Transcripts
1. Ultimate 360º Photography Guide: Shoot Like a Pro: Hello, guys. Welcome
to my new class, shooting a 360 like a pro. In this class, we are going
to learn how to shoot 360 photography with a DSLR
or a mirrorless camera, not the Is 360 cameras, not talk about a brand, but those cameras that you take one shot and it
takes the whole shot. Both sides are all around, but we are going to learn
how to do it like a pro. So we're going to use
this system. So who am I? I am a professional
photographer. I've been so since 2010. I own my own business. It's called amplified Creations, and we do a lot
of virtual tours. So this is a topic that
is very close to me. We do this almost
every single day. So I know what I'm
talking about. We do this a lot. So this is YM. I'm a professional photographer, and I'm specialized amongst
other things in 360 shots. Necessary equipment for this
class is a bit more complex, not a simple camera. You need a tripod. As you can see, you need
what's called a panel head, and you need a wide angle lens. In this tutorial, I'm going
to show you how to do it the simplest way with
a 7.5 millimeter lens, fish eye lens, but it
can be done with up to, I'd say, 16 millimeters, so you will need one
of those lenses. So camera, one of those
wide angle lenses, a panel and a tripod. Those are the essentials
for this class. Of course, you are going to also need in terms of software, something that can stitch all of these together
and edit it. Personally, I use PTG for the
stitching of my raw shots, let's say, and then I use Lightroom or Photoshop
to edit them. Also, use Affinity Photo to
remove the tripod because Photoshop doesn't allow to manipulate an image like a 360. You will always see
the Acurangular image and you can't say, navigate it like a 360, so it's harder to work. So if you can, affinity photo, if you can't will work. So, what are we going to do? You're going to learn
how to shoot it, how to shoot the actual photo, how to take the necessary shots, and also how to edit them. It's a very complex process, but as soon as you
understand it, and as soon as you
know how it works, it's very easy to do it again and again and
again and again and again, so you can easily create
a virtual tour or simply have 360 shots
for whatever you want. Let's do this and see you in
the next video. Let's go.
2. Actually Shooting 360º: Pro Photography Tips for Stunning Virtual Tours: So, welcome to my first lesson in shooting a 360 Like a Pro. In this lesson, we are
going to learn how to actually take the
shot like a pro, not using one of
those insta cameras, not talking about the brand,
talking about cameras that should instantly
the whole shot. So we are going to learn how to shoot it like
an actual pro and do it so you can extract
the most definition, the most dynamic range, have it the most control
that you want for your shot this way
because you know how to handle a photographic
camera or a photo camera, you know how to set
those parameters. This type of shooting the 360, it's not much different. Let's get into it. First of
all, what do you need to do? You need to align the
camera in your panel head. You need to set up your tripod. That's the first
thing, of course. Then usually tripods come with a head that
you need to remove. If not, good. One last
step for you to take. I usually take my leveling
head because it's easier if the tripod is slightly inclined or not
perfectly levelled. It's easier to do
minor corrections. So I usually take it. Not all floors on the 360 that you're going to
do are perfectly leveled. Just yesterday, I did a job on a museum that the house was
more than 100-years-old, so the floors were not
leveled and you don't want a 360 that instead of straight
lines as like waves. So it's an advice. It's not necessary
because you can do this with the tripod legs, open one more than another, and you can level it that way. But it's a bit more
time consuming and a bit harder and it's
not as easy to do. If you can get one of
these leveling heads. If you can't, that's fine. There's no mandatory, there's
no obligation to get one. You can still do the 360 shots. Next, the penu head, there are multiple pano
heads more simple, more complex, some are
automated, some are not. I still work with
a non automated. I not so great results
with an automated. I like to do things
myself and keep checking if quality is up to
my standards while shooting, so I don't want it to
be too much automated. But if you want to save time
and risk it, that's fine. There are automated heads. I'm going to show you how to use a non automated pano head. So it's not that complex
to set up your pano head. And if you set it for the particular camera
with a particular lens, and you don't move the knobs, let's say, you'll understand
what I'm saying in a minute. If you don't move the knobs from place to place
when let's say today you are working
here tomorrow you'll be working 200 kilometers away. If you don't change the knobs, you get there with the
same camera and same lens, and it's already set up. So you set it up once, and as long as you don't
change your camera lens setup, it's perfectly set up. So that's one good thing. If you want, you
can always check. I always check just
as a precaution, but it's not necessary. As long as you don't change
your lens or camera. So how do we configure, set up our pano head? First of all, you point
your camera down. All of them have this feature. You want, in this case, I don't know how to
call this the triangle, the drawing, whatever, to be in that center of your image. It doesn't need to be in focus. It just helps if you
center it in focus. And for that, in this
particular penohad, you screw the
drawing, let's say, and you move it forward
or backwards until it's perfectly centered on your camera while
pointing it down. Next, the part that people
find more confusing, but it's actually very simple. The camera needs to rotate
on its nodle point. And the noddle point, it's
not easy to understand, but it's easy to get there. What I do is set up my tripod. I always take a monopod
with me, and I set it up. Let's say I have my tripod
two or 3 meters away, I set up my monopod and
let's say ten, 15, 20, 50 meters away, there's straight line from a
door like a chimney, something that is straight. And what you want to do
is align in my case, the monopath with
the straight line while dead center in the
camera. Makes sense. You want both to be
in the same line. You don't want it to be
like this or like this, you want it in the same line. Okay? Now, the part that
confuses some people, what you're going to do
is rotate the panel head until it's barely
visible on your camera, and then you are going to
zoom in and while it's barely visible right on
the edge of your lens. So if it's 7.5 millimeter lens, it's about 90 degrees
a little bit less. You can check if
it's still aligned. It needs to be still aligned. If it's not, what
you're going to do is you see where the camera
is screwed in here. On the top, you unscrew
this support and move it to the
back or move it to the front by little increments, and you're going to see that while the two lines that should be aligned are in the limit
of your viewing angle, let's say, they will start to align as you move
front and back. This is how you align
to the noddle point. When you align, let's say, in the left extremity, do exactly the same
on the right one. You're going to go
tilt the pano head all the way to the
other side when it's just barely visible again, right in the edge of your image, and you need to have
it aligned again. If it's not, move it just slightly to the back or
to the front until it is. And you're going to do
this back and forward until it is fully aligned. There will be a point
when it is fully aligned, all the way to the
left, all the way to the right, and
in the dead center. So that's when you know you have all this setup all the pano
head setup perfectly aligned. That's how you know. And
from there, start shooting. There are some
considerations to have, and let me tell you, first one, with a wider lens, you need less shots. Make sense? For example, I use a 7.5 millimeter lens when I
want faster working time. Why? Because I need four
shots and one to the top. That's all I need
for each 360 image. That's four shots, 90 degree
turns and one to the top. It's easier to stitch, and also it eliminates the margin of error because
there are only five, if I'm counting correctly, five stitch lines
across your 360 image. Now. If you say no, but I want more detail and I want people to be able
to zoom in further. Okay, so now we're going to use, let's say, a 16 millimeter lens. This one I have here,
I have used it. It's an 18 millimeter
lens. It works. It works perfectly. What you need to do is instead of doing 90 degree turns
on your pano head, you are going to do
60 degree turns. Yeah, so it takes more
shots to go around, and you need to take
in consideration that not only you need more shots
in the horizontal plane, you also need more shots
in the vertical plane. 7.5 millimeter, you can do four shots because it takes everything
from top to bottom, and it takes, let's say, 90 degrees of image. With a longer distance, longer focal distance,
you need more shots. And with my 18 millimeter, what I do is turn the
camera 45 degrees down. And shoot all the way around
at 60 degree intervals. Then I turn it 45 degrees up, shoot it at 60 degree intervals. Then I shoot one
straight up just to fill in if you have
something on the ceiling. If it's a completely
white ceiling or a completely blue sky
or something like that, the top shot usually doesn't get recognized by the software that will stitch
it all together. Always take it just in case because you can always
end up not using it. So it's up to you, but I always take it anyway. In this tutorial, we are
going to keep it simple and keep it to the 7.5
millimeter lens. Just because it's
an entry point, and now we'll
explain everything. But you can easily, after you understand how it
works with a 7.5 millimeter, you can easily scale up
your work and work with longer focal distance
if that's what you find that 7.5
millimeters on this, this is a 73. So it's a 24 megapixel camera. The end result is about a
little over 100 megapixels per shot per 360 shot. I will call it compiled shot. If you want more definition, you have the choice of getting a longer focal distance
because it zoom in, so it will have more detail, or you can use a body
with more megapixels. If I use this body, this is a seven R five. So it's 61 megapixels. The shot will be much, much, much bigger in terms of
definition and megapixels. So if I want that, I
just use another body, put the 7.5 millimeter, and I still have
the ease of use of the four shots per
turn per 360 photo. If I still want more quality
and more definition, I can always put the 18
millimeter lens on my R five, and then I will have
a very heavy image, very heavy on the details. It always depends on
what you're doing. If let's say you want your 360 shots or your two
to have maximum quality, but you are only going
to do ten shots, 15 shots, 20 shots. Maximum, I would say, Okay, in that case, go for the 18 millimeter lens or something along those lines. If you want just a tour
with high quality, both are still high quality. Just one allows more
zoom than the other. Okay? If you still want a
very high quality shot, but time is an issue. Let's say you have one
day to take pictures of a museum and you need
more than 100 shots, maybe the 7.5 is
the way to go. Why? Because not only, it
will be much faster, you won't lose
that much quality, but you will only take four
shots and one to the top. When I say four shots, it's always times three, and I will explain
why in a second, but you only take four shots. And if you do this with
18 millimeter, you take, if I'm not mistaken, six shots plus six
shots plus one. So we are talking about 146
plus six, 12, 13 shots. My math is terrible.
I'm sorry. Versus five. So it's a big difference, especially when you're doing
three shots per angle. What do I mean by
this? Back to the 7.5, one shot, two shots, three shots, four shots. But you want most
quality possible. What you're going
to do is HDR shot. Yeah. So every time
you press the shutter, there's a normal exposure. You set it at zero
as most as possible, and then your camera will
take that shot at zero, one, at let's say minus
two, one at plus two. One at minus three,
one at plus three, you choose the interval. I usually work at minus
two and plus two. I think that's a big
enough dynamic range. Bigger than that, for me
personally, starts to look fake. I don't really like it, but do, there's no wrong way. You just keep in mind
that it's the difference between the darker points and
the lighter points. So do. I personally do minus
two and plus two. Oh, you do four shots
times three because HDR, and then you do one shot to the top times three because HDR. So you can see it fills
your cards really, really, really quickly, especially if you're doing 61 megapixel shots. So keep that in mind. I never had an issue
with battery life, but it depends on your gear, but cards might be an issue. So take big cards, 128 gigabytes and up and
always take at least two. That's my advice. Of course, it depends on your camera. It depends on your gear.
It depends on your fear shooting with a 7.5 or
with an 18 millimeter. It depends on a
variety of things, but rule of thumb, do that. So now that this is all done, basic settings of your camera. I always start with ISO 400. I think it's the sweet spot. You don't get any noise at ISO 400 with
the modern camera, isn't there, just isn't there. And I set it to about
F eight to F nine. Okay? So you have
a lot in focus. Then you set manual
focus, very important. You don't want it to keep
auto focus in between shots. No, manual focus. And you focus as close to
possible on your subject. Let's say you're
shooting a museum and you take most of your shots, let's say at 2 meters distance from your subject every time. So you set your manual
focus to about 2 meters. Of course, at least with Sony, we have that red dots that
help with the focusing. Other brands, I'm sure, have other similar systems. So manual focus and you
focus on that shutter speed. It's the one variable
that doesn't matter. Meaning you set your ISO, you set your aperture, very important because you want most of your shot in focus, and then the shutter
speed is what remains. So in a very dark room, you can have a shutter
speed of one or 2 seconds. In a very light room, you can have a shutter
speed of 1/250. What matters is you don't
change the aperture. You don't change
the focal distance. You can adjust the eso, but I advise you
not to because you start to introduce grain or remove in the
middle of your work. So keep your aperture the same, keep your
eyes are the same. What you change to
compensate for the lack or too much light is
your shutter speed. That's my advice. And then if it all works nicely, you'll end up with
a bunch of rows in your camera that you'll need to import into your computer and work them get a 360 shot. 60 shot is only 360, meaning a 360 shot is
only 360 navigable. If you put it somewhere that understands what is an
equirectangular shot. Equirectangular shot
is a shot two by one. Usually, I export mine at
15,000 by 7.5 thousand. You do you. You can scale up, scale down, you do as you wish. I find it's a sweet
spot for going through a museum or a house or something and not
lose too much detail. But if, for example, you need the most, most most detail, of course, you export them higher. If you don't need as
much and you need to save up on server space
or something like that, you save it a bit lower. But that's the next lesson. Now that we know how to
shoot, we know the settings. We know how to set
up our pen head. Let's go to the next lesson
and learn how to edit these photos in your computer
and make them look pretty. Okay? So let's do this. See you in the next lesson.
3. Mastering 360º Editing: From RAW to a Polished Virtual Experience: Hello, guys. Welcome to my class shooting
a 360 like a pro. Today, we are going
to learn how to edit and all the steps necessary
to make your shots. All of them, it's not only one, all of them into a 360 image. So I'm going to do exactly like I do for my
work, for myself. There are parts here
that you can ignore. I will tell you when or
what you can ignore. But let's do this. This will be a big lesson, so let's dive into it. So you are now seeing
my screen, right? You see that I have
PettigiPro license. It's my software to
stitch my images. There are a bunch
of other softwares, but this one I
particularly like, and this is the one I will teach you how to use because
in my opinion, it's honestly the best that
you can do with the software. So I will pick a bunch of
images from my last work. I always do this. I
always do images. And then, as you can see, I always shoot dark, useless images, image, sorry, so I can separate the image. As you can see, the next
images are all content. This one is like a
separator for me visually, so it's easier to have, Okay, this is a 360 shot, blank image or
black, in this case. This is 360 shot. Back. This is a 36 shot. It's easier for me to
organize in my head. If you have another way, of course, be my guest. This is the way I found
easier and quicker on the fields to do and just put my end on top of my
length without touching it, of course, and take a shot. It's ruined shot, but it
helps me organize my work. So I can easily come here
and notice these items, these 15 shots will
make 1360 shot. So let's drag this into
Petty gi. I didn't work. Let's drag this into the
area that it's necessary. So now you see all
the shots are here, all the 15 shots. And here is just a rough image that will compile as
soon as I start working. But let's do this step by step. When you become proficient, you can always go to
file, apply template. I have two templates, one for my 18 millimeter lens and one
for my 7.5 millimeter lens. I will not do this today, so you can see all the
steps that I usually take. Okay? So first of all, we took HDR shot. So in step number
two, set up panorama, we're going to enable HDR mode, merge bracketed images to HDR and link the
positions. Okay. So it now knows that actually
there's only five images. Each contains three images
regarding minus twoiV, zero, and plus two V. So we
now have five HDR shots. Now, as soon as I click Align, this panorama editor in the back will have all
the images aligned. So line and you see now we have a 360
shot almost perfect, except it isn't one thing
that my lens is a fish eye. So one thing it
does that I don't really like is it
adds a little blur. You can see this blue here
on the stitch lines, yes. So what we do is come to crop, and this circle lets
Put it a bit smaller, and as you can see,
no more blues. The blues are fixed. So back to project assistant, run optimizer just because we
crop every single image to that Zoom that if you do this all and save
it as a template, it will automatically
crop all your images. So that's why I
have templates per lens or meaning per
camera per lens. Okay? So now that
it's all stitched up. I like to come to panorama
editor and see my panorama. This magnifying glass here
allows me to see the details, which is very important for me. I don't want to have details with this glow that I will teach you how
to remove. You see? I hope it does come
through in the stream, but her hair has
a yellowish glow. We will fix this. Don't worry. So projection. Accurate
angular image 360 by 180. Great. Blending. In here, since I have total faith in
my work, I will say this. I don't want the optimum seams. What is optimum sims? You see that this is all
crooked, not a straight line. Why? Because the software found that this was the best
line to join the images. But since I'm so sure that with this lens
and this camera, they are perfectly aligned. I'm going to remove
this and you will see now there are straight lines
where the shots I took. So these are exactly
the shots I took. Sometimes you need to
find the optimum sims, sometimes you don't do you
need to find optimum sims? Do you see this top light bar? Sometimes it's crooked or it doesn't really align
between two images, you come and find optimum sims. If not, for me, I remove it. I don't really like it. Okay?
That's my take on this. Okay? So next thing,
numerical transform. You can shift the panorama, you can align it, et
cetera, et cetera. I like to do this
while I should. So you see my number
one shot is centered to where I want it to start or where I want
the middle to be. Okay? So, no need to move there unless you want to change
something. Tone mapping. Now, this is something
I found out recently, and tone mapping is something
that was ruining my shots. Tone mapping is a system that can I explain this that merges the light
in all the images, so it doesn't appear that on the line where
it changes image, the exposure is different. Okay? So what I like
to do is remove tone mapping and come
to exposure fusion. You can't have both.
Let's see. I apply this. It takes exposure
fusion out of the game. I apply exposure
fusion, it changes. I like exposure fusion most. Why? No more glow in the air. I don't know if you can
see this, but trust me, there is no more
glow in her hair, and this is especially
complicated when you have lots of texts
written in your walls. For example, in museums, sometimes lots of texts
for people to read, and you don't want the text
to have an outer line. So it's actually harder to read. So you apply exposure fusion
instead of tone mapping. Okay, tone mapping
is more appealing. It's brighter, but tone fusion lets me adjust the values,
although I never do. What I do is change
the algorithm to PTG the last one, 12.20. I don't know if the new version, which I don't yet have
13 as a new algorithm, but 12 works just fine for me. As you can see, there's a big difference in
terms of lighting, and you can always change. I never change this
because in the end, what I will do, let's go
just to see post process. No need to work here because
we are going to work in either Photoshop or Lightroom.
No need to do this. I find Pettig is
great as a stitcher, not as an editor, if
you know what I mean. So this for me, is very nice. So now what we're going to do, we are going to go
to the last one because no more
things are needed. The source images all are used. I told you in the last video if you have a completely
white ceiling, you would have a nearer
rear of your ceiling shot. No such case. Lens settings, you set up your lens. I camera doesn't
automatically set it up, it's automatically set up. The crop you removed the bluish tint around
the fish eye, so great. Mask not need to come here. Parameters don't
need to come here. Control points if you see
the images that don't align, and this is very rare unless you do two fewer
images per lens. In this lens, I need four. In the other 18 millimeter lens, I need about six per row. So if I did, let's
say, four or five, probably I couldn't
align them as well, so I could come
here and say, Okay, this point here is the
same as this point here. It's not. But you
understand what I mean. Compare the points, and then the software would
know how to stitch. Optimizer, you don't need, it works perfectly. HDR, it's off. As you see, noise
floor is turned off because we turned on exposure fusion instead
of tone mapping. Okay? Project settings,
bunch of settings. Don't need to worry about them. Preview. Don't need
to worry metadata. Don't need to worry.
Now, what you need to worry is create panorama. Why? Because it sets up
a default, let's say, with a night
depending on what was merged or how much was
merged between each image. What I'd like to do is put some even numbers
or wrong numbers, 15,000 by 7.5 thousand. It's more than 100%, but I don't really care. It's not something that Bothers me. And on JPEG, what I usually do is TIF. I want to work it as a TIF and with as much
quality as possible. I can change this to 16 bits, but for this case, no need. Now, you can do an HDR
panorama if you work EXR file, but I don't find
there's a need, okay? So a TIF LDR is
more than enough. So we're going to save
this to my desktop, okay? And create panorama. So it's creating a TF
here, is stitching. On apple one Max
with 64 gigabytes. So this is the speed that you can expect from a
machine like this. Now, we have our TIF here. My next step, open it
up with Affinity Photo. Why? Because it's the software I use to remove the tripod. You can see in the panorama, the tripod is all stretched out. So it's a pain to remove this in any software
that doesn't allow you to view
it as a 360 image. So while Affinity
Photo opens up, okay? It's here, it's open,
as you can see, what I can do is layer
life projection, a queer rectangular projection. Sorry, my English is terrible, and now it allows me to
see it as a 360 image. That's what's so great
about affinity photo. Okay? I love it for this fact and other
facts, but for this fact. Now, I point down, and then I come to this
tool I'm just going to open it so you can see what it's called in
painting brush tool. Okay? And I paint
like the tripod. In here, we might have
to fix the floor, but it's a pattern,
so it's easy. But I'm not going
to do that. Even if it comes out a bit wonky, but it's almost perfect. This line is not, but all the rest is perfect. And now, go to layer life
projection, remove projection. And as quick as that,
I'm going to save it. Like that, we have a clean
floor from affinity photo. That's it as fast as it goes. So you can work on it
wherever you want. Okay? So you can now
go into light room. You can now go into
whatever you want. And edit your colors, put more contrast,
more saturation, do whatever you want. This part, I'm not
going to show you. Otherwise, the video would be insanely large because
it's up to you. You know how to edit photos, so it's up to you. You can do this in
affinity photo. This is an editing software. So you can actually
do this here. If you have this software. You can always go to Photoshop, Light room whatever you want. Or if you're happy
with how it is, you can use it as is an expertise and use
it as a 360 image. Of course, this was a very fast tutorial on
how to work the image, but I think it was necessary, very necessary to work
this Pettig part. I don't know how
to pronounce it. I'm sorry. The peti
gi part because I've lost a lot of time to
get to these settings. I had a hard time finding
out why some things at the glow around letters around
there that those things. So it took me a long time
to get to these settings. So I thought it was necessary to teach you how
to get there more easily. So this is how you
should 360 like a pro. If you have any questions, don't forget, leave them. I will try to answer as
easy or as fast as I can. And yeah, that's it. Don't forget to do
the project part, and I'll see you
in the next one, guys, thanks for watching.
Pedro Thomaz, Pro-Photographer
