360 camera Ricoh Theta

[ArielB]

Does any one can share comments about 

Ricoh Theta S 360-Degree Spherical Digital Camera

[PatricL]

My Theta S is black.

The Theta S is mentioned in every second post in this forum, search and you will find.

Please specify what you want an answer for, as share a comment is far from specific.

[LucioV]

Great value for price.

Easy to use.

Overall quality acceptable for Google Maps and Google Street View.

Not for professional use.

[Medyatic]

It is the most useful in 360 cameras. The interface is simple, it is practical to use. The only negative thing to me is that the area of ​​wifi shooting is low.

[JosephDewey]

Pros:

*It's the only widely-available solution for a press-button photophere that's less than $400

*Everything stitches together perfectly except for a small area at the bottom

*Transfer from camera to phone over wifi is fast

*Easy to hold

*People are fascinated with how a small stick can take a one-click photosphere

Cons:

*Much lower resolution than a phone making a photosphere

*Can't easily shoot yourself out of the picture

*Doesn't have good GPS tagging, and can't easily transfer your GPS location from your phone. Tons of my photospheres are missing a location.

*Needs a wifi connection

*Really bad app. I always use StreetView instead of Ricoh's app.

*Resolution isn't that great

*Doesn't take low-light images well

*Sometimes takes a few seconds when taking the picture over wifi. So, you need to turn the sound of the camera on, to be able to tell if it's working.

[ThomasKrueger_eu]

The resolution is too low for serious work. Otherwise a fine gadget. The same goes for the Samsung Gear360 with a bit better resolution.

Whats missing is a 360 camera with decent resolution of at least 10000 x 5000 pixel of the stitched image, with a bracketing function and the possibility to take images in RAW saving to DNG files.

[PatricL]

@ThomasKrueger_eu

Check the 13 level bracketing in Theta S that can be set manually at each level.

High resolution and sharpness is 2 different things, high resolution will not solve anything without sharpness backing it up.

Sharpness is nothing without good dynamic range.

Here is a good example of that. 500x500 crop taken from center of sphere

First Crop: Panono 136MP, second Crop LG 360, Third crop Theta S.

And yes, the theta can be used professionally with out a doubt.

But that is up to the photographer.

Don't treat it like a DSLR, treat it like a theta. < this is where most fail.

Use it when light is not to dynamic and it might surprise you how well it does.

I've taken pictures that look much better with a Theta then an average Joe can do with a 50MP DSLR sphere.

All Cameras have different purposes, you just have to know when it works best to be able to get max out of it.

[SarahJS]

@ThomasKrueger_eu - Are you familiar with Sphericam, and do you have an opinion on their product?

[PatricL]

Sphericam V2 for $2499 and a funky stiching, not very impressive toy.

But then they have the "Beast".....

Sharp 16MP that will make most DSLR photographers envy, and it squirts them out in 30FPS, stiched and ready.

500x500 crop from a movie.

Split Setup, camera, a HDD/battery/power box with 5m of cable connection and about 2 hours of filming with battery.

Not sure it can take photos, but it's made for movies @6K 30real FPS stiched, 60FPS unstiched.

Captures 512GB of RAW sensor data (Cinema DNG) per sensor in under 10 minutes.

Price: Unknown

Non of them will probably work to capture a tour in the park.

They are for movies and live feed.

And as we all know, Google Maps don't support that, yet.

[homokhat]

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