My experience of shooting a 360º panorama on film

Idea

360º panoramas of both photos and videos are becoming more popular. They can be found on Google and Yandex maps is no longer just as street browsing, they are placed on maps by various businesses in order to attract customers. Over the past 5 years, a lot of panoramic cameras have appeared, social networks have learned to display panoramic photos and videos.

I work as a panoramic photographer in the studio Tour-360.ru , I had the idea to shoot a virtual tour using the technology of the past, not on a digital camera, but on an analog one. There are film cameras that allow you to shoot cylindrical panoramas, but I did not find spherical panoramas 360 × 180, which were captured on film, therefore, I will probably be the first. Next, a little theory, practice and, of course, the result.

All the foregoing has been done solely for the sake of interest and does not carry any practical application.

Equipment

I usually use a Canon 5D mark III digital camera, a Sigma AF 8mm f / 3.5 EX DG digital camera, a 360Precision Atome panoramic head and a reliable Benro a1970t tripod.

In order to remove the panorama on the tape from my set, I need to replace only the camera. Lens and other equipment will be the same. I decided to choose Canon 5 for this. This is the progenitor of the Canon 5D digital camera (D in the title is Digital), I managed to buy it for only 2500 £, in good condition. Given that the digital camera now costs about 180,000. In appearance, both cameras are somewhat similar. The difference in the age of cameras is about 24 years.

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For example, I will take a panorama of both analog and digital cameras, with the same shooting parameters, so that it can be compared with.

Of course, the camera needs a film. My choice was Kodak Professional Ektar 100, this color negative fine film with high brightness and color saturation. The fine and even grain of this film allows you to scan high resolution negatives.

Some theory

The Sigma 8mm ultra wide angle lens allows you to take pictures at an angle of up to 180 degrees.
To shoot a full panorama, you need to shoot only 4 frames in each direction.
All images should be taken from one point, if you slightly move the camera, the foreground and background objects will diverge, which will make further gluing impossible. To achieve the best result, you need to rotate the camera around the optical center of the lens, which will avoid parallax and achieve the best result when gluing. For this and need a panoramic head.

Since the lens has a fairly large viewing angle in one frame, a very bright sky and a rather dark ground can simultaneously hit. The camera will try to reflect the same thing equally well, but the dynamic range of the sensor is not enough to show equally well the areas in the dark and light areas of the frame.

In order to make the frame more uniform, you need to take a few frames with different exposures.



In the first shot, the clouds are clearly visible, and in the last one the grass.
Then the captured series of frames is combined into one, where you can see both sky and earth, so we get a picture with a wide dynamic range (WDR, also known as HDR). The comparison below clearly shows the difference.



Such a snapshot more accurately reflects how a person sees. Further 4 such pictures are stitched into one 360º panorama.

Film shooting

The technology of shooting on film is exactly the same as on the figure, the only thing shooting in HDR would be redundant, since the film, unlike the digital sensor of the camera, is capable of capturing a wider dynamic range. Nevertheless, I decided to play it safe and shoot a series of shots, and I was not mistaken, as it later turned out, the exposure meter of the film camera let me down, and the first 2 shots of the series turned out to be too dark.

After shooting, you need to scan the film, I had a scanner, but I gave it to the laboratory. The film was scanned with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED scanner with a resolution of 4280 × 2834, which is 1.8 times less than the resolution of a 5760 × 3840 digital camera. But it’s not necessary anymore, since I don’t get more details from my film. Under the link Kroppa in 100% scale with Canon 5D and scan frame with Canon 5.

Result and Comparison

Then I collected two panoramas and leveled their white balance, on the next demo you can compare them.


As you can see, the film is inferior in quality. But the result still exceeded my expectations. It seemed to me that the difference would be more significant.



Thank you for your attention, I would be interested to hear your opinion on this idea.