Can anyone help me make a 360 pano of the inside of a club / building?

[Coppatop85]

Hey everyone. I work for a concert venue, and wanted to see if I could do a 360 degree panoramic photo of the inside of the venue.

I tried it today, and here is what I did.

Set up a Tokina fisheye @ 10mm in portrait orientation on a manfrotto tripod/head. It is not a panoramic head, just a 3 way tilt head. I leveled the tripod, set exposure, and began shooting.

I took about 7 images and made sure there was plenty of overlap.

I repeated this process in landscape orientation, and repeated the process again in both orientations with a 17-55 IS @ 17mm.

When I went home and tried to use photomerge in CS4 (set it on automatic mode) I got garbage results. Photoshop only seemed to use about half to 3/4ths of the pictures I took, and just stuck the other ones on the side.

I seemed to get the best results with the 17mm in landscape orientation, but it was still awful -- clear seams, images not lined up, and not a 360 degree view.

What am I doing wrong here -- is it an equipment thing? I have seen people say you need a panoramic head, but I have also seen people say they have done this hand held. Do I need more overlap? Do I need different software?

I want to try again, so if anyone has any insights, it would be very helpful!

[cgardinerphotos]

Well LOTS of overlap is not necessarily the best thing to do. sometimes this will confuse automatic stitching programs.

if you are using cs4 there should be an option in the photomerge dialog with a choice from :
-auto orientation
-manual
-panning
-cylindrical
-custom

do it in custom. you will get a dialog with each image selectable as its own square you can move around with the arrow keys (is best). It should be 'smart' about blending itself in if you are moving it to the right areas.
save your configuration before you tell it to stitch, it will save you from the process again if it fails.
also make sure you have the 'blend layers together' checkbox checked.