What is Panoramic Photography?

Panoramic photography has a width and height ratio of at least 2:1 as in the image above, and is often best viewed interactively. Interactive viewers allow the user to drag the mouse to change the view. It's like standing in one position and turning yourself around, looking up and down, letting you "be there." It is a wonderful way to show a location for marketing or just for fun.

Showing your location with panoramic virtual tours allows your audience to be immersed in a seamless 360 degree visual environment that offers a far more realistic view than a series of static images or an old fashioned video clip. Your audience will be wowed and impressed.

We can integrate several panoramic images into complete tour package with a custom visual layout and navigation design.

Who Uses Panoramic Photography?

There are so many great applications for this technology. Some of the uses who benefit are:

Hotels, Resorts
Restaurants, Catering Spaces
Real Estate
Museums
Private homes (show offs)
Night Clubs
Schools
Beauty Salons
For rent apartments
Vacation rental properties
Car companies
Trainers, training simulators
Special Effects producers

See some samples here

How are panoramas produced?

Our system of producing panoramas requires specialty panoramic tripod equipment, Professional stitching software and a quality digital SLR camera with a wide angle lens. We capture between 7 and 29 still photographs on location to make a full spherical panorma which means that you can view the entire 360 degrees, floor and ceiling, ground and sky, etc. Often a client will wish a final result that is beyond the capability of normal photography. This requires combining multiple exposures. See compositing and HDR below for more.

After the shoot, there are several steps including pre-processing (much like devloping) the images, stitching them together into a panorama, then several post-processing steps. Finally the full panoramas can be packaged into a easy to use interface for delivery.

Compositing and HDR (High Dymanic Range)

An important part of making a panoramic images more realistic is blending multiple exposures. When a photographer is taking photographs inside a room with bright sunlight coming in through the window, they will have to choose settings based on one of the lighting conditions. If they choose settings to see the inside of the room, the windows will be white or "burned":

If they choose settings to see the view outside the window, the room will be black:

By compositing or HDR processing, we can combine the two photographs giving us a more realistic view. This does take some extra time and is one of the types of graphics work we can offer:

How can panoramas be viewed?

Think of the perspective as being inside a sphere but without that fisheye effect. You can pan the view to see 360 degrees horizontally and 180 vertically making it possible to see not only the full room, but also entire ceilings, skys, and floors. Panoramic “nodes” can be viewed in a variety of display options. In addition to the free quicktime player, single nodes or multiple node virtual tours can be viewed interactively in web browsers, Java, customized interfaces, even on many Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices. Please contact us for quotes or further information regarding your project.

How much does it cost?

Pricing for photography is always difficult because there so many variables which is why a website will almost always say "call for a quote." In order to give an idea, high quality panoramic images are generally between $250 and $450 each. Also, expenses and day rates may be additional. So, please "Call for a quote." We can talk in detail about your project and provide a firm number before beginning work. Here are some other services and their prices:

$100 Movie Version of your virtual tour on DVD

Graphics Work $75 /hour

Palm OS interface from $50

Custom interface from $50

Ask About Our Special Real Estate Virtual Tour Products and pricing

Why choose PanoramaNETWORK?

Panorama Network combines accomplished photographers and panoramic imaging expertise to offer the highest quality panoramic products. What sets us apart is the knowledge and experience we poses for each step of the process. We employ a minimum amount of automation and do not compromise quality for time, using todays technologies to enhance imagery.