In creating a pano often a series of still photos are stitched into one image. But at SIHomeTours, we shoot vertically into a special mirrored lens.

David: Are there light management issues?

Kelly: That's the fun and the challenge of this type of photography. In a normal portrait, you have a rack of lights and flash behind the camera and you can instantly and easily light any scene. But if you are photographing 360 degrees, all at the same time, in one shot, where do you hide the lights?

It's not easy to do and be portable. So you have to be creative and take care to notice which existing lights are turned on in the room and adjust the window shades as necessary. There is some practice involved.

Often in a single room, you'll have to deal with incandescent light, fluorescent light and sunlight coming in through a window. I'll never forget shooting this one house and the homeowner had installed these reddish-orange lights in every fixture and there were only a couple of very small windows for natural light. It can drive a photographer mad.

David: Are there special lenses or equipment that this requires?

Kelly: In a perfect setup, you want what I call a super-wide angle lens. Something equivalent in 35mm format to between a 10mm and 18mm lens. This lens must not be a fisheye and have minimal distortion.

Be ready to spend $500.00 or more to get a good one. I use a BeHere lens for my 360 shots. They are not made anymore but you can get similar lens from 0-360.com (at http://www.0-360.com) and kaidan.com (at http://www.kaidan.com). This is the lens with a mirror stuck on top and when the rig is pointed straight up, it captures the entire room in one photograph. These lens create a real unique photograph. [As shown in Figure A.]

FIGURE A

Capture the entire room in a single, unique photograph. Click picture for a larger image.

Each lens will come with it's own "unwrapping software" which creates a somewhat normal but rather wide JPEG image. Here's an unwrapped, unprocessed image. [As shown in Figure B.]

FIGURE B

Once the circular image is unwrapped, it looks like this. Click picture for a larger image.

The viewing software on the Web site bends the image to remove the distortion you see the in unwrapped image.

Many photographers will stitch to create their panos. Good stitching usually requires precise alignment of 10-12 photos and a lot of work in Photoshop to match the exposure and get the edges of the images align. Lots of rubber stamping is often required for great results.

David: What about special software?

Kelly: Certainly Photoshop is required in every pro photographer's bag. PhotoWarp by EyeSee360 (at http://www.eyesee360.com) is pretty hard to beat if you choose to shoot with any mirror. It supports most every lens and the batch processing is very helpful.

Photomatrix Pro (at http://www.hdrsoft.com) is a big help when you need to keep large windows with incredible views to not "blow out". I understand Photoshop CS II has a similar HDR (High Dynamic Range) effects but I've not personally worked with it, yet.