Spherical panorama head and software

[Cornfield]

I have been asked to shoot a series of spherical panoramas and link them to form a VR type tour of a building, internal and external.  There seem to be a number of products and software packages available without standout products. Nodal Ninja 360Precision seem to produce excellent products.

Any recommendations from someone with lots of experience is this area?

[Alan Smallbone]

What kind of camera? How detailed do the shots need to be? For web? It really depends, I use a fisheye lens on my Fuji and Nodal Ninja R1, I can do a full 360 in 4 shots, and then need to shoot a nadir shot if needed. Stitching I have found PTGUI to be the best.

Alan

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I have been asked to shoot a series of spherical panoramas and link them to form a VR type tour of a building, internal and external.  There seem to be a number of products and software packages available without standout products. Nodal Ninja 360Precision seem to produce excellent products.

Any recommendations from someone with lots of experience is this area?

Hi,

The equipment requirements depend on the required output quality. There are solutions that allow to use existing camera equipment, and panorama stitching software like PTGUI is used for the creation of the base 360 degree VR files, e.g. as a single 360x180 degree equirectangular projection file.

Creating a tour, which connects the different vantage points from where the scene can be viewed, usually requires separate software, and as a bit of a learning curve if the tour has additional features added.

From what I've seen, the NodalNinja gear is of decent quality, but for heavier camera equipment I'd prefer something with a more sturdy construction, e.g. as offered by Really Right Stuff. It's usually a joy to work with that modular equipment, although I combine it with components from other manufacturers such as a Click-stop indexing rotator which quickly/repeatably allows to rotate the camera in fixed increment steps.

With a full-frame Fish-Eye lens I take a 360 degree pano in 5 images, 4 are pitched down by 20 degrees, and one points straight up (the Zenith shot). When the ground detail below the camera is complicated, another separate image (the Nadir shot) is taken, but with a bit of planning that can often be unnecessary. A fish-Eye lens that creates circular images can use fewer images, but at slightly lower quality (due to the lower image magnification and edge quality).

I use PTGui Pro for pano stitching, and Pano2VR for the virtual tour creation. Both do a great job, and have excellent support.

If you have no experience with shooting this type of images, it will take a bit of practice to get the hang of it.

Cheers,
Bart

[Cornfield]

Thanks for your replies.

I'm planning to shoot with a d810 and probably a manual lens.  I have seen great reports about the 12mm Samyang with sharpness way above the price range of the lens.

The quality requirements are high especially for the linked tour buildings.  These are high-end hotels being sold for big money and my client expects to pay way more than my normal commercial daily rate.  The Pano2VR software looks interesting and I'll give it a try.  Their demo files certainly are impressive especially with live action video and audio segment dropped into the VR

Thanks

FC

[Alan Smallbone]

I believe the 12mm Samyang is not a circular fisheye on full frame I could be wrong. I believe it is what is called a full frame fisheye, so you will need quite a few shots. So you might need quite a few more shots. Moving people can be issues when tours.

As Bart mentioned, with a large dslr the nodal ninja will not be stable. Stitching is a whole lot easier with repeatable results and a stable platform. I also have a Really Right Stuff setup, but I use that with rectilinear lenses and not the fisheye.

Make sure you practice a lot, they are not easy to do.

Alan

[TonyVentourisPhotography]

I do a lot of this work for commercial clients.  High res panos.  I use Really right stuff gear so I. Can calibrate all my equipment to shoot spherical panos with.  I  use everything from m43 all the w any up to a tech cam or a hasselblad with a digital back.  A couple items to pay attention to:

1.  Support.  You better have the best tripod out there.  Weak tripods for the load will flex as you move the gear around.  Especially, if you have to double back around for extra pieces due to changes in light, or adding in people.  Remember, camera will be quite offset to the center. 

2.  Are you shooting top and bottoms?  Tops are easy...perfect bottoms take practice.  I have a special technique that requieres two tripods in order to create the bottom shot.  Perfect seamless bottoms of any floor results from it though. 

3.  Do you have a computer that can handle the files?  D810 files in full Res as panos as tif or psd files will be enormous, especially if you edit and add layers.

4.  Software, ptgui is the one to use.  It's amazing what it can do, especially if you mess up.  It has some great manual tools to help fix problems. 

5.  Best quality will come from a full frame fisheye, and it's the best trade off between number of shots.  Ultra wide lens need too many shots, and circular fish eyes waste too much frame.  In my opinion.  I also get better, quicker results from a full frame fisheye when stitching. 

Thanks for your replies.

I'm planning to shoot with a d810 and probably a manual lens.  I have seen great reports about the 12mm Samyang with sharpness way above the price range of the lens.

The quality requirements are high especially for the linked tour buildings.  These are high-end hotels being sold for big money and my client expects to pay way more than my normal commercial daily rate.  The Pano2VR software looks interesting and I'll give it a try.  Their demo files certainly are impressive especially with live action video and audio segment dropped into the VR

Thanks

FC

[Cornfield]

Tony, many thanks for your very helpful post.  You have covered everything I'm interested in, gear, software and technique.  I think shooting with the full frame Samyang 12mm I will be able to get the 360 using 6 images.  I'm going to test using a rotating head that can be controlled from a smartphone to do the 6 rotations accurately and also control the camera to shoot the brackets.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I think shooting with the full frame Samyang 12mm I will be able to get the 360 using 6 images.

Hi,

Yes, 5 or 6 shots, but a bit of planning can help a lot in post-processing / stitching.

I usually shoot 5 full frame fish-eye shots for full 360x180 degrees coverage, only missing a small patch under the camera. A 6-th shot could cover that, but if the tripod is placed over a relatively predictable patch of surface, it is easy to clone it in or cover with a logo.

I shoot 4 frames in portrait orientation, pitched down by 20 degrees and with 90 degree rotation between shots. That is easy to do with an indexing click stop (probably faster than an electronic rotator, and no batteries needed).
I then add 1 shot pointing 90 degrees up, the 'Zenith shot'. This usually also makes it easier to stitch, because there is enough overlap for perfect alignment, and for lens distortion correction (although that could be figured out in advance). The single Zenith shot also helps with outdoor shots by avoiding moving clouds between shots.

And shaving 1 shot off of the total sequence helps with bracketing as well, saving 1 shot for each additional bracket. A 'Nadir shot' of the floor, if needed, rarely requires HDR bracketing. The Nadir shot, from a different position, might still be needed if the tripod casts a shadow.

Cheers,
Bart

[BAB]

There are three very capable manufactures of motorized drives that will make your job very easy check out these companies
MK PanoMachine Great for Dslr cameras unit cost about $2,500[/font][/size]

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Seitz [/font][/size][size=78%]http://www.roundshot.com/ this will work with almost any system costs about $4,000.00[/size]
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[size=78%]And then there is the most stable and most expensive Clauss VR drive costing Appx $8,000.00 this bad boy can really handle a lot of weight you can contact [/size]
Dr. Clauss Bild- und Datentechnik GmbH[/font][/size]Turnhallenweg 5a[/size]D-08297 Zwoenitz[/size]Germany[/size]

[/font][/size]
Personally if you want bulletproof software to control the VR drive they are all great for that but you need to drill down into the operating manuals which each company will provide you with and study which product seems to fit your needs.[/font][/size]

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There must be plenty of users out in internet land but not sure they are to willing to share their knowledge on forums.[/font][/size]

[shadowblade]

Pity that this is an indoor shoot, so parallax errors are actually significant and require the use of nodal point offsets.

I've seen some fantastic 360-degree video (i.e. made from 360-degree panoramas taken 30 times a second) of outdoor locations, shot using a drone with several cameras attached. Parallax differences from one side of a drone to the other don't matter when all your subjects are tens to hundreds of metres away. Also, it turns out you can make 8k video by sticking enough 4k cameras together...

[TimoK]

There are three very capable manufactures of motorized drives that will make your job very easy check out these companies
MK PanoMachine Great for Dslr cameras unit cost about $2,500[/font][/size]

[/font][/size]
Seitz [/font][/size][size=78%]http://www.roundshot.com/ this will work with almost any system costs about $4,000.00[/size]
[size=78%]
[/size]
[size=78%]And then there is the most stable and most expensive Clauss VR drive costing Appx $8,000.00 this bad boy can really handle a lot of weight you can contact [/size]
Dr. Clauss Bild- und Datentechnik GmbH[/font][/size]Turnhallenweg 5a[/size]D-08297 Zwoenitz[/size]Germany[/size]

[/font][/size]
Personally if you want bulletproof software to control the VR drive they are all great for that but you need to drill down into the operating manuals which each company will provide you with and study which product seems to fit your needs.[/font][/size]

[/font][/size]
There must be plenty of users out in internet land but not sure they are to willing to share their knowledge on forums.[/font][/size]

I use cheaper Gigapan Epic Pro, price tag around 1000$. It's not exactly a pro level tool but very usable.
It can carry Canon 5d mk II with 24-105mm lens which I use @24mm taking 35 shots for 360x180 degree
panorama. Look at gigapan.com
With full frame FE you don't need any robot, any good panorama head will do the job.
The most important thing is to set the camera accurately turning round the nodal point. Much less troubles in post.