Overlook your customary video guidelines, when shooting in gitup git2 360 VR Camera degrees convenience could trump quality. 360 video -- that VR-like format that permits you to lookup, down, left, right, and behind -- is all the craze right now. However to get those wraparound views, you may want a special digital camera (or a number of camera setup) and a large dose of patience.

I discovered this the hard manner during my month-lengthy crash course comparing three completely different units: the 360 Freedom (holding six GoPro Hero4 cameras), a Kodak Pixpro SP360 4K Dual Pack Professional (holding Kodak Pixpro cameras) and the Ricoh Theta S (an single-camera all-in-one answer).

1. Not all 360 cameras are created equal

The first problem was trying to determine which cameras to incorporate in our shoot-out. A fast Google search of 360 cameras will show you'll be able to spend wherever from $200 (for the LG 360 Cam) to $60,000 (for Nokia's Oz digital camera).

You additionally have to factor in the viewing angle. Even cameras that have 360 in the name won't produce shoot your complete 360 degree angle. The 360Fly and Kodak's Pixpro SP360 are examples of cameras that solely have a viewing range of 240 degrees vertically. To get a full spherical picture, you'll be able to fill within the lacking angle with graphics as in the case of the 360Fly, or arrange cameras back to back as in the case of the Pixpro.

To provide a full 360 shot with a GoPro you will need at the very least 6 of them mounted on a 3rd party rig or watch for GoPro's Omni, a fully integrated solution that incorporates the six cameras into one casing and syncs all of them automatically.

The simple clarification for the vast distinction in price is quality: the cheaper the digital camera, the lower the resolution. But there's more to it than that. Solely the cameras at the high end of the worth spectrum, just like the Oz., are capable of shooting stereoscopic video for VR.

2. There are two forms of 360 movies

Monoscopic is the most typical sort of 360 image discovered on Google's Street View or in 360 players like Youtube 360 and Facebook. These are flat renderings 360 degree renderings of a shot which will be viewed on any screen or in a headset. You can transfer across the area, but you haven't any real depth perception.

Stereoscopic video amps up the virtual reality aspect by making a 3D rendering of a 360 degree shot utilizing a separate input for every eye. Such a immersive content material is often shot with two lenses (one per sight view) and may be viewed in 360 with a VR headset.

3. There are completely different degrees of difficulty

For the aim of our comparison we decided to test out solely monoscopic 360 cameras at three ranges: beginner, advanced, and prosumer.

Newbie: The Theta S is Ricoh's the second version of Ricoh's 360 camera and costs around $350. Point and shoot and also you're ready to go. The stitching is completed on the fly so you'll be able to share your shot immediately without editing. Others on this class embody the Samsung Gear 360 and the LG 360 Cam.

Advanced: The Kodak Pixpro SP360 4K Dual Pack Pro costs $900 and consists of Pixpros mounted on a cage. Because you're getting video from two completely different sources, you will have to stitch them together in put up production. Nikon's KeyMission will have an analogous quality, however will file all of the pictures in a single device.

Prosumer: We tested out a Freedom360 rig, a third-party enclosure utilizing six GoPro Hero4s. The rig requires you to press all six seize buttons at once and sync the movies manually with a special editing software. The complete setup could find yourself costing over $three,000 ($500 for the Freedom360 rig plus the six cameras and the software).

4. Comfort is king

Only the Theta was compact enough to suit comfortably in my pocket during a weekend excursion. Each the Freedom360 rig and the Pixpro require some planning and setup time so don't anticipate to take a spontaneous mountain climbing shot next.

The Theta can also be the only one that does not require an SD card -- it comes with eight gigs of storage on board and a built in battery. With the other options I had multiple SD cards to keep monitor of and multiple batteries to charge.

5. Objects in 360 should not all the time as they seem

It is hard to know what your shot will appear like in 360 whenever you're getting ready to shoot. Every thing in plain sight of the camera is fair game when shooting in 360, however you do not know at what distance it will apear, what the lighting looks like or while you're standing on a stitch line.

A stitch line, I discovered, is the point at which the video from each lense meets the other to create the total sphere.

Because the Theta does all the stitching internally in real time, it allows you to use your phone as a view finder with the mobile app if you want to preview. The sew itself is relatively seamless and even stitches the actual camera out of the shot.

Website URL: