360° panoramic photo

360° photo

What can a 360 degree photo do?

A 360° photo offers a 360 degree view. It is often used to show 360 view of tourist sites, buildings, events and etc.

How to get a 360 degree photo?

In order to get a 360 degree image, you need to use digital camera, pano head and tripod. Fisheye lens is recommended in order to get 360*180 degree panorama pictures, but normal lens is also OK. Refer to Panorama Photography and compatible equipment list.

Digital camera with high resolution can offer great details. Fisheye lens offers greater field of view, for example, Sigma 8mm F4 EX DG Fisheye lens has a 183 degree angle of view. So, only 4 images are needed to cover 360 * 180 degree. The above spherical 360 picture was stitched from fisheye photos taken by Nikon D70 & Sigma 8mm Fisheye lens. Visit how to take fisheye photos page to get detailed instructions before shooting with your fisheye lens.

If you have no professional equipment for taking fisheye pictures, you may use standard digital camera to take continuous series of pictures and stitch with Panoweaver to get a 360 panorama like the above cylindrical one. To take normal digital pictures, a pano head and a tripod are also needed in order to get high quality 360 degree panoramic pictures. Visit how to take normal photos page to get detailed instructions before shooting with your camera.

After taking photos, stitch them into 360 degree photos with photo stitch software Panoweaver. Fisheye photos can be stitched into 360*180 degree spherical panoramas and normal digital photos can be stitched into cylindrical panoramas.

360 photo of various places

360 views of tourist site: 

360 pictures of Mount Huang:

360 degree images of historic buildings in south China:

360 degree photos of real estate properties:

Above 360 degree pictures have reached 360 degree horizontally and 180 degree vertically, and we call this kind of panorama "360 spherical panorama". When a panoramic picture has reached 360 degree in horizontal field of view, but less than 180 degree vertically, we call it "360 cylindrical panorama". See below cylindrical panorama.

360 * 65 degree

What players can be used to play 360 photo?

There are many players that can play 360 degree pictures in immersive views, for example, Flash player, QuickTime player and Java player. With these 360 players, you can view the panoramic image in real 360 degree.

Click following icons to view 360 tours based on the players.

In Panoweaver, photo stitching and panorama publishing are both supported. So the 360 degree images stitched with Panoweaver can easily be exported into single panorama tours based on above players. View 360 panorama gallery.

Be sure to install relevant plugin. Right click on the 360 photo and choose full screen display in Flash and Java player.