cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Use of Ricoh Theta cameras for stereoscopic panoramas

Annogyl
Honored Guest
I've always preferred stereoscopic views and wasn't really happy with the flat images of my Ricoh Theta camera. Therefore, I tried to establish a workflow which allows me to generate stereo panoramas using a single Theta on a rotating panohead. Results aren't perfect, but for me its a major improvement over these flat monoscopic images. I've included links to two samples which can be viewed on the Gear VR in the Oculus Photos app. The first one is derived from three shots in 21 sec using the old Theta m15 camera. For the second image I used the new Theta S camera taking four shots at 90 degree angles. For me it's really fun to revisit nice places I've seen on my Gear VR.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mssukayh9gnfx ... 9.jpg?dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4xmpbek2esvt ... 9.jpg?dl=1
17 REPLIES 17

nosys70
Expert Protege
i think it is better to take 3 panoramas at 120 deg.
the trick is to cut the part of the picture in the panorama that face the view in the direction you are looking for.
if your FOV is set at 120 deg, you can make 3 panorama, if you want more precise (90deg) you shoot 4.
there would be a software that would know the direction you are looking for and grab the correct part in the each panorama for left and right eye. it would took the correct part in the correct panorama, provided you set a reference for North, in each.
The less picture needed , the less seams you need, so my opinion is 3 pictures is ok.
This way of doing is not perfect because it implies the viewer position slightly (less than half of the IPD) change when moving head.
for small IPD this should not be a problem.
The only problem is it is very hard to shoot 4 pictures in real life without having change between the shots.
so you would need 4 theta shooting at the same time, then masking each theta cam from each panorama.

Annogyl
Honored Guest
"vrnewwave" wrote:
Then how to stitch it in Photoshop?
For the stitching I'm using PTGui. You will find useful tutorials here: http://www.pano.guru/cat/tutorials/ I learned a lot about stereo stitching from this thread: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/p ... zyb-64xHsJ Using the Theta fisheye views as source masking is not required.
However, the method requires to have the 8 180 degree fisheye views from the two lenses available. As I don't have access to unstitched Theta raw images I'm reconstructing these views from the equirectangular images I'm getting from the Theta camera.

"nosys70" wrote:
The only problem is it is very hard to shoot 4 pictures in real life without having change between the shots.
I have done stereopanoramas successfully with the camera mounted on a handheld monopod. I'm using the Rollei ePano 360 turntable for the Theta stereo panoramas. In the fastest setting the 4 images can be taken in 20 sec. Using the interval mode this is done with a single click in the smartphone app. Obviously the method is not applicable when there are many moving objects in the scene. However, using the cloning tool in StereoPhotoMaker following stitching I could remove moving people and cars from final images. I'm still waiting for the one click consumer camera which gives me a final synchronized stereopanorama.

tumbleandyaw
Honored Guest
This is exactly what I'm trying to do. Thanks for creating this workflow! How exactly do you unstitch the equirectangular Theta .jpg file to get the output from each lens separately?

Annogyl
Honored Guest
I have a workaround in two steps. First, I'm rearranging the equirectangular images to represent the single lens output (done in Photoshop). In the second step I'm using Hugin to convert the resulting two images to fisheye views.

In the Hugin Advanced Interface select Add Images (only one at a time) and check that Lens Type is set to Equirectangular with Focal length 6.159 mm. In the Stitcher tab set Projection to Fisheye and Field of View to 180 (horizontal and vertical) with Canvas Size 3000 (width and height each). Uncheck 'Exposure corrected' for Panorama Outputs and check 'No exposure correction' for Remapped Images. Then stitch to the fisheye view. The settings can be saved as a template.

Don't forget first to resave the Theta images in the Theta software with XMP-information added. This will minimize horizontal stitching errors.

tumbleandyaw
Honored Guest
Great. I'm going to try this. Thank you !

tumbleandyaw
Honored Guest
Are you able to share the Photoshop template for retrieving the 2 lenses? This would help tremendously....thank you...

Annogyl
Honored Guest
For the purpose of splitting the equirectangular images I have recorded a Photoshop Action. Don't know if you can use it because I have the German version of Photoshop (CS5). It assumes that the 3 Theta images are already loaded in tabs and makes use of a specific directory for saving. It's not really difficult as it only involves moving some selections around. All files are saved as tif.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ck9gu052jg829 ... n.atn?dl=1

vrnewwave
Honored Guest
"Annogyl" wrote:
I have a workaround in two steps. First, I'm rearranging the equirectangular images to represent the single lens output (done in Photoshop). In the second step I'm using Hugin to convert the resulting two images to fisheye views.

In the Hugin Advanced Interface select Add Images (only one at a time) and check that Lens Type is set to Equirectangular with Focal length 6.159 mm. In the Stitcher tab set Projection to Fisheye and Field of View to 180 (horizontal and vertical) with Canvas Size 3000 (width and height each). Uncheck 'Exposure corrected' for Panorama Outputs and check 'No exposure correction' for Remapped Images. Then stitch to the fisheye view. The settings can be saved as a template.

Don't forget first to resave the Theta images in the Theta software with XMP-information added. This will minimize horizontal stitching errors.


Thank you very much ~!