Panoramic/360º/VR Pictures

[Cameronftw]

Any Idea how I can acomplish this? I have a normal 350mm camera just like anyone else, and want to avoid having to go out and spend a fortune on new equipment just to accomplish this. How would I go about taking the pictures? Also what program would be ideal for stitching them together and how I would go about doing it?

I'm doing this for a website and am not sure whether or not I should take a 360º picture and stitch the ends together or to just make a normal panoramic photo and have it end at where the actual picture ends. It will be imported into flash after it's done. I was planning on using it as my site's main navigation. Thanks for the help in advance. :thumb2:

[mlk]

http://www.worldserver.com/turk/quicktimevr/

as far as I know qtvr is the only mass-distributed panorama viewer on the web. (maybe there's a flash/shockwave counterpart)

from personal experience i would recommend tripod, really small rotation angles (each photo should overlap the others by a third of the width to prevent angle distortion), taking in portrait instead of landscape mode, shooting rapidly (you don't want clouds going faster than your camera turns)
manually overriding the aperture settings so your exposure doesn't change from one picture to the next

i'm sure there are hundreds of websites more knowledgeable than we are here =)

[hybrid101]

yep, definitely get a tripod. and if i were you, set everything manually(white balance, exposure, etc) :D