360-degree photography records everything around a single point: a full circle horizontally and everything from straight up to straight down. The result, often called a spherical panorama or photo sphere, is viewed interactively. The viewer drags, swipes or turns a phone or headset to look in any direction, as if standing where the camera stood.
There are two ways to make one. A 360 camera uses two or more fisheye lenses facing in opposite directions and captures the whole sphere in one shot. A regular camera on a panoramic head shoots a series of overlapping frames that software stitches into a sphere, which takes longer but gives much higher quality. Both end up as the same kind of file: a flat image twice as wide as it is tall that a viewer wraps back into a sphere.
How a 360 photo is stored and viewed
A finished 360 photo is usually saved as an equirectangular image: a rectangle with a 2:1 aspect ratio that maps the sphere onto a flat surface, the same way a world map shows the globe. The horizontal axis covers 360 degrees around you and the vertical axis covers 180 degrees from straight down to straight up. Like a world map, it stretches the top and bottom: the point directly overhead (the zenith) and the point directly below (the nadir) are each smeared across the full width of the image.
Looked at flat, an equirectangular image looks strangely curved. A 360 viewer, on a website, a social platform or a headset, projects it back onto the inside of a sphere and shows only the part you are facing, with normal-looking straight lines. Most platforms recognize a 360 photo from special metadata in the file that 360 cameras and stitching software write automatically. If a 360 image shows up as a flat, distorted panorama, that metadata is usually missing.
360 photo or panorama?
A regular panorama is a wide view that you look at as a flat picture. It may cover 360 degrees horizontally, but it does not include what is above and below. A full spherical 360 photo covers every direction and only makes sense in an interactive viewer. Partial spheres, which leave out the ground or the sky, sit between the two.
Method 1: shooting with a 360 camera
A 360 camera has two back-to-back fisheye lenses, each seeing more than half the sphere. The fields of view overlap slightly, and the camera or its app blends the two halves along a stitch line into an equirectangular image. One press of the shutter captures the whole scene.
This is by far the easiest route, and it works for video too. The trade-offs are image quality and control: the camera’s pixels are spread over the whole sphere, so any one view in the viewer shows only a small fraction of them and looks softer than a normal photo with the same pixel count. Small sensors also mean more noise in dim interiors.
Tips for better 360 camera shots
- Use a thin stick or light stand. The camera sees everything, including your tripod. A slim monopod or light stand directly below the lens hides almost entirely in the nadir blind spot, and many apps can remove what remains.
- Set the height deliberately. Around standing eye level feels natural for most scenes. Higher gives an overview; much lower can make a room feel huge or strange.
- Keep the stitch line off important subjects. Point one lens directly at the main subject so it sits in the middle of a lens rather than on the seam between them.
- Keep people back. Objects very close to the camera, within roughly an arm’s length, are most likely to show stitching errors.
- Get out of the shot. Use a phone app or self-timer and step behind a wall or doorway. Otherwise you will be in the picture.
- Hold it level. Most 360 cameras correct tilt automatically, but a camera mounted upright gives the cleanest horizon and stitch.
Method 2: a regular camera and a panoramic head
For the highest quality, photographers use an interchangeable-lens camera with a wide-angle or fisheye lens on a panoramic head mounted on a tripod. The head lets the camera rotate around two axes: around in a circle and up and down.
The no-parallax point
The key adjustment is to rotate the camera around the lens’s no-parallax point, the point inside the lens where the light rays appear to converge (technically the entrance pupil, often loosely called the nodal point). Rotating around any other point makes near and far objects shift against each other between frames. That parallax makes the frames impossible to blend cleanly, and shows up as broken lines and doubled edges, especially for objects close to the camera. A panoramic head has slide rails that let you move the camera backward and forward until the no-parallax point sits directly above the rotation axis.
To find it, set up so a near vertical object, such as a door frame, lines up with a distant one. Rotate the camera left and right. If the two shift relative to each other, slide the camera forward or back on the rail and test again until they stay aligned through the rotation.
How many photos to take
The number of frames depends on the lens. The wider it is, the fewer frames you need. Plan for about 25 to 30 percent overlap between neighboring frames so the software has enough shared detail to align them.
- Circular or full-frame fisheye: often four to six shots around the horizon, plus one straight up and one or two straight down.
- Rectilinear wide angle (such as 14 to 24mm on full frame): several rows of frames, angled up and down from the horizon, plus zenith and nadir. That can mean 20 or more frames.
- Normal or longer lenses: possible for very high resolution spheres, but the frame count climbs into the dozens or hundreds.
For the nadir, many photographers take an extra handheld frame after moving the tripod aside, holding the lens over the same spot, and use it to patch the ground where the tripod stood.
Camera settings for 360 photos
- Exposure: manual mode, so every frame matches. Meter for a middle-brightness direction, then lock it.
- White balance: a fixed setting, not auto, so color does not change between frames. See white balance.
- Focus: manual, set once, so focus does not shift as you rotate.
- Aperture: around f/8 for good depth of field with a wide lens.
- Contrast: a 360 view almost always includes the brightest and darkest parts of the scene, such as the sun and the shade, or a window and a dark corner. Bracket each position, typically three or five frames two stops apart, and blend them with HDR techniques.
New to stitching frames together? Panorama photography covers overlap, rotation and stitching for flat panoramas, the same skills a full sphere builds on.
Stitching and editing
Stitching software finds matching features in the overlapping areas, works out how each frame was positioned, warps the frames so they align, and blends them into one equirectangular image. A good stitch starts with good capture; the software can only do so much with frames that have parallax or moving subjects in the overlaps.
Common problems and their causes:
- Broken or doubled lines: parallax from rotating around the wrong point, or objects too close to the camera.
- Ghosts and half people: subjects moving between frames. Shoot when the scene is quiet, wait for people to pass, or mask in the version of the frame you want.
- Visible seams in skies and plain walls: too little detail for the software to align. Add control points by hand or increase overlap.
- A tripod at the bottom: patch the nadir with a handheld frame or a cloning tool, or cover it with a small logo or disc.
- Tilted horizon: straighten the panorama in the stitching software before exporting; a crooked sphere feels like the floor is tilting.
You can edit color and tone on the equirectangular image as on any photo. Avoid local edits near the left and right edges, which join in the viewer, and near the top and bottom, which wrap around a single point. Anything that differs across the left and right edges shows as a seam.
Uses for 360-degree photography
- Virtual tours: several 360 photos linked with clickable hotspots let viewers walk room to room. They are common in real estate photography, hotels, venues, schools and museums.
- Travel and landscapes: a 360 view of a summit, a canyon or a city square shows the whole place, not just the direction the photographer chose.
- Documentation: a single capture records every surface of a room or building site, useful for construction progress, insurance and heritage records.
- Aerial spheres: many drones can capture frames for a 360 view from the air. See drone photography.
- Creative projections: the same image can be reprojected into a “little planet”, where the ground curls into a small globe with the sky around it, or the opposite “tunnel” view.
Common mistakes in 360 photography
- Standing in the shot. There is no behind the camera. Hide or step out of view.
- Placing the main subject on a stitch line or too close to the camera.
- Using auto exposure or auto white balance with a multi-shot method, which creates bands of different brightness and color.
- Ignoring the brightest light. The sun or a bright window is always in a 360 frame. Bracket for HDR, or the highlights will clip.
- Shooting from an odd height without meaning to. A camera on a short tripod at waist height makes viewers feel small.
- Uploading without 360 metadata, so the image appears as a flat, distorted strip.
Try this: your first sphere
If you have a 360 camera, set it on a thin stand in the middle of a room at eye level, point one lens at the most interesting feature, start the self-timer and leave the room. If you have only a phone, use a camera app with a photo sphere mode, turning slowly in place and pivoting the phone around its lens rather than your body. Open the result in a 360 viewer and look for stitch errors: they show you exactly where parallax and movement caused trouble.
360-degree photography FAQ
What is 360-degree photography?
It is a photograph of everything around one point, horizontally and vertically, viewed in an interactive viewer so you can look in any direction. It is also called a spherical panorama or photo sphere.
Do I need a special camera for 360 photos?
No, but it is the easiest way. A 360 camera captures the whole sphere in one shot. A regular camera on a panoramic head, with frames stitched in software, gives higher quality, and a phone app with a photo sphere mode can make a basic one. An ordinary phone panorama mode covers only a horizontal strip, not the full sphere.
What is an equirectangular image?
The standard flat format for storing a 360 photo: a 2:1 rectangle in which width covers 360 degrees around and height covers 180 degrees from bottom to top. A 360 viewer turns it back into a sphere.
Why do my 360 photos have stitching errors?
Usually parallax from objects close to the camera, or from rotating a regular camera around the wrong point, and movement between frames. Keep subjects farther from the camera, rotate around the lens’s no-parallax point and shoot when the scene is still.
How do I hide the tripod in a 360 photo?
Use a thin stand directly under the camera so it falls in the nadir, then remove what remains with a nadir patch from a handheld frame, a cloning tool or the camera app’s automatic removal.