Stitching of Stereo 360º Plates with Fewer Pairs | Antonio Victor Garcia-Serrano

There is something about stereoscopic photography that has captivated and entertained humans for centuries now. It is fascinating to me how, already by the end of the 19th century, there was a complete industry developed all-around it, with many types of viewing stereoscopes available for the masses (high, mid, and low cost) and with photographers and assignments to travel all over the world to capture the beauty of all continents in stereo cards and reels. Surely a piece of the history of human entertainment. Although not as popular, maybe, as in other past times, there is still something to this sort of stereo photography that really appeals to me and which adds to my passion for 360º imaging.

Stereo and parallax are two terms that always come together. On the other hand, it is well known that mixing 360º imaging with parallax results in stitching errors. 360º imaging and stereo could then be thought of as two opposite concepts that should not initially fit well together but, in practice, they do. Stereo 360º imaging, when well implemented, has been proved as an illusion that works well and there are several approaches to the making of this kind of media.

One approach to reducing the visual effect of the stitching errors created by the parallax in 360º images is to use a large number of photos in order to make these errors small enough as to get them practically neglected (a far limit of this method would be a slit-scanned approach of photography). But on the other hand, having a large number of photos also limits the use of this technique to only some particular static locations and situations, since light changes and moving-ghosts on the overlapping seams can greatly affect the complexity of the stitching.

The aim of this webinar is to present a dual-camera 360º stereo stitching method that uses a small number of pairs (6 to 12 pairs). Shooting stereo panoramas with fewer pairs can very much resemble the capturing pattern of traditional monoscopic 360º photos, and therefore opens the door to capturing stereo 360º photography in many more situations.

**Software required: PTGui 11 Pro. A sample panorama made of 12 pairs will be provided.**
Trial is available here: https://www.ptgui.com/download.html

Practice Files: https://ivrpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-07-03_ZAKATO_STEREO_WEBINAR.zip