Don Stauffer in Minnesota <> wrote:
> Does anybody know how this spherical photography is done and what kind of
> equipment do you need to do it? From those amazing pictures I could say that
> it cannot be done by stitching, because there are moving objects in the
> pictures which would be impossible to stitch together. It looks to me like
> the picture is taken as a one shot through spherical mirror (one-way) or
> something like this.
> http://www.sphericalphoto.com/flash.html
>
> I would appreciate any links to learn more.
> Thanks
> Jan
If you inspect all the images on that page, you'll see that all of them
could easily be done using a 360° panorama lens or a set of panorama
cameras with synchronized shutters pointing in several directions at
once (or indeed with a number of normal cameras with very wide angle
lenses linked in the same way), with the addition of a shot or two
straight up with a normal or fisheye or turning the 360° lens 90° on
its side.
Not all the images there even _have_ the overhead component, so it
becomes even more probable that that is how they are made - even the
ones _with_ an overhead portion, that overhead portion is clearly a
static one (ceiling, cloudy sky, etc.), with nothing moving rapidly
enough to not be successfully computer adjusted and stitched into a
360° panorama.
Not too long ago I watched a guy use a homemade rig he had made just to
do that - it was a sheet of 1/2" plywood, on which he had mounted 4
quick release plates for 4 cameras pointing at 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°
with respect to dead center. He had what he called a "triple tripod"
(3 tripods at the same time) to support the plywood and level it
perfectly, using two of those electronic levels that Home Depot sells
which were mounted on the underside of the plywoood - the beeping from
which was highly annoying in the up-till-then peaceful location until
he finally got it leveled to his satisfaction and turned them off (and
I still have no idea why he mounted them instead of just using one,
settting it in various locations and directions until he was
satisfied). He had rigged up 4 cable remotes to 4 identical (3 rented)
cameras and to an electronic switch unit that looked like it came out
of a garage door opener, so that they would all fire simultaneously.
He locked off all the cameras to the same settings, stepped behind a
large tree, and pressed his [I suppose] garage door remote.
Some people will stop at nothing to attempt be creative. Rube Goldberg
would have been proud. Never did see the image(s), though, so I can't
tell to what extent he was successful. Theoretically, it should have
worked fine, as long as he or his stitching program was good enough to
compensate for the perspective extremes at the edges of the wide angle
shots.
Mind you, this was all to photograph a landscape scene - no moving
components. I have absolutely no idea why he didn't just use one
camera on a tripod and pan it. I never had the nerve to ask him such a
silly question (maybe because my jaw was hanging open the entire time,
and I was trying not to giggle - giggling tends to ruin your image in a
situation like that). Perhaps he was doing proof-of-concept for an
actual action scene, but why he had to do it way out in the
pucker-brush, I don't know.
Likely those pictures you saw were the result of either something
similar but much higher tech, or a true 360° lens.
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