![]() I focus on infinity setting the lens to manual focus so the camera doesn’t adjust it between shots. ![]() As you are capturing a full spherical image it is important that the camera settings are the same for each direction, hence manual is a must. Fortunately, the 5ds allows you to automatically bracket the images so you set the mean exposure for the shot and it will automatically adjust the exposure to the set steps above and below this. This means that a full high dynamic range photosphere is made up of as many as 20 single photographs. When actually shooting the photospheres I like to capture the full dynamic range of the scene which invariably means taking 3 to 5 shots at stepped exposure values for each of the four directions making up the photosphere. Of course the entire rig with tripod and shutter release costs £4200 (the Theta S costs £ 299 -)). With this rig a 180 x 165-degree photosphere can be produced with just four photos. The camera and lens are mounted on a Nodal Ninja Ultimate R20 tripod head, this is a specialist head for spherical photography which holds the camera at a 7.5-degree upwards angle and has fixed stops at 90 degree angles allowing the camera to be rotated quickly between shots. I use the lens at the 8mm setting which produces a 180-degree circular fisheye image. My equipment of choice is a Canon 5DS, which is a 50 Megapixel camera, fitted with a Canon EF 8-15mm Fish eye lens. However, quality comes at a price as these images take processing. The images I like to work with are 10000 x 5000 pixels hence there is really no comparison, I could produce bigger but this size I believe balances quality with a fast download speed. The Ricoh Theta S is a great camera but if you’ve been used to working with DSLRs it’s a big compromise on quality. This has opened the doors to photospheres produced on point and shoot 360 cameras such as the Ricoh Theta S which produces a 5376 x 2688-pixel image, (great for Facebook with its max dimension’s being 6000 x 3000 pixels). Now recently Google have lowered the requirements for the image quality that is acceptable for these tours, originally they required 8000 x 4000 pixel but have now dropped this to 5300 x 2650 pixels. I have achieved the Status of being a Google Trusted photographer, so I can shoot and upload businesses to Google Street view. One of the services I offer is shooting ‘’see inside’’ tours for Google. I know I could do things quicker and easier but I just cannot bring myself to compromise on the quality. I have an obsession with trying to produce the best work I can and am seldom happy with my output.
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