Anyone create 360 degree panoramic virtual tour images?

[CurtEastPoint]

I have just started to look into it and it requires a good fish-eye lens and a special tripod. Not hugely expensive but definitely not cheap.

I am thinking of doing this for real estate ads/listings, kind of on the side.

Any experience or thoughts?

Thanks!

[Fumesucker]

1. A panorama bracket is necessary to do a good job on interiors

The fisheye lens is not absolutely necessary but it makes things easier, a really wide angle point and shoot could do it but you have to take more shots and stitch them which takes up more shooting time and more computer time.

The pano bracket sits on top of your tripod rather than replace it, what it does is make sure your camera rotates around the nodal point of the lens which is down inside it somewhere. It's possible to determine the nodal point of any given lens through fairly simple experimentation with the camera mounted on the pano bracket.

Here's a zoomable 360 degree pano I did some time back with a more or less normal lens, this one is 110 megapixels or 0.11 gigapixels.

http://gigapan.com/gigapans/48577

Here's a video that covers finding the nodal point..

[liberal N proud]

2. As part of my job, I have a spacial scanner which also takes pictures.

The scanner creates a 30 point cloud of a space for measuring and creating 30 models for reverse engineering.

As part of the process, it takes a panoramic pictures of the space. With the software can stitch multiple scans together allowing you to walk through from scan to scan, turn around, look up or down.

Cool stuff. The scanner is a FARO scanner.

[Expat in Korea]

3. I have an app

on my smartphone for that.

Except for that, when I'm using my real camera and a tripod, all I do is level the tripod and take slightly overlapping photos, then stitch them together in PS. I do have a 12-24mm lens, but it's not completely necessary, I think.

[CurtEastPoint]

4. Thank you all for adding to my knowledge!