ask me for a suggestion, I can"t help saying the name Ricoh Theta S (Google itself recommended the same). The camera has two fisheye lenses on either side. It is a camera made for the sole purpose of 360 photography. You can either capture a 360 still image or you can capture an entire 360 video. The device is simple to use and it is easy to switch between video and still image modes. It can also connect to your tablet device to access it from there. This is an entirely spherical 360 photography device so that you will be able to scroll around the image in every direction.
There are many 360 cameras available in the market, though.
If you don"t want to invest in dedicated hardware, no worries. There are many applications available for both iOS and Android to capture 360 photos and videos.
Google Street View is one of those applications which will let you capture your surroundings in complete 360. Even though your smartphone has two cameras, the app will only use your rear camera.
What happens is, the app will capture many small images in every direction and finally stitch them together to form one single image. You will have to move your smartphone precisely to capture these individual images.
The app itself performs all the stitching action. One drawback here is that using a technique like this, you won’t be able to capture 360 videos. This is simply because of the reason that the image is rendered using multiple individual images. For a 360 degree immersive video capturing, you need multiple lenses in a single device.
There are some other apps too, which can take 360 panorama shots. These images won’t be spherical, so you cannot view the entire surroundings in these. But you will be able to capture in a horizontal plane. It is advised to use some holding devices like tripods or monopods when 360 panoramas are being captured, as it will help to stabilize the image.
If you are a passionate photographer who doesn"t want to use dedicated hardware or some applications available in the app market, you can always go with the conventional method too. That is capturing individual images using your DSLR camera and then manually stitching them together using software. This process won’t be pretty. You will have to carefully set the camera in proper settings when you capture every single image. They should blend in the end, so it is important to match the lighting, exposure and other metrics in every individual image.
Finally you will have to select the best of these images and stitch them together with your hands.
Only expert photographers will try to capture this way.
What’s the Mechanism behind 360 Photography?
The principle behind 360 photography isn"t hard. The equipment you use for shooting captures a series of images and it (or a dedicated tool) stitches all of them together to get us a 360 photo. Dedicated 360 photography hardware will do all the stitching and other tweaks automatically when we capture the photo or video. Most of the times, the software adds metadata to the image for smooth functioning.
I have mentioned above that certain Android and iOS apps can be used for 360 photography. These apps are capturing individual images and stitching them together in the final step. Basically, this is what going on inside a dedicated 360 photography hardware too. Except we do not see any of it.
Let’s take Ricoh Theta S as an example. It has two lenses on both sides of the gadget and it will capture simultaneously. The image obtained from these two lenses are stitched together using specialized software loaded onto the camera itself. What we can see on our smartphone or tablet once the processing is complete, is the stitched together imagery.
You can use PTgui, Fisheye Shots, or Hugin for stitching.
The possibility of 360 Photography?
The potential of 360 photography is endless, which is the main reason why tech and gadget giants are getting into the business. We can see many devices for virtual reality and 360 photography being manufactured and introduced into the consumer market in these recent years.
In my opinion, the tourism industry and travel businesses are going to benefit from this hugely. They can capture a fully immersive picture of the beautiful places and upload them online and use them for marketing purposes. In this digital age, people search on the internet for even deciding in which hotel they should eat.
So it is evident that if 360-degree photography is used for such purposes, the business owners can benefit from this. Embedding a 360 panoramic photo provides invaluable information than seeing a set of still images.
So, tourism and real estate business websites can insert 360 photos to give their potential clients an idea of how the place looks.
Wrapping Up
With all the dedicated hardware being available for 360 photography, I think there is a pretty good chance that a lot of 360-degree content will be created in the future. People are already uploading different 360 photographic content to social media. I have even seen users uploading their home, their street, and surroundings, etc. just for the kicks of it.
Also, I was able to see many sceneries which I have never observed in reality, simply because I can’t reach those locations. So yeah, there is real good scope for this trending new photographic method. Then again, we can’t predict what comes and stay in the tech world, can we?
Do I miss anything? What is on your mind, share your thoughts with our readers here!
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