IVRPA International Virtual Reality Professionals Association

hi hani

Nodal Ninja 6 would be a good choice for 16mm on full frame Nikon like D850, would also work well with wider or longer lenses and other cameras etc

http://shop.nodalninja.com/nn6-starter-pkg-f6001/

shooting a full 360° x 180° sphere on D850 (or other full frame DSLR) with 16mm fisheye requires 6 images around + up and down (zenith and nadir) shots, with D850 at full 46 mp resolution this results in equirectangular pano about 20k x 10k px, this is more pixels and larger file than required for most typical interiors in my own experience, most shops and hotel rooms etc are sufficient resolution around 12k px wide equirectangular, but a huge interior with important architectural detail or deep zoom cityscape or stadium or very large print etc you might want more pixels

also note that enough pixels today might not be enough in a few years time, so if your work may have any historical or other possible future interest etc shooting at max res is a good way to “future proof” your work, shoot at max res and downsize when rendering stills for stitching or final pano

if you used the nikkor 8-15mm fisheye zoom at 12mm, you can shoot with only 4 images around using a single row head + lens ring mount like nodal ninja R1, on D850 this results in final pano about 16k x 8k px, still more than enough for most typical interiors, and much quicker to shoot and stitch vs 16mm

http://shop.nodalninja.com/r1-w-rd5-adj-tilt-pkg-f6120v/

i am currently shooting with nikon D850 + nikkor 8-15mm fisheye zoom myself, 12mm here gives me an easy workflow with great results, normally i shoot at 12mm with nodal ninja R1 as above, but i can also use same lens at 15mm on multi row head like NN6 etc if more pixels are desired

also see this page with a list of tutorials and other resources for 360 VR photography

https://ivrpa.org/about-ivrpa/360-vr-photography-360-video-resources/

thanks, and howdy from brooklyn ;)

sam

full frame DSLR with 16mm fisheye on single row NN R1 would not allow a full sphere as you cannot tilt up or down with a single row head, so you would have an empty space on top and bottom of pano, but R1 is fine for full sphere with 8-15mm zoom at 12mm on full frame, smaller rotator like RD5 is best for R1 head design

nodal ninja RD16 rotator is more for multi row heads like NN6 or NN M1 and only really needed for lens longer than 30mm or so, but if you also wanted to shoot landscape panos with with a longer lens RD16 and NN6 would be a good choice

manfrotto SPH303 is an antique boat anchor (obsolete and very heavy) in my opinion, nodal ninja heads are lighter weight, more stable, and nodal ninja has some of the best customer support of any product in any industry i know ;)

for stitching panos, i use PTGui, but kolor autopano is also good

for creating tours and embedding 360 panos and tours on wordpress there are many options, upload to 360cites or roundme etc and use their embed code, or make your own tours with panotour, krpano, or pano2vr and embed with iframe into wordpress

also see the IVRPA guides and tutorials page for more info on all of this ;)

https://ivrpa.org/about-ivrpa/360-vr-photography-360-video-resources/

thanks

sam

6 shots around would be 360° ÷ 6 = 60° stops

see the shot calculator chart here on nodal ninja site, bottom of page –

http://shop.nodalninja.com/shot-calculator/

you would pretty much always want to shoot in vertical portrait mode rather than horizontal landscape for 360° panos, landscape would require more shots to cover same spherical area

there should be info on common nodal points somewhere on NN site, but i always set them myself, easy enough and also i use RRS or kirk L brackets on my cameras too, so that way i am 100% sure vs 2nd guessing someone else’s settings who might use different QR mount than me ;)

thanks

sam

IVRPA has just added stripe as an option for membership payment, see the stripe buttons on the Join IVRPA page

https://ivrpa.org/members/join-ivrpa/

sam