Introduction to Virtual Tour Equipment

Note: There are many different setups out there for creating virtual tours, some providers use a fisheye lens, some use a 'one shot' setup. We have seen the results of just about every setup available and have made the decision not to make any compromise when it comes to quality, so we use a range of wide angled lenses and take between 10 and 15 shots per single row panorama, our methods take a little longer but our results look a lot better! We use the same equipment when creating our affordable virtual tours as we do when creating our bespoke Revolution Tours for clients of our parent company Revolution Viewing.com.

Today there is specialist equipment that allows 'panographers' to determine the exact point at which to take a picture (often referred to as the nodal point) when panning a camera around on a tripod. Such equipment enables high quality panoramas to be created.

A professional provider of virtual tours will use a sturdy tripod (any camera shake will result in blurred images or photographs that don't align). A panoramic head is used to hold the camera vertically and indicates the exact position at which to take the photograph. A high specificion digital SLR camera that has the option of manually setting the focus, colour balance, exposure and aperture. A wide angled lens is required, the wider the lens the fewer shots needed for each panorama but the more likely lens flaring. Last but not least a levelling bubble is inserted into the hot shoe on the top of the camera, this ensures each shot is level.

Our preferred VR equipment supplier is RedDoorVR.

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