Is your thumb making too much of an
appearance in your 360 photos? I have a
message from Jason on Instagram and he
says 'Hey Ben! When working with the Theta 360
how can i get myself and thumb out of
the shot?'. So this is something that most
360 shooters will experience at some
point. Whenever you are holding a 360
camera in your hand like the Ricoh Theta
here, because the shutter button
is so close to the lens it's something
that is unavoidable because it's so
close
the camera is going to capture
your thumb right there, two centimeters
from the lens. So let's have a look at
how we can avoid the the classic 'Theta
thumb' problem as it's affectionately
called or '360 thumb'. Most cameras have
the shutter button really close to the
lens unfortunately so this is a problem
that spans across many cameras not just
the Theta S. So the first thing I'll say
is that you won't be able to hold the
camera in your hand if you want to avoid
the big thumb problem. Because the lens
is so close to the shutter button, your
thumb is really close when the photo
was taken, so since it's only two centimeters
away and everything else is like at
least a foot away it's going to be much
bigger than anything else in your
environment.
Take any camera for example; if
you put your thumb too close it's going
to be much bigger and distort the frame
too much so let's have a look at some of
the tricks of the trade to help us avoid
looking like you got stung by a bee on
the thumb. Don't know why it'd go for the
thumb. But it did. Trying to minimize your
physical presence in 360 photos won't
really be helped by holding the camera
above your head because since it is so
far away from your body it will draw
more attention to just your thumb as
opposed to less. As you lower the camera
at least things become even now you have
a big thumb but you also have a kind of
big head and a bigger body so things are
more in perspective you can still take
some very decent photos with the camera
at arm's length in front of you
the thumb will still be there but it
will look more normal than if you're
holding your camera high above your head
if you do choose to keep the camera in
your hand using the Wi-Fi connection
between the camera and your phone will
help you out here because it will allow
you to hold the camera right on the edge
and not have to press that button there
so instead of having a thumb up here we
can have it down here or just use two
fingers like this which will make your
hands seem a lot smaller and solve your
problem about fifty percent or so like
it it's not perfect your hand will still
be larger than the rest of your body
proportionately but it does draw less
attention to it. So the first toy you
want to invest in is a selfie stick
I know that sounds really narcissistic
but it's actually a really useful tool
in 360 because it helps distance the
camera from our hands and our bodies and
it allows the camera to capture a more
normal perspective of our environment
instead of us being really close to the
camera
it allows the camera to take a
step back from us and capture us the
same scale as everything else you might
want to experiment with the selfie stick
at different heights
you can have it high above your body
which will make you seem much smaller or
you can have a little bit closer to you
and have you more prominent in frame
ok so that's better already the thumb is
not noticeable whatsoever and you can
use any hand you like so let's raise it
up a bit and see what the difference is
so now i look a lot smaller as well
obviously my hand is now pretty much
disappeared from the shot because it's a
little dot in the middle of the frame and
we have a much higher perspective so you
might want to play with your selfie
stick and try a couple of different
lengths depending on what suits the
situation best so now you can move your
selfie stick and basically any direction
and your hand won't be noticeable your
thumb won't be noticeable and the selfie
stick won't be noticeable because it's a
long black line underneath the camera it's
going to be completely undetectable no
matter which direction you point it in
another great investment will be just a
little tabletop tripod this is mainly
for the safety of the camera basically
anywhere you go as there's going to be a
little bit of wind gust and every time
you put your camera down especially on a
hard surface you're risking it falling
over smashing a lens and having to fork
out another 500 bucks for a new camera
there's a reason I'm up to my fifth Theta
camera and it's because I trusted the wind not
to blow my camera over and the wind let
me down. Son of a bitch.
so now that we've got a tripod again
we'll just connect the camera to our
smartphone app and then activate it from
there
you might even want to try putting a
selfie stick onto your tripod so you can
get a little bit of extra elevation and
reduce the tripods presence this does
unfortunately create a new problem for us
which is having the presence of a tripod
and a shadow at the bottom of our 360
photos it's not ideal at all it's
probably better than having the thumb
taking more of the space the tripod will
take up less so what we'll do here is
once you take your 360 photo it's as
simple as painting it out using the
healing function of snapseed also you
could bring it to your computer and use
photoshop. Snapseed's healing function
is very good i would highly recommend it
it's always done the job for me getting
rid of tripods and tripod shadows so
Jason also mentioned that he didn't
necessarily want to be in his 360 photos
so this is as simple as running and
hiding just go find a bush or a tree and
just hide behind it and connect
wirelessly through your smartphone to
the camera and then activate the shutter
through your smartphone app so
you can do that or you can use the app
'Vanish 360' I made a tutorial about that
last week
check it out it's on our youtube channel
but either one will allow you to achieve
that result if you really don't want to
be in your photos i prefer being in them
makes them more interesting people like
faces to connect to instead of empty
landscapes but sometimes you might not
want that to be honest I actually don't
mind 360 thumb at all it's a small price
to pay for getting a really good 360
follow some of my best photos that i've ever
taken had my thumb there huge in
frame and honestly most people haven't
noticed because the picture was so
interesting to look at there are so many
points of interest that the thumb was
just something that was there that they
noticed eventually after looking at
everything else first
so it really just depends if you've got
time to set up your shot or not if
you're on-the-go moving around quickly
and you don't have time to set up your
camera on a tripod or a selfie stick
I think it's absolutely fine having your
thumb in shot i think most people would
forgive you for it
however some photographers are really
picky and they really despise the 360
thumb they hate
in there it's ruining their images i
think that being a bit too picky to be
honest but that's just my personal
opinion. If you want to learn more tips
and tricks like this i have an ebook out
it's called 'Life in 360: a beginner's
guide to tiny planet photography' and
it'll help you get good really fast so
check it out
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check us out if you have any questions
you'd like me to answer in future videos
feel free to shoot me a message I'm
totally obsessed with 360 I don't go
anywhere without at least 2 360 cameras
so I'm always experimenting always
playing and want to do my best to share
my findings with you guys so shoot me a
message and keep living your life in 360
talk to you soon