The Camera: To create high-quality panoramic images, you need a high-quality DSLR camera with interchangeable lenses and preferably exposure bracketing. You need interchangeable lenses because using a wide angle or fisheye lens is almost essential to creating an effective and detailed panorama without having to take half a million individual images. Using a wide angle or fisheye lens also means that you will want to invest in a very high megapixel camera. This is because a wide angle lens bends the light so that more image can fit in the same number of pixels. A low megapixel camera will not have a high enough resolution to handle the stretch around the edge of your fisheye image. I wouldn’t use a fisheye lens with a camera less than 16 megapixels and a wide angle lens with a camera less than 10 megapixels.

If your budget allows, definitely go for an Exposure Bracketing camera, this will allow you to shoot high dynamic range (or HDR) images and is a fantastic tool for producing circular exposure images for your virtual tours. High megapixels and exposure bracketing are features you’ll find on any professional-grade DSLR camera. For the entry level I highly recommend the Canon 60d, you can buy one for around £ 600 and they produce fantastic images. If you’re willing to spend a bit more, the Canon EOS 5D Mark ii remains my pick for motion photography any day of the week, bodies are available for under £ 2000.

The Lens: Opinion differs as to which type of lens produces the best results. Some virtual tour photographers use wide angle lenses, others prefer full fisheye. Both have their merits: Wide-angle lenses create less pixel distortion around the edges of images and reduce the risk of pixelation within a panorama that can seriously damage the quality of your virtual tour. However, they require many more images to create a single panorama. This can dramatically lengthen production and post-processing time and increase the chances that one or two of your images will not stitch together properly. Full fisheye lenses, on the other hand, only need a few images to create a full panorama, the trade-off is that they use the same number of pixels to take a much larger photo, so the images are of lower quality. . I find that if you use a fisheye lens correctly, take photos that are well in focus, and pay attention to how your images look, then there is nothing that a fisheye cannot do better, easier, and in less time than a great angular. I highly recommend the Sigma 8mm autofocus which you can get for around £ 800.

The Tripod: Tripods are one of those things that amateur photographers almost always feel the need to get several times wrong before getting it right. You have to remember that your panoramic scene MUST be centered around the nodal point, your first concern is to ensure that the camera does not move even slightly from the nodal position during filming. Your enemies are the wind, they accidentally hit the tripod and have to reposition the tripod head, all of this can be avoided by investing in good sturdy gear. You can buy a Manfrotto tripod with legs and head for under £ 500. A ball tripod head is particularly useful as you can easily level your Panohead to a full 360 degrees, even in difficult situations or rough terrain. I recently shot a panoramic photograph of a 4-story sculpture from a beam nine feet in the air. The only way I could stabilize the tripod was by supporting 2 legs on a wooden slat and the last one on the beam, the tripod was almost bent like an old man; Without a ball tripod head, panning would have been impossible.

The Panohead: A Panohead is specialized equipment used to find the nodal point (or no parallax). The nodal point is very important when taking panoramic images, as it allows each image to be taken from exactly the same perspective. If the perspective changes even a few millimeters, the objects will appear a little closer or farther apart from each other, which means that when you join them, you will have big problems. There are ways to approach this without investing in a tripod and pan head, for example the Philopod Pitch Variation method is very popular; however, if you want panoramas that you can be sure will be attached correctly every time, a good tripod and panoramic head are essential. Panoheads come in many shapes and sizes, from the inexpensive Panosaurous to the monstrous motorized auto-rotating VR head. Having experimented with several of these, I have found that there is very little you can achieve with Panoheads’ fully robotic Panoheads T-800 Astala-vista baby super dooper that you cannot do with a tight modular midrange setup. Pick a nodal ninja for a £ 200 prize, prize winning but refreshing and wallet friendly.

With a good DSLR camera, the right lens, a sturdy tripod, and a sleek panoramic head, you’re on your way to creating beautiful panoramic images to use on a virtual tour.