Welcome to Barcelona!
We're here today shooting a virtual tour
of the Estela hotel behind us,
which is a nice little boutique hotel
off the south coast of Barcelona.
I've got the Z1 with me today,
and we're going to be taking you
behind the scenes as we shoot this entire virtual tour.
- Shooting a virtual tour is not just
taking a picture and hoping it's okay,
it's taking a lot of things into consideration
and we're going to discuss ten tips
how to make your next virtual tour better
and more professional looking.
- The number one must-have accessory
when shooting a virtual tour
after choosing a 360 camera is a monopod.
It does pay to invest in a good one
that has a heavy bottom and a thin top.
This will last you a long time,
so it is worth saving up and getting
because this is going to make shooting
your virtual tours so much easier.
A tripod isn't a good idea
because tripods are so much bigger than monopods,
meaning it's going to be a lot more
post-production work to remove it,
or you just end up with a tripod
in your shot and that's not good.
Be especially careful when you're shooting outside
because it is windy and your camera will fall over.
Even with a good monopod with a lot of weight,
you need to be extra careful;
so when you're shooting outside,
you'll still want to do it as quickly as possible
because there is still a chance it could blow over.
Set up your camera, hide, take the shot,
then run back and grab your camera.
- So Ben, this is not how you take a proper picture.
You have to put it up
and you need to make sure that the camera is straight up,
else there will be a lot of post-processing issues
where you have horizontal lines doing this wavy stuff
and verticals that are not straight.
Not all 360 cameras have an auto-horizon correction
and even if they do, sometimes it simply doesn't work,
so what we try to do is keep the camera straight up
and then you avoid any sort of post-production work.
So that way, when a viewer looks around,
the horizon is straight and it looks more natural.
- Make sure the camera is centrally
located and at eye level.
This is important because you don't want a shot
against the wall, you don't want to mistreat the use of 360.
When we're shooting 360, the idea is to capture
interesting details in all directions,
so first off, you need to look around
your location with your own eyes
and figure out okay, where are the nice spots?
I need to put my camera exactly in the middle,
so right here I have this beautiful water feature,
I have this spiral staircase, I have details up there,
I have nice artwork on this side,
there's artwork everywhere.
This is the theme of this hotel,
there's artwork everywhere, so I wanna position myself
right in the middle of the artwork.
Keeping the camera at eye level as well is important.
You need to think about your viewers' experience.
You don't want them to feel like an ant
or like a giant, you want them to feel
like they're a human walking through the space,
so it's important you put it the same level
that they would see with their own eyes if they were here.
If you have a space that has a few "centers",
you might wanna try a few of them.
This seems pretty center to me,
but also up here, so I'm gonna shoot
a pano down here and also one up here
because I'm not 100% sure yet
which one is going to look better later on,
so I'm gonna shoot both
so we have both of our bases covered.
- Shooting a bathroom is probably one of
the more difficult rooms to shoot
because there is lots of reflections
and things going on that you don't
want to have in your frame,
so we're going to try to set up the camera
in a way that there's the least amount
of reflection or shadows going on
and that's what we're trying to do here
because there's a large mirror behind me
and if i put the camera over here,
the camera will be seen in the mirror, of course.
But if you just put it 20 centimeters further,
I've found the spot that there's
no reflection at all any more.
So the way that we quickly double check
if the camera is not visible in the reflection
is just by viewing it yourself
and I can see from this point that everything's okay
and as a final check, you can always check your app
and look at the live view to check if everything's okay.
- The name of the game is having
as little post-production as possible,
so if you can fix your reflection issues on set,
you don't have to fix it later,
so if there's any major reflections
like in a big mirror here, avoid it while you can.
This room has a few different places that reflect,
so if you have a smaller one like this,
so our shower door is reflecting a little bit,
that's going to be easier to edit out
than a major reflection in the mirror here.
Next, you'll need to think about lighting
and it's a better idea to shoot
during the day if you can,
because you have lots of natural light in front of you.
At night time it's gonna be too tricky,
the exteriors will be too dark
and it won't look as nice and inviting
for your viewers to look at the tour.
So the sun is essentially going to act as your key light
shining in through the windows and lighting up your space;
however, there are some difficult situations
like the one we have here in this room.
It's kind of dark at the back of the room
and really light at the front,
so what might we do to light up the rest of the room?
- Well, you just turn on the lights of the room
and it gives you also an extra atmosphere
and gives you a better overview of the room, as well.
- Let me just show you for contrast.
That's off, off, off.
So look at that; this looks dark and dingy like an old shed,
whereas at least we have a little bit of ambient light.
Especially from a 360 camera perspective,
it's going to light up the rest of the room.
Obviously, you need to get your exposure right as well,
but that little bit of ambient light
will actually light the entire corner
and this part of the room,
so even if it's a small light and that's all you have,
it's going to make a difference.
- Speaking about strong light sources,
it's important to know that a strong sun
or a backlit window like the ones behind us
can have an effect on your image,
so sometimes it's better to just rotate the camera
so that the stitch line is actually in the middle
of your strong light source.
- Yes, this is because if the lenses are facing this way
and one lens is getting a lot of exposure
to the strong light source
and one lens is only facing the dark side,
it's gonna create issues here,
so depending on the camera you own,
it may not stitch it that great
and it could be quite a noticeable disparity
in the stitch line area around here.
- So another area that you need to take care of
is your stitching line.
When you're way too close to an object,
actually, in this case a coffee table,
sometimes it's better to just move your camera
a few centimeters or 10 centimeters from the object,
or you just rotate it 90 degrees
so the stitching line is not hitting your object.
- The next tip is don't shoot in plain JPEG.
JPEG has the least amount of information in it
and when you shoot just with JPEG
with no settings adjusted,
you're going to get the worst image quality possible,
which is something you will definitely need to change,
especially when you're dealing with harsh,
mixed lighting like we have here in this restaurant.
We've got really bright windows out there,
yet the interior is extremely dark,
so this is when we're going to go up a notch
and I'm gonna try two different exposure settings;
firstly I'll try HDR, inbuilt HDR in the Theta Z1.
Next, I'm going to try shooting raw with bracketing,
which means you're getting three different exposures;
one bright, one normal, and one dark
and combining them together.
So these are settings you will want to try,
especially when you have a tricky
lighting situation such as this one.
So Peter, funny seeing you here of all places.
- Yeah.
- So I have a question for you.
- Okay.
- How many panos should you shoot?
- Well, the minimum amount would be just one,
of course, that's obvious,
but in a hotel room like this bedroom,
for example, one is more than okay.
You don't need to have five images here,
just one image will show you what the room is all about.
With a lobby, for example, which is a larger area,
there it can be nice to jump from one point to the other.
- [Ben] Yeah, and the lobby downstairs at this hotel
had really interesting artwork all the way around,
so it actually did justify moving around a bit;
however, if it was a really plain lobby
with plain walls and not too much visual interest,
you'd probably do less, wouldn't you?
- Yeah, just one image probably tells
the entire story, so that's okay then.
- Yeah, same with things like the dining room downstairs;
it only needed one because if you move
from one point to another,
it's just more tables and chairs,
so you don't need to overshoot.
- And to make your virtual tour even more interesting,
it's also important that you can connect
the different locations that you shoot,
or within one location that you can go from
one pano to another one, and it's pretty simple to do that,
just have a visual point of reference
when you're placing your camera
and you see that you can see the next place
where your next placement will be
and you will be able to go from one place to the other one.
- Yeah, so make sure each pano has a clear view
of the space the viewer will be moving into.
As we lay here now, I'm looking into the other room
and I'm already visualizing
what the virtual tour's gonna look like.
There's gonna be a button right there at that door,
I'm gonna click it and it's gonna take me there
so I can see with my eyes therefore
the 360 camera can also see it.
- [Peter] Another important aspect
when shooting virtual tours
is having your location free of any people.
Photographing members of the public
can have consequences from a legal standpoint
and we don't want to have to ask everyone
sitting by the pool to sign a model release,
because it takes too much time
and they might not be okay with it.
So it's a waiting game;
sometimes you have to wait for people to leave,
or you can ask them nicely if they'll move for two minutes.
Right now, there's one guy in my shot here,
so I'm going to ask him politely
to move while I take the picture.
They key thing is to capture your location
completely empty without any people in it.
Sometimes you will get the location
and it will be empty straight away,
but sometimes it can also take minutes
or even hours before it becomes empty,
so the best thing to do is pre-arrange with your client
when the least busy time of the day will be,
so you can plan your shoot around that.
- The final tip is removing the tripod from the nadir.
When you're shooting and placing your camera
down on the ground or an elevated surface;
I'm gonna put it on the table in this example;
try and find a pure color,
like pure white or something else.
Try and avoid patterns or anything difficult
that's going to be difficult to edit out later.
So here we go.
I have white, I know already that's gonna
be super easy to edit out.
So here's the shot; I've opened it up
in the app TouchRetouch,
which is for both iPhone and Android,
and we're simply just going to drag
our finger over the tripod, go.
Voila, it's gone, magic.
I think this app is like two bucks,
so I would definitely recommend downloading it.
- So Ben, we've finished our first virtual tour.
- Together!
- Together, what do you think about that?
- Well, I think it turned out extremely well.
That was a work of absolute perfection
and in fact, it was so perfect I'm gonna link it
down there so you can check it out yourself.
I'll link our complete setup down in the description as well
and also, just FYI, I'm working on my next video course,
which is all about virtual tours,
that will teach you everything from beginning to end.
I'm in the process of shooting it now
and it should be ready by the end of the year,
which is why you need to hit that subscribe button,
so you can be the first to hear about it.
You can find Peter on social media here.
(clicks fingers)
You can find me on social media here.
(clicks fingers)
And with that, we will disappear.
(clicks fingers)