Hey guys, it’s Gaba VR, and this time I show you an accessory for 360 panoramic photography
with DSLR and Mirrorless cameras, which you can use instead of a traditional panohead,
and even more it lets you record videos like this: just like it was shot with a 360 camera and reframed in post.
So let's jump into it!
Welcome to the studio, and let me introduce you Capsule Pro,
a versatile pan and tilt head for time-lapse videos, 360 product photography and of course, panorama photography.
As I mentioned in one of my previous videos,
for 360 DLSR photography you need a camera body, a fisheye lens and a camera stand with a pano head.
And I showed you how to shoot and edit your photos with my manual workflow.
You know with a traditional pano head, you always must turn with your camera manually at least 4 times vertically,
and of course, take one zenith and two nadir photos, too.
And to avoid shaking the camera, it’s recommended to shoot with a remote controller or with a self-timer.
This time I will do it on a little bit smarter way, with motorized camera movements and a smartphone app.
I use the MIOPS Capsule Pro Pan-Tilt pack with 2 Capsule PRO units and an L-Bracket.
The Capsules connect to the phone wirelessly, using the MIOPS Mobile app.
Before the first use you should run the firmware update, which goes quite quickly.
After that the app will automatically recognize your capsules, and you can connect both of them.
But make sure you use one of them horizontally, while the other one vertically,
so the app will know that there is a dedicated pan head and another tilt head.
Otherwise, you cannot connect two different modules with the same function.
So, as I turn one of them sideways, it allows me to step forward.
Of course, if you start pairing and updating after you assembled them, you won’t even meet this problem.
Assembling is very simple.
I just screw the L bracket on top of the panning capsule, and then I mount the other one the side of the structure.
And finally, here comes the camera. I fix the camera in the rearmost position.
And off course to make the app control the camera I need to plug in the remote cable and I’m ready to go.
By the way, it would be a little bit better, if they made this rail a little bit longer,
so we could have more headroom for setting up the different cameras.
You know it’s very important to move the camera in the best position,
finding the so-called nodal point to avoid parallax issue.
It means, that the camera rotates in a very special way,
while the edge of lens stays in the same position, doesn’t matter how you pan around with the camera.
I could make it with my Mirrorless Camera, which has a little bit thinner body,
while I wasn’t so lucky with my DSLR.
Anyhow, finally I could shoot a perfect pano despite I couldn’t set the nodal point perfectly.
But let’s go back a little bit and see the next step. That’s where I start setting up everything in the app.
First, I select Panorama mode and go to my Equipment settings.
Here I add that I’m working with an APS-C camera in Landscape mode, using an 8mm fisheye lens.
Another important data is Overlap.
In practice it will affect how much the camera turns between two shots.
I think the ideal value is around 40 percent.
As I shoot with manual exposure settings, I can tell the app my exact settings,
to make sure it won’t start rotate before a photo is taken.
In 360 photography, I usually shoot with a very high aperture, somewhere between 11 and 16, with ISO 100,
which means, I use quite long shutter speed.
But here I can add exactly the same value in the app, so it will wait until the photo is taken.
Even more, we can add a Wait Time, so the camera won’t start rotating accidently in the last seconds of exposure,
but it will wait a couple of seconds if I want so.
And now, when everything is fine, all we left is telling the app that we want a full 360 rotation to take all the photos.
So, I go to Movement and set up the starting point, which is a totally straight horizontal position of the camera
and add the end point, which is a 360 degrees turn.
The app will automatically move the camera from the starting point according to the values of the B point
and will calculate the optimal number of shots. In this case, it’s 6 frames.
So, when I start capturing, by pushing the big orange button, the camera will turn around in 360 while taking 6 photos.
And we only need to make these setting for the first time,
and then the camera can repeat shooting with the same settings over and over again.
But we haven’t done yet. For a perfect 360 panorama we need to take zenith and nadir photos,
and we have to create our presets for these movements, too.
Yes, we can save everything we’ve done so far, including Equipment settings, A-to B path and all the other data.
And then we can go on with the Zenith shot.
To take a zenith photo we need to tilt the camera upwards 90 degrees.
So, I leave the horizontal settings untouched, and only modify the vertical movement.
When it’s done, I save this preset and go on with the nadir photos.
I have to take two nadir photos to get rid of the L bracket, so I tilt down 90 degrees and also pan 90 degrees.
Basically, this time it will take 4 shots, but all we need is the two nadir shots.
So, we can delete the other photos of this last session.
Of course, we can do this whole fine tuning beforehand, and we don’t need to waist our time on the spot.
After saving these presets we can go through all the process anytime and anywhere.
Of course, depending on the scene you may shoot with different shutter speeds,
but if you add quite a long value in the app, you can go on with it even without changing it all the time.
Before shooting, all you have to do is leveling your camera perfectly, to give a nice starting point to the process.
You can do it by opening the remote controller, and setting up this camera position manually.
And you’re ready to shoot. You only have to go through all the three presets, and you’re done.
The image quality and resolution of your photo will depend on your camera and your lens.
This device only makes the shooting process easier for you. But let’s see what we’ve got.
This Pan and Tilt pack makes the shooting process easier on the spot and reduces the risk of making mistakes.
You don’t need to move your camera manually step by step, standing next to your setup,
and you don’t have to waste time with self-timer during shooting.
On the other hand, this process is not super-fast neither.
With my settings it took around 3 minutes and 15 seconds to take a pano,
and it depends on you whether you find it slow or fast.
But you cannot modify the speed in Panorama photo mode,
so the capsules will always turn with the same speed between the shots.
And setting up the nodal point is not working perfectly with thicker camera bodies.
Neither in my case, but shooting in landscape mode with quite a big overlap,
fortunately I didn’t meet parallax issues during stitching.
But it would be better if we could shoot in portrait mode, too.
And maybe I would say, it’s better to shoot two zenith photos, too, just for the sake of safety,
so you surely won't have any blind areas on the sphere.
Another con is this L bracket is a little bit short in the other direction, too,
which leads to a bigger coverage on the nadir.
I think it cannot be fixed perfectly, so it’s the better to put a patch or logo there instead of trying to fix it in Photoshop.
Anyhow the post-production is the same as with the manual workflow.
I edit my raw photos in Lightroom and then stitch them with Autopano Giga.
If you are interested about the detailed process, check out my dedicated video about it.
So, this MIOPS tool has some pros and cons, but after all, it’s a very useful tool.
And of course, it can be used for further purposes besides 360 panoramic photography, as you could see in my intro.
So, I’m sure I’ll be experimenting with it in creative videography, time-laps videos and 360 product photography,
and I’m gonna share my further experiences with this tool.
Until that, if you liked this short tutorial, please hit like button,
and for further 360 contents and tutorials subscribe to my channel.
And see you next time.