Spherical Panorama?

[Simply Ravishing]

Any idea how these are done??? Kinda cool

http://www.utah3d.net/index.html#top_of_page

[sparkin]

Any idea how these are done??? Kinda cool

http://www.utah3d.net/index.html#top_of_page

You need to have enough contiguous pictures to cover the whole 360° around, up and down. These are stitched with one of many programs (PTGui, Hugin, PTMac etc. etc.). The format of the final file may depend to some extent on what you intend to use as a viewer, but I usually use a free program called MakeCubic along with PTMac. The site you link to looks as if it used a program called Pleinpot to make the full-screen views.

Most often the pictures used are taken by rotating the camera about the point that minimizes parallax errors, using a special tripod head. You can buy these, or even make them yourself. Here's a couple of examples that I made:

http://xray.uky.edu/people_documents/Parkin/panohead/panohead.html

http://xray.uky.edu/people_documents/Parkin/panohead_mk2/panohead_2_4.jpg

The first one is solid as a rock, and the link has a description of the build. The second is smaller, lighter, more adjustable and has a smaller footprint, but is slightly less rigid. I use the smaller one mainly on a monopod now. Elsewhere on my site there's a few of my 360° panos.

It's a lot of fun, and really not that difficult - you should give it a try.

[kingdaddy]

Why do you need all that to do 360°? Why not a simple pan head and an L-bracket?

[sparkin]

Why do you need all that to do 360°? Why not a simple pan head and an L-bracket?

It makes it much easier to get a seamless stitch. If there is anything up close in the foreground, and you don't rotate precisely about the no-parallax point, then it can be hours of work to join the images seamlessly. This is especially true if you use a fisheye lens to minimize the number of images you need. If you have a well-functioning panohead, and a properly calibrated lens, then it's often an easy ten minute job. I learned this the hard way! Also, I'm cheap, which is why I made my own panohead.

[kingdaddy]

Well I'm on-board now, thanks for the info, I've built my own DIY pano setup. Couldn't stomach the price of the RSS system.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=833187