Creating QuickTime VR (QTVR) Panorama Movies

What You Need to Create QTVR Pano Movies

1. A suitable camera for taking stills. This would include film cameras, digital still cameras, and even video cameras. A wide angle lens is recommended for QTVR Panoramas (Panos), because it gives the most vertical coverage. This tutorial will show how a Pano would be shot using a Kodak DC50 digital camera.
2. A way of getting your pictures onto the computer. Photos taken with a film camera may be scanned, or put onto a Kodak PhotoCD (recommended). Digital cameras interface with your computer to "download" the pictures they have stored in the camera's memory or on flash memory cards. Video stills may be digitized using a video input card on the computer and suitable software.
3. A sturdy tripod with a tripod head that allows you to take pictures at specific angular increments and in portrait orientation (vertical). Some companies, such as Kaidan and Peace River Studios, make tripod heads especially designed for taking QTVR Panos. This tutorial uses Kaidan's Kiwi+ pan head.
4. A way of reliably leveling your camera. The Kaidan and Peace River Studios pan heads have built-in levelers. A small bubble level purchased at a hardware store is also suitable.
5. Software for stitching your shots and converting the stitched panorama into a QTVR Pano move. Programs such as Roundabout Logic's Nodester, VR Toobox's ObjectWorx, Apple's QuickTime Virtual Reality Authoring Studio (QTVRAS), and Picturework's Spin Panorama will stitch and convert your shots to a Pano movie. This tutorial will demonstrate the process using Nodester and QTVRAS.

Setting up for Shooting Panos

1. First, set up your tripod and attach your panorama head to the tripod. Here we show a Kodak DC50 on a Kaidan Kiwi+ pan head mounted on a Bogen tripod. The Bogen tripod has two tilting controls to help with leveling. The Kiwi+ enables us to mount the camera in portrait orientation. It also has pan increments denoted by click stops to help you find shooting positions quickly, and two leveling bubbles to assist with leveling.
2. Next, make sure that the camera is positioned so that its lens nodal point is over the line of rotation of the pan head. This is to prevent parallax between shots, and it is critical if you have objects close to the lens (within a few feet). See Finding the Nodal Point of a Lens for more information on this step. Scales on the Kiwi+ help you locate the nodal point after you have determined its position.

3. Next, you need to level your camera. There are 3 orientations to the leveling you need to do. The first two use the two leveling handles of the tripod to level the two bubbles (at right angles to each other) on the pan head. (Your pan head may have a single target style leveling bubble, or your tripod my have a ball style mount, so that this may seem to be just one leveling orientation.) Making sure your pan head leveling bubbles are orthoganal to the tilting handles of your tripod will help with the leveling. Otherwise, the leveling in one direction will shift when you try to do the second.

4. The third leveling orientation is how the camera is attached to the pan head. It is a "twist" orientation of the camera itself. The first two leveling operations must be done before this one, assuring the platform the camera is attached to is level. With the camera mounting screw loosened slightly, place a small leveling bubble on a flat spot on top of the camera and twist it to a level position, then snug up the mounting screw. If you shoot panos with a 35 mm film camera, you can get a leveling bubble that attaches to the hot shot of the camera at most camera stores.

5. Now, you are ready to take your shots. You need to take one shot at each position, not skipping any. One problem pano photographers sometimes have is keeping a good count of their shots, so that they take all of them. Looking through the viewfinder on the first shot to remember its exact framing will help you know when you've gone all the way around. If possible, use a cable release on your camera to prevent camera shake. Most digital cameras don't allow cable releases, so squeeze off your shots with a steady hand. Rotate the pan head one increment clockwise after each shot.
6. Other recommendations for shooting panos:
   • Exposure and lighting conditions. Because several pictures will be blended into one, exposure is a crucial consideration for panos. Big differences in exposure between shots will result in "banding" or vertical sections that go from dark to light, often with color shifts. Unfortunately, most digital cameras do not let you set the exposure manually, so if your scene changes from dark to bright as you shoot around the horizon, big exposure shifts are common. Shooting outside shots within a few hours of noon helps. If you do have manual exposure control, ease up to bright or dark areas a half stop at a time. Experience is the best tutor on how to use your camera in different lighting conditions.
   • Exposure compensation on automatic cameras. Though they don't let you manually set exposure, many digital cameras will let you set exposure compensation (overexpose or underexpose relative to what the camera thinks exposure should be). Because your camera must be level, the sky fills have the frame in most outside pano shots. On overcast days, the result tends to be good exposure on the clouds and underexposure on the landscape. (This is not a problem on sunny days.) So on overcast days, compensate to overexpose a stop or two. If you are shooting in shade on a bright day, you may also wish to overexpose.
   • Use of flash. Many digital cameras have a built-in flash that you can set for automatic, forced on, or forced off. Generally, if using your camera's flash, you want to flash to go off for every shot in a panorama. Also, you don't want your automatic flash going off unexpectedly. In an interior pano shoot, your camera may decide it doesn't need flash for those shots that feature bright windows. Forcing the flash on will correct that problem. Outside, an automatic flash may go off when you face a shady area. Forcing the flash off will prevent that.
   • Know the behavior of your camera. Most digital cameras need a few seconds between shots to recycle for the next shot. Also, digital cameras don't give you the definite "click" a film camera gives when the shutter goes off. Consequently, a common mishap in taking panos with digital cameras is skipping a shot because the shutter did not go off when you thought it did. Familiarize yourself with your camera so that you know the delay that is required between shots and the kind of feedback it gives when a picture has been successfully taken.

After you have taken your pictures, you will need to get them onto your computer so you can stitch them and turn them into a QTVR Pano movie. The following sections of the tutorial illustrate how that is done using either Nodester or QTVRAS.

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