A few weeks back I was investigating ways to rapidly create full 360° panoramas. Specifically I was interested in creating cubic panoramas to be included in a digital publication with InDesign and the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, and I had no intention to invest in expensive equipent for that. After all I just wanted to test it.
Searching the interwebs I came across this cool company: Pixeet. Their offer includes a specifically designed fisheye lens for the iPhone or iPad (or any other device with a camera) and a really easy to use application to take the four pictures necessary to create the panorama. So I ordered it.
Here's the result of my first test:
That is pretty neat no? It only took four pictures with the fisheye attached to my iPhone 4.
There is one thing that annoys me and that Pixeet promises to fix. Currently you have to upload your images to the cloud for stitching, an internet connection is therefore required to complete the process. However, Pixeet wrote that they are working on a new version of the app that will stich the images on the device.
After you have uploaded your panorama, you can download an equirectangular or stripped cubic image, or even a QuickTime VR of it. You could then separate the cubic images with Photoshop or use an application like Pano2VR to create the 6 images needed for InDesign, which I did for my test. So, as far as my test on using such a panorama in an InDesign Document to be published with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, it works just fine!
I shall continue in these investigations. Stay tuned.