Here’s how to get the best image quality for the Ricoh Theta V using the free Dual Fisheye plugin.
Ricoh Theta was the first consumer 360 camera and was the one that introduced 360 cameras to a wide audience. Today, it remains one of the most popular 360 cameras especially for photos. You can get the best photo quality from the Ricoh Theta V (reviewed here) using the free Dual Fisheye plugin by Yoichi Hirota, Photomatix or other HDR software, and PTGui, the most popular stitching software. Here’s a sample 360 photo that shows amazing dynamic range:
To achieve this quality, you’ll need to use the Dual Fisheye plugin. In this case, I used the 9-shot bracket, then used Photomatix to fuse them in HDR. I then stitched the photo in PTGui. Here’s a tutorial by Yuqing Guo (subscribe to his YouTube channel):
Also check out his tutorial for the Dual Fisheye plugin for Theta Z1, which has even better image quality thanks to Raw DNG support. Here’s a demo of the Dual Fisheye plugin for Theta Z1:
And here’s his tutorial for Theta Z1:
In the test image the trees tops are purple. The Ricoh in-camera hdr is better I think. Did a similar test indoors. Used enfuse, Oloneo and SNS pro. The in-camera HDR gave best result. No noise best stitch. Just boost in Lightroom the shadows/ highlights and sometimes change the whitebalance (sticker on tripod).
Thanks Erik. Yes there’s a lot of purple fringing but I think it can be edited out in post. The advantage over the built-in HDR is that this one is from a 9-shot bracketed exposure, wider than the Theta V’s 3-shot HDR.
Do you happen to know a Photoshop or Affinity tutorial on how to remove the pink hue? We often have the same problem in photos, it would come very handy!
Do the bracketed shots get automatically stitched in camera?
Hi Ced. Sorry, no they don’t. You need to stitch them on PTGui or other stitcher. AFAIK, the Ricoh Theta desktop app will not recognize the bracketed photos.
I keep getting an error message that says it needs to have dng file to export it to stitcher.
Hi April. Theta V cannot use Lightroom stitcher because Theta V has no raw mode.