What are these photos?

You're looking at 360-degree panoramic photography. Some people call it VR photography (that's "Virtual Reality") or QTVR ("QuickTime Virtual Reality"). Panoramic photography of some kind has existed for more than a century. You can see many examples of 360 degree photos from 100 years ago.

The images you see on 360cities are spherical panoramas. They are made from multiple photos that cover every direction from a single viewpoint. These photos were taken at nearly the same time, and joined (stitched) together with great precision on a computer.

When this is done properly the result is a completely seamless, smooth image (without borders between photos), which can be viewed in any direction. You can even zoom. (You'll also notice arrows inside the panoramas on 360cities - if you click on one of those, you'll jump into a nearby location...)

What equipment do I need do make photos like these?

You need a camera and a computer.

As with any craft, the right tools can help you get the job done faster, easier, and better. You can start by trying making panoramas with any compact digital camera. Once you're hooked, then you can think about getting the best tools for the job!

About the camera:

Panoramic photos can be made using any kind of film or digital camera. The most effective way to do it is with a digital SLR (Canon EOS 300D, Canon 350d (Rebel XT), Nikon D80, Nikon D200) and a fisheye lens (Sigma 8mm 3.5 or Peleng 8mm are common). This lets you create a fully spherical panorama in as little as 3 or 4 pictures, with very high resolution (30 or more megapixels).

Panoramas can be shot handheld (as in this panorama for example), but it is much better to use a tripod and a panohead (panoramic tripod head).

A panoramic tripod head, mounted on a tripod, allows you to mount your camera precisely so that it can rotate in a circle and remain properly aligned. You can easily make your own panohead out of wood or metal. There are also many excellent commercial panoramic tripod heads available, in every price range. Aside from the aesthetic issue, there is nothing a commercial panohead offers that you cannot do with a home-made version -- except for the convenience of having it ready-made and well-designed, of course.

About the computer:

You can use any windows, mac, or linux computer. There are both free and paid programs you can use for the entire workflow of creating panoramas. You will need

1. a program to develop RAW images from the camera.
2. a stitching program such as Hugin (free), PTGui, or Autopano Pro
3. an image editing program such as Photoshop or Gimp.

Stitching photos is not a lightweight task, and the more RAM you have, the better. It also helps to have fast hard disks. For example, tiny notebook (such as the asus eee) might take 3 hours to stitch a panorama while the same task would take 10 minutes on an average desktop computer (because of RAM and disk speed, more than processor speed). We will soon begin publishing tutorials for stitching your panoramas.