back to article Ricoh Theta 360˚ camera: Point and click immersive imaging

The Ricoh Theta is yet another excursion of photographic fun intended to deliver an immersive environment, on-line, on the move or on the desktop. It’s been tried before – remember iPIX anyone? That idea – which in the mid-1990s became a hit among high class estate agents – is still going, and still pricey, stitching two fisheye …

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  1. Gob Smacked
    FAIL

    No Photosphere ?

    Seems an easy target to me...

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: No Photosphere ?

      Photosphere? I just observed the photosphere, and it was full of spots, by contrast, the chromosphere showed lots of prominences.

      Coat please, and hand me the backpack with the solar H-alpha telescope

    2. ratfox

      Re: No Photosphere ?

      Indeed, this would seem a great accessory for Photosphere.

      I love photospheres, but it is a bitch to do right. I tend to have to make at least three attempts to get something correct. And if there are people walking around, then you have body parts flying around.

      My wife tends to get annoyed at having to wait for me while I turn slowly around…

  2. Dave 126

    Exposure bracketing - fingers crossed for future firmware addition.

    This would be a handy device if it supported exposure bracketing. If it had this feature, and images could be saved and exported in a lossless format, it would be ideal for creating quick and dirty 'environment maps' for illuminating providing reflections for rendered 3D objects. Currently, one can achieve the same with either an expensive specialised lens, or with a largish mirrored hemisphere and some post processing to remove the camera from the image.

    Several images at different exposures can be combined to create a .hdr image, which contains more detail in the shadows and the highlights than can be expressed on a monitor or in a printed page. This allows the brightest areas to be interpreted by the rendering software as lightsources, and so shadows on a virtual object are rendered to match the real-life environment.

    The open-source program HDRshop is useful (and its UI... interesting) for translating between different layout formats of .HDR or .EXR (i.e, the ones that resemble a sphere [spherical], the ones in landscape format that look twisted [lat.-long.], and the ones that look like a cross of six squares - [cube map]). For a bit of fun, I tried it with a .jpg of the calssic M.C Escher self-portrait - the etching of the artist holding an 8" mirrored sphere - translating it into a lat.-long format.

    The GIMP can't handle .exr or .hdr images, though a GIMP fork called CinePaint (only on Linux at the moment) apparently can. More recent versions of Photoshop handle .hdr well, but can't do some of the transformations that HDRShop can.

  3. Blergh

    Do the lens scratch?

    I noticed in one of the pictures that when you lie it down it is lying on one of the lenses. How susceptible to scratching is it likely to be?

    Perhaps it's not something you just stick in your pocket with your keys and "just be careful with it" is the answer.

  4. silent_count

    Is there a market for this?

    I've got two android apps, the most expensive of which was AU$4 (about £2), which create panoramic photos*. If wouldn't be terribly hard to extend that kind of app to do 360 degree photos. While it would require a bit more effort from the user than this ricoh camera, it would also cost some £325 less.

    * Both work on the same principle - move phone slowly from left to right. The phone takes a series of photos along the way before stitching them together to produce a really wide photo.

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: Is there a market for this?

      If this camera can do video then your panoramic idea won't work unless your phone spins really fast.

    2. NoOnions
      Thumb Up

      Re: Is there a market for this?

      I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 - the built in camera app allows me to turn on the spot to create a 360 degree panorama. Works very well in both portrait and landscape . The panorama feature of my parent's Sony Xperia Z1's I find much harder to use and I've not been able to get a 360 shot from that.

    3. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Is there a market for this?

      The default camera app in Android 4.3 (and 4.2?) does this as, for free. Plus you can download the images as jpgs, or view them online in their full, clicky-draggy glory.

  5. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    Crosses several boxes for me

    iOS only, air, Facebook, low resolution, limited controls but it might be a hit with the target market. Might, given it's relatively expensive and really needs a tripod. Plus automatic connectivity will be fine for some but if you can't share your work with just anyone it won't take off. My prediction: Apple will do this right in two year's time while claiming they invented it.

    Now, what I had hoped this was is a small camera with a built-in motorised pan and tilt head. Do that for the same price (alright probably a little bit less) and I'm in.

    1. Sir Barry

      Re: Crosses several boxes for me

      Currently it is iOS only, but there are plans for an Android app on its way by the end of the year.

  6. John H Woods Silver badge

    Too late...

    ... nobody needs this technology any more. Just take as many overlapping pictures as you can with a high quality camera and let something like Hugin do the rest.

    1. Ian 55

      Re: Too late...

      Quite. If it needs to be particularly good, invest rather less than the cost of this in a proper panoramic head for a tripod and work out the camera + lens' nodal point. High quality gigapixel results are easy.

  7. ColonelClaw

    Close...

    This would be incredibly useful for my job if it had a multiple exposure with bracketing option (so I can make HDRIs) and much higher resolution. Currently I use a Nikon D800 and a 14mm lens, and the entire process takes me about half an hour from taking the photos to stitching them all together using specialist software to create a single image. I am aware there are better solutions on the market, but they cost thousands.

    Definitely heading in the right direction, though.

    1. Chemist

      Re: Close...

      "but they cost thousands"

      Hugin costs nothing and is excellent

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WOW

    £329 will get you a Nexus5 phone that does all this out the box..

    Not a single mention of Photosphere.... OK then.....

    1. MartinB105

      Re: WOW

      The PlayStation Vita can do it too with the latest firmware, although it requires taking 38 photos in total and the resolution is pretty awful due to the poor camera in the Vita (640 x 480 if I remember correctly). It is extremely easy though and it lets you look around the resulting image using the Vita's motion sensing gyro. :)

  9. Ian Michael Gumby

    Am I the only one who gets a little disoriented...

    Sorry, but when looking at the shots, the distortion around the edges of the photo start to make me a little queasy.

    Much worse than a fish eye.

  10. John Robson Silver badge

    Couple of frames a second, looping...

    And I'll have one for cycling. Proper 'all round' viewing, including indication by the rider...

  11. harmjschoonhoven
    FAIL

    Re: 3584 x 1792 pixels

    The full-res picture of the Ricoh Theta is 3584 pixels wide. 20/20 human vision has a acuity of 1 arcminute, 21600 "pixel" pairs in 360°.

    BTW a poor man's way to take a 360° picture is photographing a Xmas ball. It works quite well in fact.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Missing at least another degree of freedom.

    Is this 360° around the Z axis only?

    Anything that can take or stitch together proper spherical shots?

    Not that I could personally find any use for them. I don't even like pictures. But it sounds like a cool idea. :-)

  13. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Yawn...

    The Sony Bloggie camera with the 360 degree attachment. *Almost* (<-note the "almost" please) exactly the same thing, but several years earlier. I bought mine for $40 on Clearance well over a year ago.

  14. stu 4

    Why no video

    Strange they missed out the killer feature??

    At present your two options are:

    - strapping 2 gopros back to back (170 degrees each, so a 20 degree deadband)

    -using a 360 degree lens like http://www.0-360.com/

    I have both - the gopro suffers from sync issues and the deadband, the 360 lens is large and awkward, difficult to mount and get good results with a compact camera, very poor resolution once you process.

    The immersion you get from 360 video is pretty amazing - it's best watched as regular video, but with you in total control of where you look (works great on a phone with gyros) - basically it is like a portal into the scene with you able to look at anything you want.

    example from my kitchen (other better ones on site):

    http://www.gopano.com/video/Mjg4NQ

    with multiple gopros, you can do something really good, but then it's costing a lot more:

    http://www.360heros.com/2013/11/for-the-love-of-sharks-its-like-google-street-view-but-underwater/

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