So you're looking for a 360 camera for virtual tours,
but you don't want to spend any more than $300.
Well, I think I found the perfect solution...
And that is, the Theta SC2 and the Theta SC2 for Business
which is the one I have here.
While it doesn't have the image quality of its granddaddy,
the Theta Z1, for less than one third of the price,
it's definitely more than one third as good,
and puts itself forward as a great second best option
for those on a budget.
The SC2 is basically a cheaper version of the Theta V.
The specs are more or less identical as you can see here.
And while the Theta V is still a great
second best option,
the price is too high right now for what it offers.
Enter the Theta SC2, coming in at just $299.
This camera has the potential
to be the best budget 360 photo camera
in late 2020, early 2021.
However, with a resolution of only 14 megapixels
is this a camera you could actually use professionally
and make money with?
Now there have been a lot of 360 cameras
come out over the past five years
with an endless amount of weird names,
weird shapes and weird features.
But something that has been consistent
has been Ricoh releasing a camera called the Theta.
Here is the very first 360 camera I've ever owned,
it's called the Theta m15.
Then came the Theta S and Theta SC,
then Theta V, Theta Z1 and now the Theta SC2
and SC2 for Business.
And here they are all together in case you were wondering,
and something they've always had in common
are really nice images straight out of the camera
with accurate colours, excellent dynamic range
and a fast workflow.
And while of course,
they don't compare to a DSLR and a pano head,
I have found that Ricoh 360 cameras
look sharper than the numbers on paper might suggest,
and compared with other 360 cameras
with the exact same resolution,
they almost, always look sharper.
I took some samples here in my office
where the sun was shining through the windows
really brightly to test out what the Theta SC2 could do.
After switching it into HDR rendering mode,
here's the photo I got from it.
And the first thing to notice about this shot
is the dynamic range is really good.
You can see outside is exposed really nicely.
You've got strong shadows in here,
but they don't look too contrasty.
I'd almost say this is the perfect level of contrast
straight out of the camera.
In terms of sharpness, I'd say it's about average,
when you zoom in really far,
it just doesn't look good, does it?
But the average zoom level for a virtual tour
is more around here, or so.
So when I look around at this level of zoom,
it's not noticeably soft,
and it's not noticeably sharp either,
it's kind of in the middle,
but, I would say this is acceptable in terms of sharpness.
Some imperfections I'm seeing straightaway
are the chromatic aberration there in the window.
Yes, you can get rid of that in editing,
but it will show up in most shots,
where you've got the sun beaming in there quite strongly.
So that's something to keep in mind.
If you don't like that,
it's gonna take that extra step of editing it out.
Another flaw of the SC2 is on the floor, pun intended.
And yeah, as you can see,
it hasn't done a great job of stitching,
and I have noticed this to be a consistent theme.
Whenever you have the straight lines
near the base of the camera,
as I do here with the shadow of the window frame,
it's probably not gonna do a good job down there.
So that's gonna take time to edit out.
This was the worst shot I found of all my tests.
It did do better in other situations,
but I would definitely consider this to be a genuine flaw
of the Theta SC2.
Likewise, when shooting handheld
it still produces stitching issues
and all I can say here is, "take my strong hand."
Otherwise, I think overall this shot is possible
and you could definitely use this
for a low budget virtual tour.
Oh and by the way, this with no editing whatsoever,
I haven't touched this image,
which all flaws considered, is actually pretty good
and better than most other cameras
would produce straight out of the camera.
Now here I put it side by side with one of its competitors,
the Insta360 ONE R.
A more expensive camera with more photo settings,
so surely the ONE R should be better right?
Well no actually without even zooming in,
you can see straight away the Theta SC2
is performing much better than the ONE R.
First thing is better overall contrast out of the SC2,
whereas it's a bit washed out here,
and this is even after colour correction
with my One R shot, I still wasn't able to get
as good contrast, as the Theta SC2
had naturally out of the camera.
Also, there's a pretty big difference
between the two sunspots in each image.
The SC2 is handling it much better,
with the ONE R it's blowing it out quite considerably.
Now let's zoom in on the horizon
and we're getting better clarity
not only on the city skyline with the SC2,
but also this window frame is considerably sharper
than the ONE R.
Going inside, and this time it's a little closer,
but I'm still preferring the contrast of the SC2,
versus the slightly washed out look with the ONE R.
One last comparison and my softbox settles it.
The Theta SC2 is definitely performing better indoors
than the ONE R as well as outdoors.
Now, I even did a manual RAW HDR shot with the ONE R,
where I shot three different exposures
and combine them all together in Photoshop
to try and beat the Theta SC2.
But still, even when using this more advanced method,
I'm noticing that the Theta SC2
is clear with better colours and contrast.
And by the way, you know the differences in workflows
between these two?
With the Theta SC2 it took me one second to take the photo
and one second to airdrop it to my computer.
With the ONE R it took me about 30 seconds
to take this photo and five to 10 minutes of editing
to get it to this point.
So, the Theta SC2 also wins for workflow.
Now for the comparison you've been waiting for,
the SC2 versus the Theta Z1.
And I think you know who wins here, is the theta Z1.
With this shot on the right I use the Dual Fisheye plugin,
with nine shots of DNG bracketed RAW,
edited them together to produce this fantastic 360 photo.
It's definitely a level above the SC2 in every way.
However, I wouldn't say it's three times as good.
It's not even twice as good.
It's more like 1.5 to two times as good.
As you can see, we've got less noise
and better clarity with the Z1.
But, the difference isn't exactly night and day.
The theta SC2 definitely holds its own, in this comparison.
Here is the softbox again, and yet it looks better
on the Theta Z1, but still to serve my point
that the Theta SC2 is a cheaper version of the Z1,
seems to be accurate with this particular setup.
Oh, and also the Z1 has infinitely better
shadow recovery than the SC2, it can do this.
So, that's where some of that extra money
towards the Z1 goes.
It's in shooting this fantastic RAW
that allows you a lot more flexibility later on in editing.
With the SC2, you got to get it right while you're shooting,
or you're going to end up with an image
that looks like this, and that ain't good.
Okay, so the SC2 beats the One R for photos,
and that was without any manual exposure techniques applied.
Well you might consider manually
bracketing the shots yourself.
From the experiments I did,
I wasn't able to get any better than the inbuilt HDR,
since JPEGs don't have much flexibility,
when it comes to editing, and when I combine them,
it produce more issues than it was actually helpful.
And while it's definitely a limitation,
it's actually okay since the inbuilt HDR mode
still produces better dynamic range photos,
than other cameras without having to use these techniques,
and it should be able to handle most lighting situations.
You can set the exposure manually
with the Theta SC2 to get a range of lighting effects,
like this silhouette shot,
where I set a really fast shutter speed
and jumped above the camera.
So I'd also consider it to be a good 360 camera
for social media type content,
since between the manual settings
and the inbuilt HDR feature,
you should be able to get any kind of cool shot you want.
Yes, the sharpness is still lacking with this camera,
so it's better use for zoomed out perspective
or reframe shots like this silly tiny planet photo.
Would I use this camera professionally
for paid virtual tour gigs?
Yeah, I would. But, only for small low budget projects.
Not all clients can afford DSLR quality,
nor do they always need it.
So I see the Theta SC2 as the perfect entry level camera,
that is good enough to shoot for small businesses.
And I'd see the Z1 as a camera you could use
for slightly bigger clients and bigger shoots
with more budgets for small to medium size businesses
where you might be shooting in RAW and bracketing
using the Dual Fisheye plugin,
which would definitely produce an upgrade
in image quality for those clients.
Then obviously I don't need to say it,
but I'm going to anyway,
for big clients and big budgets use a DSLR.
To quickly address the differences between the SC2
and the SC2 for Business,
there aren't too many, it's mostly small stuff.
Both has the inbuilt LED screen.
With the business version, it also has a Room mode,
which basically puts the camera straight
into inbuilt HDR mode without the need
to change modes in the app.
It also has time shift mode, where you can take two shots,
one after the other, move to a different part of the room,
and it automatically removes you.
There are some other small differences
but nothing that really affects
virtual tour shooting too much.
So I probably recommend the business model
over the regular Theta SC2,
although to be honest, either camera can produce basically
the same result anyway.
It's just really small things like the SC2
comes in four pretty colours,
whereas the business model only comes in gray.
So is this the best budget 360 camera
right now for virtual tours?
Well, at least at the time of making this video,
I say yes, especially if you want a quick workflow
with very little editing, it's no Z1,
and it's not a high end camera.
But it's a great choice,
if you're a complete beginner to 360 photography,
and want a reliable camera that gets the exposure
right, with relative ease.
It's the perfect mix of acceptable image quality
and price, for the low end of the 360 market.
Now if you want to learn how to get
the best image quality possible
from a point-and-shoot 360 camera like this one,
as well as how to put together professional virtual tours
that you can actually earn money from.
And I'm talking about earning back
the entire cost of the camera, on your very first shoot.
You can find out exactly how to do that,
inside my video course Virtual Tour Pro.
It covers everything you need to know
including the best shooting techniques,
how to edit using a variety of free and paid softwares,
all the way through to starting
and scaling a virtual tour business from scratch.
The course is 11 hours long,
and I've been adding videos to it weekly
that include all of the best and latest information
for every step of the virtual tour journey.
You can join our 900 plus Virtual Tour Pro members
by enrolling at virtualtourpro.com,
or by following the link in the description.
And that's it for my review of the Theta SC2.
What do you think about this camera?
Is it a good option?
Is it something you're considering for using professionally?
Do you see it as a good social media camera?
Or are you going to go with something else?
Let me know down there.
Of course you know, I've got reviews
of all the other 360 cameras out there on my channel.
So be sure to go through my videos,
if you wanna find out more about the competitors of the SC2.
But, I do genuinely think this is going to be a camera
that will be around for the next one to two years
and be one of the best budget options you can get.
And that's it!
Mr. Ben, out.