360 Degree Virtual tour photography

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Gabriel
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Welcome to the 360 VR photography Thread
I realise that 360 VR photography is a specialized field, however it is one of the fastest growing sectors in the photographic market today.
If you set yourself up as a VR photographer in even a fairly large town the chances are that you may well be the only one doing it. How many other photographers have that luxury.
VR tours can vary in size from the inside of a car right up to an entire town. I recently completed a virtual tour for Glastonbury town council that covers the whole town and fairly close to every shop in it. This can be viewed at the town council website ay www.glastonbury.gov.uk and cliking on the link at the bottom of the page.
I hope if there are established VR photographers or people thinking of trying it for the first time, that we can make this the place to come to discuss techniques, equipment and general tips.
 
My favorite gear for 360 VR

I started my business using Manfrotto 303sph pano head and a Nikon d300 with a Nikon 10.5mm f2:8 DX lens.

This is a more than adequate sating point which with careful Ebaying can be purchased for less than £800. In photography terms that is not a lot of money given that is the average you can be paid per job.

I now uses a Nodal Ninja 5 and a Nikon D3s and a Sigma 8mm f3:5

I have one last upgrade and that is to the fabulous Nikon D800 which will enable me to increase the resolution and therefore produce images with a much higher resolution.
 
I am always fascinated by these images and am feeling the need to give it a go.

I have a D800 but no wide lens yet.

I have been waiting to spot a 20mm Nikon prime, would that be an OK starting point to dip a toe into vr or is it better to get a fish-eye?
 
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Hi there Sponner

You will be looking for a Nikon 20mm f/2.8D AF
The Field of view (FOV) for this lens on a full frame Nikon D800 is

HFOV: 84° | VFOV: 62° | DFOV: 94°

H= Horizontal V-Vertical D=Diagonal

This means that to shoot a full 360 panorama you will need to shoot

8 images every 45° at -60° pitch
8 images every 45° at 0° pitch
8 images every 45° at +60° pitch

Now most of the time you need to bracket for HDR so that means +1. 0 -1
which means 8x3 = 8x3 =8x3 This means 72 Shots

You should always shoot RAW and convert to Tiff as JPEG compression causes issues in the stitching phase.

This leads to a problem. You are lucky to own a d800, however the one drawback to this fantastic camera is that when shooting raw it will only output full size images and if my memory serves me correctly this means 80mb+ files. 80mbx72 means a massive amount of data once converted to TIFF which will slow down even the fastest of computers.

If you just want to dip your toe this will not be a massive problem. However if you are going to get the bug (and you probably will as these things have a massive wow factor) then you will need to look at a fish eye.

I am sure you know the difference between circular and full frame fish eyes, (and if anybody asks I am happy to discuss the merits of both types) I prefer the circular type. There are cheaper ones on the market all with varying flare and distortion issues but in my opinion the best value bang for buck is the Sigma 8mm f1:3.5. These can be bought for around £620 new with a 3 year warranty and come pretty close to the Nikon version costing 3-4 times more.
Although rare they do come up second hand. I paid £400 for a mint example recently.

Here are the numbers.

HFOV: 180° | VFOV: 180° | DFOV: 180°

This means that to shoot a full 360 panorama you will need to shoot

4 images every 90° at -0° pitch

x3 for HDR total 12 images and a happier computer.

I havent discussed the panoramic head which you will need as the images need to be pixel perfect in order to stitch properly. If anybody would like me to explain Nodal points and Pupil entry points or panorama heads please ask and I will be happy to help,

In the mean time I hope this answered your question Sponner

Gabriel
 
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Gabriel, thanks for the reply, I had gathered that the file sizes would be an issue but that is more than I want to spend on a fish eye at present.

I have been doing a bit of googling and am thinking of using the 10.5mm Nikon fisheye which is a dx lens and using the D800 in crop mode. This will lose sacrifice some detail but keep the file size to a reasonable level.
 
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