Now that 360° photography is a relatively common practice, and after seeing thousands of them in virtual tours, google street view, social networks etc etc , I can establish that there are 3 types of use, all implying different shoot processing:
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– Business or marketing aimed photos/videos: their goal is to show a place ( like a shop, restaurant, museum ) through multiple views to emulate the movement; photos needs to be taken on a tripod to ease the post-processing ( yeah, I know good handheld photographers , I know the philopod etc etc… but most of them needs to be taken with a tripod ). Need to be a professional to be efficient in the production process
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– Drone panoramic photography to show a complete landscape from the sky ; also need to be a professional to be efficient in the production process.
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– Leisure 360° photos or videos : often intended to show that your phone/tablet/theta S can do it…( often
When taken with a tripod shots are most the time taken at the height of the photographer’s head, or slightly below . Places are empty or showing blurred faces /ghost people due to the movements.
When taken with a drone it’s often very high too see the more (limited by the sensor size and the resolution ).
All of those photos can only be viewed online, unless you reproject a portion to make it printable – but you loose the interest of taking the complete 360° field of view.
My idea – taken as a game – is to use 360° not only as an ultra modern demo, but as a yet traditional technic in order to apply standard photo compositing to it :
what about taking your family , but with the good proportions , enabling the final photography/video to be printable? Imagine that in 2 hundred years someone find your 360×180 not on a computer but in a drawer, taking it back to a kind of numerical product to appreciate it ? Why would we forget paper for this kind of photography ?
At the time of the explosion of virtual reality and conditional storytelling be the one that will make the difference with a more stylized kind of 360° shot.
Stay tuned
#360° #portrait #changing-the-uses