First thing, you need a good tripod, I have the Manfrotto Mag Fiber 055MF3 & Manfrotto by Bogen Imaging 303SPH QTVR Spherical Panoramic Head Kit bought at BH Photo, my second Apple store . This 303SPH head allows photography of multi-row cubic, spherical and cylindrical panoramas, along with VR object movie sequences.

You have to spend a lot of time and test before to find the perfect angle and this famous “Nodal Point”… What’s that ????? The entrance pupil of a lens (formerly nodal point) is the point about which a lens is rotated where close and distant subjects focused on the film plane maintain their relative positions to one another. Successful panoramic photography requires that the axis of the camera’s rotation be positioned at the entrance pupil of the lens. Otherwise, foreground and background subjects change their relative positions when the camera pans, causing misalignments and stitching errors between shots.

After that, I am taking 30 photos to compose my 360° image because my head is set up at 36°… 10 photos at 0°, 10 at –50° and 10 more at +50°, all these adjustment depend to your body and lens. I am using the last Canon 5D Mark II and the 17/40 from Canon also.

Also, I want the best result for this image, I mean I want to show what my eyes see in reality. So to get this result, I am “shooting” my images in HDR. High Dynamic Range-technique is a method was developed to produce a high dynamic range image from a set of photographs taken with a range of exposures. I am taking usually for one images at 3 different exposures (underexposure, normal and overexposure). In this way, with these 3 images, I get a record a greater range of tonal detail producing images with more detail in the highlights and shadows.

My 3 images ready to be “HDR”

HDR
completed.

2 – Quicktime vr 360 degree photos: Stitch my images

For my regular single HDR, I prefer to take 5 shots with different exposure and the result is stunning. I am building my main images with these 3 shots with photo merge from Adobe Photoshop, at the end, I got 30 photos ready to be “stitch” and I working with Stitcher to build this flat panoramic. This software enables you to create wide-angle images and panoramas for engaging virtual tours.

View before to be render

Next step is render this view, you will see with the screen capture #01, my set up and click on “Render” on the button… Be ready it might be long, so have a beer and go to surf.

Screen #01

my “flat” panoramic saved in tiff

3 – Quicktime vr 360 degree photo: last step to see my 360°

After a while, I got a file saved .tiff in my desktop. I am launching Cubic converter. This application converts various types of panoramic images into and out of cubic format QuickTime VR movies. It allows simple conversion of VR media with a drop and a click. Just drop your tiff file to the white window, click to convert and see what is happening.. It’s magic and you are almost done. With my 17/40, these 30 images are enough to all my 360° with the top but for the bottom, the lens took your tripod… Bummer. Good thing you thought to take a shot of the floor before to leave.

my tiff convert in 360°, almost done

So Cubic converter already rendered your 360° except the bottom, then click on Cube Faces and bottom you will get this view # 02, export this image and open it on Photoshop and I hope now you know this tool. Adjust, remove the tripod, add your logo or whatever and save it in tiff. Go back to Cubic Converter and click on “choose Image..” et voilà…

View #02. The bottom needs to be retouch

my base for Photoshop

Inside Photoshop, I am retouching the floor and add my logo

et voila….

Your 360° is ready, choose your right size and open this new file with Quick time and play with your mouse… Really cool, don’t you think ? this tutorial “Quicktime vr 360 degree photos” is completed, I really hope it helps a little.