360 degree photography

[Dormitator]

After toying with the idea for a bit, I've bought myself a 360 degree camera to have a play around with, nothing special (a Samsung gear 360 - 2016 model). I decided to get one after trying, and struggling, to describe the immersive feel of Leipzig's Gondwanaland to a fellow animal geek who happens to be disabled, and subsequently hardly ever ends up going to zoos. It'll also be a very different style of photography to that which I'm used to so I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Unfortunately, I'm really struggling to find any tutorial-type articles / threads for advice for trying to use such cameras in zoos and aquaria. I appreciate that actually getting good 360 degree photos in zoos is going to be very difficult (how many good 360 views are there in zoos?), but I'd like to hope that the one good photograph / movie I manage to take per zoo is going to be worth the hassle of having to lug the tripod around for such a tiny camera.

Does anyone have any experience with such things? I wouldn't even know where to actually post the pictures... I would really appreciate any thoughts and advice, I'll probably post some updates to this as a catalogue of my failures.

 

[Dormitator]

After having the camera for a month or so, I've learnt quite a few things about 360 degree photography -

• There are very few good 360 degree views in zoos
• High quality videos (needed to see the detail on the animals) are a massive pain to edit on an old laptop
• You need some specific equipment to take decent videos - a flexy tripod is a near-must

Things would be much easier if the camera had a 270 degree mode - the least viewed part of the picture would be gone, and it would give me somewhere to hide my gurning face.

But, having said all that, I've really enjoyed using it. The best moments came from the Canada geese in my local pond, I just popped the camera down in the field in front of their feeding direction, and started recording video as they approached. Managed to get some great close-up footage of them feeding, before they got spooked by something and headed for the water, taking the camera out as they slammed into it.

I tried it in Bristol Zoo's Wallace Aviary (I know it's Forest of Birds now, but the old name is so much nicer damnit) - managed to get some nice footage of Victoria crowned pigeons and roul-rouls, but it was somewhat difficult to get the camera in place and on a flat plane, whilst avoiding actually disturbing the birds. It also got some great footage of me taking photos of things, and other curious zoo-goers. It would be much better if I could get hold of a decent extendable litter-picker-type pole to give me some extra reach into the 'bird areas' of walkthroughs. However, this does of course bring into question the ethics of the whole thing - I huff about people walking off the path to shove a camera phone into a bird's face, is me dropping down a remote camera any better?

So I've still got a lot to learn about this new venture, somewhere like Leipzig's Gondwanaland or Slimbridge might be the best place to play about with it.