How do I teach virtual reality photography?

June 8, 2010 5:52 PM

How should I teach virtual reality photography to college art students?

I am considering teaching virtual reality photography in a college art course to provide the students with a technological skill to document sculpture and architecture. Where can I buy good instructional materials and equipment to do this? I am thinking of starting with documenting small sculptures from the college's collecting using a turntable, possibly with the Quicktime format. Is that what you recommend?

posted by tnygard to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Teaching college art students how to document their work is a fantastic idea. However, you would be doing your students a disservice by instructing them to document their work using a gimmicky method that is only suitable for presenting on the web, which is not universally supported, which almost no professional artist uses, and which locks them into a proprietary format (Quicktime).

I would suggest showing them how to document their work using digital photography and video, which is the usual way of documenting sculpture and architecture. This would be a much more useful and versatile skill for them to have.
posted by oulipian at 7:26 AM on June 9, 2010

Manfrotto's set of panoramic heads are very good indeed. I believe their 303SPH is regarded as the gold standard in the field. It's quite complicated to use, but once you have it down, it does make it very easy to create high quality VR panoramas.

They have a microsite with plenty of info on the creation, and have uploaded a long series of tutorial videos onto Youtube. The end result of all that setup - actually taking the photos - is pretty straightforward and quick.

I believe Nodal Ninja's heads are also highly regarded, but I don't have any experience with them.
posted by Magnakai at 3:42 AM on June 10, 2010