Learn 360 Photography to Become a Panoramic Photographer

360 Photography is the latest development in the field. It is a technique in which a shot of every angle of the surrounding is taken instead of just one. It is useful for various businesses and can also be used for some daily fun and frolic.



360 photography isn’t as inexpensive as the usual one that we’ve all been used to for a few years now. It costs a little more than our normal cameras. It needs specialized equipment to capture everything around you and hence, requires panoramic photographers to get familiarized with the what’s and how’s of the working and mechanism.



Now, the basic concept behind generating and processing a 360 photo is that it is actually made up of several pictures and put together as one using an underlying stitching software. There are various ways to stitch together a 360 photo. It can be done using a DSLR, point and shoot camera or an array of cameras or just a mere smartphone.

Ricoh Theta

This is a small device, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It’s got two fisheye lenses on both sides, back, and front, and it’s got a button under the lens to start recording or capturing the scene. It is sort of a selfie device because you will definitely appear in at least one part of the scene because of the two-sided lens. However, you can control it without being in the scene using a remote app. The Ricoh Theta is affordable and costs up to $400 but it isn’t the best in the market for professional panoramic photographers. It can be a little grainy and may have a few stitching errors. It is more of a fun devices for everyday users. The professional and freelance photographer rather not invest in it. It gives best results in a sunny outdoor environment.

GoPro Array

Now, the setup to use GoPro"s are more useful for 360 videos but can also be used for 360 photos. Some good companies manufacturing the rigs that hold the GoPro"s are Freedom 369 6 GoPro Mount and 360 Heroes. The setup is complicated for panoramic photographers to take 360 photos because you would actually be moving and so there are a few synchronization issues which come up during the displacement. A remote is used to trigger all the GoPro cameras, but it doesn’t start all the cameras at once. There is a slight delay between firing up the cameras which aren"t very good for 360 photography. There can be stitching errors like the Ricoh Theta, and also a few misalignments while shooting in tight spaces which reduce the quality of the photo. There is, however, a better way to create 360 photos out of this setup. You can use the Go Pro Array to take a 360 video and then extract stills from the video to get your resultant 360 photos.

Photosphere Android App

This again, like the Ricoh Theta is used mainly for everyday fun by anyone who owns a smartphone. It is tied up to the Google camera. The Photosphere app is available on the Play Store. The panoramic photos can be created just by opening the app, clicking the capture button and rotating the phone along the highlighted blue dots that appear on the screen. This is more of a trial and error based scheme since sometimes you can get the perfect 360 photo while other times, you’ll have to keep trying to get it right. It’s a little tricky to perfect 360 photography using a smartphone, though because you’ll have to stand in one position and keep rotating the phone in all angles. If you tend to move too much, you will have to deal with stitching errors. For the apple freaks out there, don’t worry. You can have fun shooting 360 photos too by using the Photosynth App available on the iStore. It runs on the same mechanism and has the same issues as the app on the Android OS. Here’s a way to work with stitching and the issues.

One Shot 360 photos

Some other good one-shot solutions to 360 photography include Matterport which costs $4500 but is worth it. It can take brilliant 360 photos and make 3D models of it. There is also the Panoramic Ball camera which is similar to the Ricoh Theta but is more fun to use since you get to throw it in the air and it starts capturing the scene when it reaches its highest point. Pretty cool, right? And then there’s the iStar which requires no Photoshop and no editing. Its HDR capabilities are just enough to process great 360 photos.

DSLR and gear

Now this is exactly what panoramic photographers want. The gear includes a tripod stand. A Benro A1980T Tripod is recommended since it has a lateral arm which is helpful when you want to capture the floor, and a hook to add some weight to it to keep it in a stable standing position. Then there’s the Nadir minimizer, a custom built metal rod which lets you reduce the post-processing work by making the down shot smaller. Next up, the Canon 600D with a Sigma 8mm fisheye lens to capture good quality photos, the Nodal Head that is attached to the tripod stand which lets you rotate your camera around a point (Nodal Ninja 4 is recommended), and a Rapid Connect Adapter which connects the tripod and to the nodal head. To get a good 360 photo, analyze the view first. See that the nodal head horizontal arm is at 0 degrees, use the manual focus, check if the focus ring is the sharpest for F8 aperture, and set the white balance depending on the scene. To shoot a proper full scene, take shots at angle 0, 60, 120, 180, 240, 300 and 360. (The last camera shot i.e. the one facing upwards is optional). For the post processing, PTgui is recommended. But if you don’t want to purchase it, you can always go for Hugin , an open source panorama stitcher. To remove black holes in the scene, you can use Krpano tools. Now you’ll have to edit up the up and down shots using Photoshop, delete the tripod from the scene, remove its shadows, and then turn it into an Equirectangular image.

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