360º Panorama Production
Mountain Visions has been shooting and producing wide screen panoramas for more than twenty years. At the beginning of the “multi-image” era in the late 1970s we used these panoramas with twelve slide projectors aimed at an overlapping portable movie screen. In 1995, Apple Computer developed the QuickTime Virtual Reality panorama (QTVR), which allowed us to bring 360-degree panoramas onto the computer screen. These circular images can be moved with the computer mouse, left or right, and up or down to the limit of the lens being used to shoot the images. This technology has allowed us to produce amazing interactive and “immersive” panorama pictures. The person using the computer is seeing the view as if they were standing where the tripod was set up and looking around in a circle. For natural resource issues, this type of moveable photograph lets people see and understand much more than is possible with a single still image.
Beginning in 2001, software and hardware became available to shoot and produce high quality “cubic” panoramas. These images are 360 degrees horizontally and 180 degrees vertically. Literally you can see everything around and up and down from on spot where the camera was shooting. During 2004 we also found a way to make these cubic panoramas available as a ‘Full Screen” option. The quality of these full screen images is already in a High Definition format being larger than 1920 x 1080 pixels.
In addition to the panorama being movable when the user chooses, on the web it is possible to provide hot spots inside the panorama that will bring up videos, audiovisual programs and other additional sources of information that may not be visible in the panorama. To the extent possible, given time restraints at each location, we tried to shoot still photographs and audio/video sequences to help supplement the view visible in the panorama.
Almost any still film or digital camera will capture images that can be made into a panorama. Even a digital video camera, shooting in still image mode will work. All of the issues concerning the Basic Photography session are important to understand. If the photographer turns in a 360 degree circle, taking photographs which overlap by about 50 percent, the resulting images probably can be stitched together into an interactive moveable panorama. Many low cost consumer cameras even come with free software that helps the photographer with this stitching process. However, a much better result is possible if the photographer uses some of the techniques, equipment and software mentioned below.
A technical issue such as exposure locking is important to understand, as the camera takes as many as 12 to 30 images around in the circle. The light changes as the camera turns, but if automatic exposure for each shot is turned on it makes it much harder to stitch the final image.
Other issues such as making sure the camera is “level” throughout the 360 degree shooting mode, helps make the final panorama easier to make. Using a tripod and leveled panorama head aids in during this photographic shooting mode. Kaidan, Peace River 360 tripods and Manfrotto tripod systems are very popular tools for this purpose.
Other topics that are important include the types of lenses used with the camera. Typically the shots are made in a vertical camera position to get as much vertical height as possible. Wide-angle lenses are better, especially in places where objects are close to the camera. Telephoto lenses can work, but many more images are necessary to obtain the required overlap to make stitching of the images possible.
There are many sources of software to help stitch the still images together to make a 360º panorama. Apple Computer developed the first such tool, called the QuickTime VR Authoring Studio. This is still a very useful and full-featured program. There are lower cost and even free programs that come with some digital cameras and computers. These work, but the final quality of the panorama is not typically as high, and the ability to make hot spots and linking panorama nodes and other features may not exist. In addition, there are other new tools, which already supplement or promise to add to the QTVR Authoring Studio. One of these, VR Toolbox, is available for both Windows and Macintosh computers.
It should be noted that many advances in software and hardware have been made with 360 degree panorama technology. There will certainly be more advances in the future.
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