360 pano guru help please

Hello everyone. I got a request to do interior 360 pano virtual tour for apartments. I've never done it before and after reading many articles, I see I need a lot more than what I have. I'll be shooting with a 5DMk2, 15mm fisheye or 16-35L.
I see that I will need a special bracket to have the pivot point to be at my lens instead of camera. They are pretty expensive.
Any thing I should be aware of? Any tutorials, software help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Ben

Im far from a guru, but software is mor important, not sure what angle you fisheye give you, but i suggest you take s shot every 90 degrees from waist level and stitch, forget the 16 it gives too much distortion, or if you do use it take a shoot every thirty degrees waist, high and low and then stitch... I tried about 10 different softwares to get it more or less right... Its a mess make sure you get well paid..

Ps i have been recommended hugin for mac as software, but i never tried it, i used a no name pc software on my mac so i could not swear by it...

I've tried with the 15 shooting landscape at 90 degrees and stitch, failed miserably, LOL. but I didn't have the bracket, so maybe that's it. I now see that it's recommended to shoot in portrait. I've also been seeing that "panoweaver" is a popular software to use.

Try in portrait mode and 45 degrees then stitch to pano open in photshop fix the edges where it stitch and the try a pano "maker" in flash or qt to render the "2d" pano that you have....

I've never done this (yet...), but I just learned about it this week.

This is what you need!

http://photosynth.net/

Looks awesome and pretty easy to do.

Watch this video:
http://photosynth.net/​create.aspx

IMO, At minimum you need PTGUI and a Panosaurus bracket. With this inexpensive set-up, you would be best served with the 16-35. Be sure to bracket and use the HDR feature of PTGUI.

http://gregwired.com/p​ano/pano.htm
http://www.ptgui.com/
Good place for resources here as well
http://www.panoguide.c​om …1EDA914CF11229C​29B1ECEC8A

Ok please contact me by PM if you need further help but here we go:

Use the fisheye, don't even think about the 16-35.
You need a panoramic head, rent one like a Nodal Ninja or a Manfrotto SPH 303 plus or similar.
Use the camera in portrait mode, shoot 6 shots with the camera angled 30 degrees up and 6 shots with the camera angled 30 degrees down.
Find the entrance pupil of your lens at home using a near/far objetc, google for "finding nodal point" the term nodal point is not correct, should be entrance pupil but you need to google nodal point because people use the wrong term.
This will give you plenty of overlap to compensate for parallax errors and you wont need a sepparate nadir and zenit shots.
Remove the tripod and shoot nadir and zenit shots anyway.
To remove the tripod from the pano there are several methods. Google, ask for help, write me, send smoke signals...
About software PtGUI is very good, try it! Hugin is also excellent and is free.

Hope it helps

Given his situation, I would beg to differ. Much better quality, and not much more effort than the 6x6 @30. But everyone has there preferences and opinions. I guess I just wouldn't say "don't even think about it"

-AP- wrote in post #11471850
Given his situation, I would beg to differ. Much better quality, and not much more effort than the 6x6 @30. But everyone has there preferences and opinions. I guess I just wouldn't say "don't even think about it"

The IQ of the Canon 15mm fisheye is similar to the 16-35. And don't even think about distortion because in a 360 pano it doesn't matter, the software corrects that automatically. The result is the same if you use one lens or the other, the cost (in time and pain) is higher with the 16-35.

thanks guys... that's giving me a better understanding of what I'm in for.

It all depends if they want a "real" 360 cos normally the roof and floor aint that interesting. If not use a 14 normal or the sigma 12-24 and make 45 degrees and the stitch cover about all the intetesting details except 100% of floor and ceiling if you dont mount in a cube and shoot the floor / ceiling seperate... As i said before make sure they pay well

they don't need the floor and ceiling really. just show the room. pay is ok, a full dayrate.

Then you are set with the 15 fisheye, do a 45 or even a 90 degree cover of the room from your waist level. Try ptgui, i did mot have too much luck but id 12mm sigma at 45 degrees, your fish eye should cover more, then find the software that works...