San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
HOW TO SHOOT PRO-QUALITY 360-DEGREE PANORAMAS.
Taking a photo with a 360-degree camera is a little like Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa — and everything around her in every direction, including the painter — on the inside of a giant sphere. And that’s just a photo.
Video in 360 requires a whole other analogy. Put simply, a 360 camera, such as the Ricoh Theta V or GoPro’s Fusion, is the viewer’s head. You put the camera in a scene, and the viewer gets to look around: By swiping the finished video, the viewer is swiveling his or her head just as you would in real life. More than that, the viewer can zoom in or out of a scene.
“It becomes the person’s point of view,” says Jesse Casman, a co-organizer of Theta360.guide, a developer community for Ricoh’s Theta 360 cameras. “The first thing you need to understand is that it’s different from a normal camera. It’s great for being at the center of things, if there’s a group of people or at a sightseeing spot.”
Supposedly the strength of 360 video is that it transports the viewer to the closest approximation of being there that you can get with video. Which means there are few better uses for it than travel videos, if only because you’re offering to transport viewers to places they probably haven’t been and want to see. It’s also about giving the control to viewers. They can direct the scene by their choices of where to swivel, pan and zoom. A side note: 360-degree camera is a bit of a misnomer because technically, it means you can see in every direction, but on just one plane. What we’re talking about is
spherical video or photography, meaning every direction from a fixed point. That said, 360 video has become the generally accepted term, so that’s what we’ll use here.
What follows are some basic suggestions from Casman, the YouTube Creators channel and other 360 camera experts:
The location is a character:
If the video is entirely about you, go ahead and shoot with your mobile phone instead. But if you’re trying to put the viewer into another place, the place itself has to be a big focus of the video and should, therefore, be interesting. Also, pay attention to details around you. You could be shooting the Bellagio fountain in Las Vegas in front of you, but behind you is one of those billboard trucks advertising prostitutes to your room in 30 minutes.
Get on the stick: Depending on the brand and model of camera, if you’re holding it in your hand, your hand will be the biggest object in the video/photo. “Use it with a short tripod,” says Casman, “so you don’t get the claw-like hand in the picture.” Also, don’t be afraid to set the camera on a tripod at eye level and, if it’s a busy place (St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, for instance), just stand back and let it run. Viewers can explore the overall scenery at their pace, but also get to do some peoplewatching.
Be aware of stitch zones:
If the camera you’re using has two wide-angle lenses (front and back), there are areas of overlap where the image is stitched together digitally. Unfortunately, because there is a bit of overlap, the person or subject in that zone might be blurred, choppy or dropped out altogether.
Let viewers be explorers:
Because 360 video allows viewers to look around by swiping left, right, up and down, give them time to do it. When you’re in one location, stay with the scene long enough for viewers to explore before cutting to another scene.
Eye height, but not too close:
Because 360 video is supposed to re-create what a person sees, says Casman, the video works best if the camera is at eye level and is level with the horizon. Because you want to treat the camera like a person, you don’t want to have someone too close because it creates the feeling that the person is invading the viewer’s personal space.
Don’t turn around or pan:
The camera should stay pointed in one direction; the viewer has the control to see what’s behind or off to the sides if they want, so let them keep that power.
Plan for how people are going to view it:
On a normal media player, your 360 video or photo will be the shape of several blankets hastily stretched on the floor at odd angles. The 360 video needs to be viewed correctly either in the program it was created in, a program for editing 360 video or at a site that specifically handles 360 video, such as Facebook, Vimeo or YouTube, although not Instagram. Read the best practices at each site for file size (which for obvious reasons can be enormous) and resolution. (Video in 4K, for instance, is often too large to view or edit on a mobile device.) Be prepared also to download the manufacturer’s editing or converting programs for your laptop.
Experiment:
Shoot photos and video and remember what you did — how you held the camera and where — and consider what works and what doesn’t. The effect of 360 isn’t for every viewer, but there are ways to make the effect less (or more) extreme.