"Greetings! This article is made for all who want to develop something new and inspire other people.
Together we will create beautiful panoramas even from a bird's eye view. We will be able to see the beauty of Russian nature from different sides. So, let’s start our journey right now!"

Alex Kazantsev, the author

Equipment

What do you need for panoramic photography?

1. A smartphone, a camera

2. A drone (if you want to create panoramas from a bird’s eye view)

3. A panoramic head (only for the camera)

4. A tripod (only for the camera)

Let’s shoot VR-content!

Now we have learnt the theory, and it’s time for practice!

1. Shooting vr-360 panorama on the phone

2. Shooting vr-360 panorama on the camera

3. Shooting vr-360 panorama on the drone

Shooting vr-360 panorama on the phone

First of all, make sure you have switched your phone camera to manual settings. Set ISO and a shutter speed according to the scenery. You don’t need to worry about the aperture: on every phone it is constant.

Take 60-70 photos rotating the smartphone, creating a 360-degree panorama projection, and ensuring a good merge of the images.

Shooting vr-360 panorama on the camera

Set up your camera to a panoramic head and then put it on a tripod. Now you need to find the nodal point. Сlick on the video file below👇

Camera settings

1. Choose the format of the shots – RAW.

2. Set your camera to the manual mode (M).

3. Close the aperture to a value of F10-12 and set the shutter speed and ISO basing on the surrounding lighting.

4. Select the exact white balance value.

5. Focus on the desired subject, after which the autofocus must be turned off.

Once all settings are done, the only task left is to take a 360-degree panoramic photo. Take the first shot, then rotate the panoramic head by the specified increment and take another shot. Continue this process until all parts of the future circular panorama are captured. To avoid confusion, it’s best to start at the 0° mark and rotate clockwise. Once you return to the starting position, you can proceed to the next row.

Shooting vr-360 panorama on the drone

All modern drones have various shooting modes. For example, DJI drones have special panorama-shooting modes. So, we will shoot the spherical panorama with the help of DJI “Sphere” mode.

1. Connect your drone to the controller.

2. Open the app.

3. Fly the drone to the shooting location.

4. Choose RAW format of the photos.

5. Before taking your shot, make sure that you have set AUTO CAMERA SETTINGS.

6. In your app go to: Pano - Sphere. Click on it.

If you followed these steps precisely, your drone will automatically take all photos of the 360 pano.

Stitching & Editing

First of all, let’s download some apps on your computer.

There are some programs for processing 360 panoramas:

1. “Adobe Lightroom Classic”

2. “PTGui”

3. “Affinity photo”

4. “Adobe Photoshop”

5. “FSP Viewer”

Editing pano from your camera & phone

1. Open your photos in Adobe Lightroom. Choose one photo which have both highlights and shadows. Then, do the colour grading of this photo. You don’t need to use masks or crop that image.

2. When your colour grading is done, click on this photo, then go to Develop settings-copy settings. Click COPY

3. After that, select all images(ctrl/command+a). Then choose another random photo, click on it and go to Develop settings-paste settings. Click PASTE. Now all photos are edited.

4. Now let’s move to stitching. Open PTGui app. Import the photos and click “Align images“. Then you will have well-stitched pano!

Stitching pano from the camera&phone

Now we may export our pano. Here are the exporting settings:

5. Let’s move to Affinity photo. We need to go to Layer- Live projection-Equirectangular. Click on it. Now you can scroll the pano around.

   

   6. When you scroll down, you will see the tripod. We need to remove it.

      

      7. Click here as you see on the screen. Choose Patch tool.

         

         6. Select the tripod, and remove it!

            

6. Now we need to export the pano. Click on Layer- Live projection-Remove projection.

10. Now, let’s go to file-export. Here are the exporting settings.

11. The pano is ready! We may watch it in FSP Viewer.

Stitching pano from the drone

1. Open PTGui app. Import the photos and click “Align images“. Then you will have the well-stitched pano!

2. Great! You can see that the pano hasn’t got another part of the sky. It happens because some drones can’t raise their gimbal up so high. The only solution is to photoshop the sky part.

   Firstly, let’s export the pano. Here are the exporting settings.

3. Secondly, we should open Adobe Photoshop and open the document there. Now we need to import the sky into document. You may download it here before. Follow these steps:

It will look like that:

Then create mask to the sky layer here:

Then go to single adjustments and add some correction layers. The sample is here:

Now we need to export the pano: here you can see the exporting settings.

Now the pano is ready!

You may also see how I did the pano which I had shot in Guangzhou from the drone.
Сlick on the video file below👇

How to create the VR-tour

Before the start, we need to download “Pano 2 VR”. It allows you to create a virtual tour, which means it can combine several panoramas or add some interactive elements to the panos.

When it’s done, create your first project, then import 360 pano into it.

After that, go to “User data” and type some information about your pano.

Go to “Default view” and set the player parameters.

Now click to the “+“ sign under the word “Output“. Choose “Web“.

Then choose the skin here:

You may also edit skin before publishing. The video about it is here.

Almost ready! Choose these settings before you export your virtual tour:

Now we can export the virtual tour by clicking to “Gear wheel“ sign! REMEMBER: Create the unique name of the exporting folder before starting the process!

Cool! We’ve created the virtual tour!

But how to share it to social media and with your friends?

I have the solution! Go to Netlify.com website and drop the exporting folder there. After that you will have the link to your tour. You may watch this virtual tour here:

NOW YOU CAN SEE WHAT YOU WILL GET IF YOU FOLLOW ALL THOSE STEPS.. WATCH A VIRTUAL YOUR :)

To conclude:

This article provides a comprehensive guide to creating VR and 360-degree panoramas using smartphones, cameras, and drones. It covers essential equipment, theoretical concepts like sensors and lenses, and photography techniques for capturing panoramic images. The piece also explains editing methods using software such as Adobe Lightroom, PTGui, and Adobe Photoshop, and provides steps for creating and sharing VR tours with Pano 2 VR and Netlify. Whether you're interested in ground-level or aerial photography, this guide aims to inspire and help you amaze others with stunning panoramic views, particularly of Russian nature.