Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Moving the camera is the single biggest way to add impact and production value to your video and timelapse sequences. In fact, camera movement has almost become expected these days. The Syrp Genie Mini is a fantastic tool which lets you do exactly that. You can check out our recent review here and see for yourself.
Now the Genie Mini has just got even better, especially for stills photographers. The latest software now allows you to easily shoot panoramic stills and 360 degree photos.
GoPro’s 360° VR rig, the Omni, has been hotly anticipated for a while now. The price tag, however, is a little more substantial than had been speculated. Coming in at $5,000 it’s not going to be replacing the Theta S in your pocket any time soon.
But, you do get quite a lot for your money. Inside the hard case, you get the Omni rig itself, 6 GoPro Hero4 Blacks with 32GB microSD cards and a whole bunch of other stuff. It also includes all the software you need to get up and running quickly.
360° video is taking off like crazy. Is it just a fad as some have suggested? Perhaps. But for now, it’s here and it probably will be for some time. The amount of 360° cameras is seems to be growing daily.
From consumer cameras like the Theta S and Gear 360 to expensive cinema solutions, VR has become accessible to all. Even Facebook has gotten in on the act. Somewhere in the middle, sit the action camera rigs. That’s exactly is how Jim Abernethy of Scuba Adventures created this awesome VR video.
Facebook first introduced the world to Surround 360 in April. It’s a 3D 360° camera rig that shoots up to 8K footage per eye. They announced at launch that all the designs and software would be coming to GitHub this summer and it’s finally here.
Built using 17 4MP cameras, it has a total cost of around $30,000. So, it’s not the type of inexpensive weekend project to do with your kids. It will, however, produce significantly better footage than most consumer 360° solutions. At that kind of price, though, you’d expect as much.
Today, as is the case most days, I check out my phone to see that I have an app update. Given the number of iOS apps I’ve used over the years that have suddenly become useless, unstable, or removed significant features with newer versions, I’ve disabled automatic app updates.
Upon seeing that an update was available for the YouTube app, what a joy it was to see that they’ve finally added Google Cardboard support for both 360 degree videos using the phone’s built in accelerometers, as well as 3D video!
Looking more like a giant eyeball than a camera, Samsung have today entered into the 360 degree arena with the announcement of the Samsung Gear 360 camera.
Two lenses seems to be becoming the standard when it comes to 360 degree cameras, as opposed to bolting half a dozen cameras on a rig, and we’ve seen this already in cameras like the Ricoh Theta S.
This camera also conforms to that new standard with a pair of f/2.0 lenses, each covering an extremely wide 195 degree field of view for full 360 degree total coverage.
This time last year we wrote about the mind-blowing 8-terapixel 360-degree interactive virtual tour of Dubai, simply called Dubai360.
Celebrating the 1 year anniversary of the incredible project, Gerald Donovan has updated his famous Burj Khalifa pinnacle shot. The new image, and largest ever taken in Dubai, is 45 gigapixels in size and offers improved visibility.
Nikon was on fire yesterday with the release of the D5 and D500, but some of the thunder was no doubt stolen by the unexpected pre-announcement of the KeyMission 360.
The upcoming virtual-reality oriented action camera captures 360° video in 4K, above or up to 100 feet below the water surface, and seems to be in an excellent position to make an impact on the action cam and VR markets.
Talk is cheap though and good looks can be deceiving, so here are the first video samples captured with the KeyMission 360, showing off the camera’s impressive capabilities.
Ever since DSLRs became cheap enough we’ve been seeing our share of time slice (AKA Bullet Time) projects. And cheap gopros enable even less of an entrance barrier into the time slice world. But some projects are just pure fun and are worth sharing.
DP Mitch Martinez uses an array of 48 Canon DSLR cameras to create a full 360° circle around a model. This enables a single shot to capture the model from all angles, and to compose a bullet-time like short video.
Photographic technology keeps getting better and better while society keeps getting dumber and dumber. But, perhaps we’ll hash out some of those specifics at a later date and time.
That being said, the new influx of giant gigapixel images is fascinating, whether it’s exploring nature or cities. Now these images are being brought onto a more personal level, complete with the capabilities to tag yourself and friends in these massive images. Blakeway Gigapixel, purveyors of giant, 360-degree panoramic photos, is pushing their new service of creating “exciting interactive social media engagements within a huge multi-gigapixel image,” and despite the blatant commercialization undertones, it’s still pretty cool.
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