Panoramic Photography

[Big Giant Head]

Heya guys

I just wondered if anyone could recommend a decent training course to bring someone up to speed on 360 deg panoramas, the QT VR style stuff, or if anyone knows any good software to do the joining or decent hardware to use etc.

Thanks for any help :)

[TimmyNoShoes]

Adobe Photoshop CS2 (i think cs has it too) has a photomerge ability, its very good and fairly easy to use for the newcomer.

File>automate>photomerge.

Good luck and show us the results :)

[Zenith]

The best software I've come across for making QT pano images is VRworx.
We used it in college for the media part of my HND. As long as you know the technical characteristics of your camera (field of view etc), it works like a dream.

In my case, I divided the rotation of my camera tripod into 15 sections and took a picture at each mark. I took one at the start position as well to give me 16 images in total.
You then open VRworx and give it the 15/16 images. It auto-stiches them to give you the long, thin pano image that you expect. Then it applies the rotation for you and saves it as a *.mov file. If you want, you can also draw on hotspots to give you location info or even clickable web links

Here is an example of one of the ones I made for my assignment. I made 4-5 pano's and I quite like this one.
Rhaedr Ogwen (Snowdonia) (http://www.zenith-solutions.co.uk/images/rhaedr_ogwen.mov)

If you're REALLY good at taking the images, it is possible to make a complete hemisphere. You can also invert the rotation so that instead of looking out from the middle, you can rotate around the outside edge and look at an object in the centre from any angle.
If you want to discuss it some more, drop me a PM.

[TimmyNoShoes]

Ok it appears i misread what you wanted, but regardless Photoshop is good for stitching.

[Neon]

Very impressive there Zenith.

[Big Giant Head]

Thanks for all the help guys, I've got a few things together, need to sort out a better camera and a bigger room to photograph but its coming together, thanks to everyone who responded!