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DSLR and Mirrorless Cameras

The process for capturing a 360° panorama with a 'traditional' camera is also called a 'multi-row spherical panorama'.

Please Note

This documentation is provided as an introduction to the process of creating 360° panoramas. Further research and experimentation is not only recommended, but vital in achieving any usable results.

A 'multi-row spherical panorama' describes a few elements of the image:

  • A 'panorama' is defined as an image with a width greater than is 2x height.
  • 'Multi-row' refers to the technique of capturing multiple rows of images and stitching them together.
  • 'Spherical' or 'spherical projection' denotes that the image covers a full 360° sphere.

The process of creating 'multi-row spherical panoramas' is technically challenging requiring some experimentation and practice to produce a good image. However, the quality and resolution of images can be magnitudes greater than a dedicated 360° Camera when captured and processed correctly.

Equipment​

Any DSLR or Mirrorless camera is capable of creating 360° panoramas. The ability to create a 360° image relies on a workflow and the accompanying equipment rather than the cameras features.

  1. A camera!
  2. A stable tripod
    • A spirit level indicator on the tripod and on the tripod head is ideal.
    • Some cameras also have an electronic level indicator, this can also be useful but not a requirement.
    • Level everything, check and recheck, rotate the head all the way around and angle it up and down to ensure everything is level.
  3. A multi-row panoramic head
    • These are required to achieve a decent result and avoid errors in the capture process.
    • Look for ones with a degrees indicator on all axes.

Other equipment that improves the workflow:

  • Motorised panorama head, speeds up the process of capturing many images.
  • Remote capture device, allows you to take photos without touching the camera to avoid camera shake.

Preparations​

To prepare the camera for capturing the multi-row panorama, there are a few things that must be considered:

  1. Complete leveling of the tripod and camera. This will ensure that the stitched panorama is level.
  2. Determining the 'entrance pupil' of the lens.
    • The entrance pupil is the point of the lens that you want to rotat the camera around. This removes parallax errors and will help with stitching of the images later.
  3. Calculate the required number of images to capture.
    • There are a number of online resources to help with this, here is a calculator using the cameras sensor size, focal length of the lens and overlap percentage of the images.
  4. Experimentation

Stitching the images​

Now that all the images have been captured, its time to stitch them together!

A lot of photo editing software provide workflows for stitching multi-row panoramas.