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One
of the reasons why many real estate professionals use a third party
service for virtual tours is that they assume that creating panoramic
and 360 degree "moving pictures" is way too complex for "average
agents" to do on their own. Well, the third party virtual tour providers
would certainly like for agents to continue to think that way, but
we hope to solve this mystery for you today!
If
you've used or at least seen the self scrolling 360 degree images
contained within most virtual tours on the Internet, these are not
really "movies" even if they were originally taken with a video
camera or camcorder. In fact, these are actually a single, very
wide still image. The Java technology used on the Internet makes
these still images scroll and appear to move. What's important to
remember is that it is really just a still image and it's one that
you can easily create yourself with common tools used by hundreds
of thousands of real estate professionals today! So how do you do
this yourself?
Using
a standard digital camera (which captures still images or JPEG files),
just follow these three steps:
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Hold
the camera to your eye and keep it level. Use the optical
viewfinder rather than the LCD viewfinder for best results.
-
Stand
in one location and don't move your feet except to rotate
your body from left to right. Some people prefer using a tripod
to keep the camera steady, but for many people this equipment
isn't necessary.
-
After
you've shot the first photo, rotate to the right and make
sure that you overlap the second photo with the first photo
by about 20% or so. Just repeat these steps, rotating your
body to the right for the third photo and continue until you've
photographed the entire area you wanted to include in the
panoramic image.
For
a great visual demonstration showing you these steps, visit our
website at: http://www.visualtour.com/create_tour2d.asp
Here
are a couple of tips to make this process easier on you and make
your panoramic image display exactly as you want it to appear...
Decide
how much of a room or view you want to show. Most of the time
it won't be a complete circle (360 degrees), but it's up to you.
You want to show the most interesting and appealing parts of a
room, not blank walls, dark corners, or inappropriate parts of
a room (cluttered, dirty, sensitive, etc.)
Then set your lens to its widest setting (or attach a wide angle lens) to capture as much of the view as possible with the fewest number of shots. Keep this setting the same for all the overlapped shots in one panorama.
Once
you've captured the images, just download them into your favorite
panoramic stitching software program and turn the overlapped still
shots into a smooth, scrolling panorama for your virtual tours!
VisualTour.com includes very easy to use and automated stitching
software. Other stitching applications are available in most electronic
stores.
In
future e-marketing newsletters we'll cover other marketing and
photographic tips. Stay tuned!
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