During 2020 many Real Estate Photographers and other imaging specialists found a need for 360 Degree Virtual Tours. With the ongoing global medical crisis many business professionals were looking for new ways to reach their clients and interact with them. The need for "social distancing" left people searching for ways to still showcase locations, homes, businesses, and more. That's where 360 images began to garner additional use cases.
At the same time imaging professionals were paying more attention to 360 photos they were also buying up many of the latest cameras. One of the best known cameras for 360s, The Ricoh Theta Z1, became very hard to find and purchase. For months the camera was on back order. When inventory was finally available, many imaging professionals purchased the camera!
Documentation on the Z1 wasn't the greatest, and that's why we've launched this class here. The basic menus, shooting modes, and more weren't fully covered in the "manual" we all received. So in this course we'll take a closer look at the Theta Mobile App, it's menus and modes, and where to find the tools you need to successfully work with the Z1. We'll also demonstrate some higher end features and Plugins to give students an idea of what they can do with this camera. While it's no replacement for a DSLR with a Pano Head, the Z1 does offer great image quality in a small package.
Please Note: This is a course about the Theta Z1, not about building full tours with 360 Cloud Hosting or desktop solutions. The focus is on the camera, its basic modes, how to access them, and some higher end modes as well. Students will see some 360 photo setups in a 360 cloud based viewer, but this course doesn't fully cover building your final tours. We've included on special section on a "quick" tour build just for students to get the overall view of how tours can come together, but the focus of this course is the Theta Z1. Additional courses will be coming soon from us on tour building (not just with the Z1) and using other cameras beyond the Z1 to create 360 tours.