We're in a world where people seek more and better experiences. So when it comes to photography and videography, 360° technology will make you experience the whole scene rather than just showing a particular perspective.
If you're new to this technology, this guide here will help you to take good 360° images to create Virtual Tours.
How 360° photography can improve your experience?
360° photography allows you to create a full 360° spherical image of the surrounding using a mobile phone, 360° cameras or even your good old DSLR. When you click a 360° image, this is how it looks.
When you upload the above image to PropVR Creation Tool, you get an experience like this,
When you add more pictures, you can make a Virtual Tour that allows you to navigate between different rooms or scenes with our tool.
But first, you need to take these 360° pictures. There are 3 ways you can do this. You can use a smartphone, 360° camera or DSLR.
Phone: We all own smartphones. You can use your smartphone to create a quick 360° capture of your surrounding environment. You can use Google's "Street view" app to take 360° pictures.
Creating photos with Street view app:
Open the Street View app.
Tap Create.
In the bottom right, tap Camera.
Take a series of photos.
At the bottom, tap Done.
Your 360 photo is stitched together and saved in the "Private" tab on your phone. The photo is also saved on your phone (unless you turned this setting off).
Note: While taking 360° panoramas for a series of rooms on your phone move from one direction to the opposite for all rooms. e.g. Move your camera from Left to Right or from Right to Left.
The advantage of using a smartphone is that it can be quick and inexpensive and gets a decent quality image. However, smartphones may not be able to capture small and dimly lit spaces and places with a lot of movement.
360° cameras: Using 360° cameras like Ricoh Theta, Insta 360 cameras makes your job easier because all you have to do is click a button and step away from the camera's lens and it gets your 360° image captured.
Apart from the cost, 360° cameras are really simple and convenient to use - you just have to click a button to capture. Yes, it's that simple! They enable shooting places with a lot of movement and have inbuilt stabilisation too!
If you're looking for a 360 camera that suits your budget, click here.
DSLR:
If you want to take 360° panoramas on a DSLR, check this guide to learn how. DSLRs almost always yield great quality pictures but there are some post-processing skills needed. You can create 360 photos with a DSLR camera and stitching software, like PTGui.
