Taking the photographs

Capturing the images for a 360x180 panorama part 3

In this series of web pages, I have documented the process which I currently use to create 360x180 degree panoramas. This page details how to take the photographs. The previous two pages described how I set up the tripod and set up the camera.

Taking the photographs

I generally take nine photographs. Using the scale on the tripod head, I don't need to look through the viewfinder after setting up the first shot and leveling the tripod.

• Six photographs at 60 degree angles in the horizontal plane, starting from due north.
• One photograph straight up (the zenith)
• Two photographs straight down (the nadir), one through the tripod and one hand-held in the same position (or as close as possible to that position), with no tripod. I started to use this method following suggestions from Bruce Torrence on Flickr.

When taking photos with people in them, it is worth asking them to stay still, unless you like people to be blurred or want to do a lot of work in editing. Some funny effects can happen if people move through the pictures, they can lose legs, arms or heads, or they can appear more than once. Because I wanted to appear in this photograph of geology students on Carn Brea, I switched places behind the camera with a colleague, who had already appeared further around the circle. The delay gave an opportunity for the students to move, making stitching more difficult than it should have been. This photograph is not on Flickr, but it is displayed on 360cities.net, which has viewers for Flash-enabled devices and for Apple devices.

On the other hand, movement can be fun. My son appears in each of the six horizontal images and the nadir of this panorama from Guerlesquin in France, which is best viewed in the immersive Flash-based viewer.

The next four pages deal with the ways in which I process the photographs to create the 360x180 panoramas and panospheres. The pages are tonemapping, editing the nadir, using Hugin and creating a panosphere.