Take Your Prospects and Customers Virtually Anywhere

Virtual Tours of Luxury Homes: 360° panoramic virtual tours are a powerful, online marketing tool that can be utilized for a variety of applications. My high-quality, turnkey virtual tours for residential, commercial, tourism, resort, retail, retirement and other industries are both affordable and high impact.

As a growing number of companies and professionals are marketing online, they’re leveraging the visual power of 360° tours that take their prospects virtually anywhere. I can help you showcase your property or facility with the highest quality photography that will give you a high-powered sales advantage.

• Standard and custom virtual tours
• Turnkey presentation solutions
• Integration into your website

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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.

It supports Live View shooting, Live View HD videos, and more. It can shoot up to 3.9 fps, has 9 AF points plus 6 AF assist points, a new 98% coverage viewfinder, a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD (920,000 dots/VGA) and a rugged build. Full-frame shooters rejoice!

Features
Full-frame Sensor: The EOS 5D’s full-frame CMOS sensor records 4,368 x 2,912 pixels-that’s 12.8 Megapixels, larger than many other companies’ top-of-the-line sensors. The same size as a 35mm image on a traditional camera, the sensor operates without a conversion factor. This is perfect for taking advantage of the spectacular optics in Canon’s L-series, and will be a joy for wide-angle enthusiasts who can make the most of their wide-angle lenses. This new CMOS sensor, designed in-house by Canon, provides smooth, high-resolution images similar to the EOS-1Ds Mark II but in a more compact body. Two automatic noise reduction features maximize the effectiveness of the EOS 5D’s on-chip noise reduction. Noise reduction can be activated when noise is detected or it will simply come into play on any exposure of 1 second or longer.

Image processor: The EOS 5D’s new 12.8 Megapixel sensor is driven by the revolutionary DIGIC II Image Processor for unprecedented performance and image quality. Thanks to the DIGIC II Image Processor, the EOS 5D is capable of shooting up to 3 frames-per-second for up to 60 JPEG or 17 RAW images. The information captured by the sensor is processed and assembled into images of exceptional clarity and resolution. Photographers can expect precise, natural colors, spot-on white balance and speed in any number of lighting situations. By handling larger volumes of image data, the DIGIC II Image Processor also contributes to lower power consumption: photographers will discover that they can shoot all day with the EOS 5D without having to change the battery!

New larger 2.5 inch LCD screen: The EOS 5D has been designed to provide the photographer with instant feedback, saving valuable time when reviewing images. A new 2.5 inch LCD screen with approximately 230,000 pixels not only displays more information, it can be viewed at a far greater angle (170°) than many other conventional LCD screens. The full-featured shot information screen not only provides an RGB histogram, it displays the AF frames used. Magnification to check exposure and critical focus has never been faster. It is also simple to jump quickly in image intervals up to 100. Menus are accessed at the touch of a button, and feature larger, easier to read text than previous models. Whether changing color parameters, setting up custom functions, organizing folders, setting white balance, or any other feature, the new screen is designed with the professional in mind. Photographers get to their information quickly, so they never lose a shot.