My experience shooting 360º panoramas on film

the Idea

360º Panoramas as photos and video become more popular. You can find them on Google maps and Yandex not just street view, place them on cards with various businesses to attract clients. During the last 5 years, many panoramic cameras, social networks have learned to display panoramic photos and videos.

I work panoramic photographer Studio Tour-360.ru, I had the idea to shoot a virtual tour using the technology of the past, not on a digital camera, and analog. There are film cameras that can shoot a cylindrical panorama, but spherical panoramas 360×180°, taken on film, I have not found, so, maybe I'll be the first. Then a little bit of theory, practice and, of course, the result.

All the below are made exclusively for fun and has no practical application.

the

Equipment

Usually for shooting panoramas I use a digital camera Canon 5D mark III, fisheye lens Sigma AF 8mm f/3.5 EX DG, panoramic head 360Precision Atome and reliable tripod Benro a1970t.

In order to shoot panorama on film from my set, I need to replace only the camera. Lens and other equipment will be the same. I decided to choose Canon 5. It is the progenitor of Canon digital camera 5D to (D in the title — Digital), I was able to buy it for only 2500₽, in good condition. Despite the fact that the digital camera is now worth about 180 000₽. Seemingly two cameras somewhat similar. The age difference of the cameras for about 24 years.


For example I'll shoot a panorama like on an analog and on a digital camera under identical capture settings, to be able to compare with.

of Course, the camera needs film. My choice fell on Kodak Professional Ektar 100, this fine-grained color negative film with high brightness and color saturation. Fine and smooth grain of the film allows you to scan negatives with high resolution.

the

a Little theory

wide angle lens Sigma 8mm allows you to take pictures with an angle up to 180 degrees.
For shooting full panoramas you must shoot all 4 shots in each direction.
All images must be taken from a single point, if slightly shift the camera, the objects foreground and background will disperse, making the joining impossible. For best results, you need to rotate the camera around the optical center of the lens, to avoid parallax and to achieve the best results when gluing. For this and need a panoramic head.

Since the lens has a sufficiently large viewing angle in one frame at a time can get very bright sky and dark earth. The camera tries equally well reflect both, but the dynamic range of the sensor is not enough to equally well to show the areas in dark and light areas of the frame.

In order for the frame was more uniform, you need to take multiple shots with different exposures.



The first picture clearly visible clouds, and the last grass.
Then shot a series of frames combined into one, where you can see the sky and the earth, thus we get the wide dynamic range (WDR, aka HDR). Below the comparison can be clearly seen the difference.


This picture more accurately reflects how a person sees. Next 4 picture are stitched together in a single 360º panorama.



the

Shooting on film

The technology of shooting on film is exactly the same as in the figure, the only shooting in HDR would be redundant, because the film, unlike a digital camera's sensor can capture a wider dynamic range. However, I decided to err and to make a series of frames, and no mistake, as it turned out, the light meter film camera let me down, and the first 2 shots of the series was too dark.

After shooting a film you want to scan, I had a scanner, but I gave it to the lab. Film scanned by the scanner Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED resolution 4280×2834, it is 1.8 times less than the digital camera resolution 5760×3840. But more and is not necessary, as more details still from my film not get. the link crappy in 100% zoom with a Canon 5D and a scan frame with Canon 5.

the

results and comparison

Next, I gathered two panoramas are aligned and they have the white balance this demo you can compare the two.


As can be seen, the film is inferior in quality to the figure. But the result still exceeded my expectations. It seemed to me that the difference will be more significant.



Thank you for your attention, I would be interested to hear your opinion about this venture.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru