Although the iPhone is a little behind with the movement of 360 photos and videos, the iOS phones are still able to snap a good 360 degree shot. The iPhone features a fantastic inbuilt camera app and although there is still no support for 360 videos off the hook, you are able to use the panoramic image mode to create 360 degree photos straight from your iPhone. This technically isn’t 360 degrees either as the iPhone can only capture 240 degrees of your surroundings, without additional camera accessories but for the purpose of this blog post we’ll pretend it is.
Creating 360 Degree Images with an iPhone
So you’re probably wondering how you get a 240 degree image converted into a 360 photo… The first option is to upload it to 360 degree friendly Facebook, which will use the panoramic image in the same way as it treats 360 degree photos. Facebook puts a compass icon on the right-hand side, and viewers can drag their fingers across their mobile screen or tilt their device if it supports it, see the best 360 phones here. On a desktop computer you can click and drag to move around the surroundings.
The second option you have is to use a mobile app to make 360 degree photos. There are various 360 degree photo applications, such as 360 Panorama app or Pano, which allows you to manually stitch 16 photos together. Google has also recently launched an iOS version of its Photo Sphere app which takes your 360-degree images and stitches them together to make immersive panoramas that can be uploaded directly to Google Maps.
Finally your last option is to take multiple photos then stitch them together yourself using the free Hugin panorama-stitching software for desktops… Probably best to give this one a miss unless you know what you’re doing!
Creating 360 Degree videos
Although out of bounds to the iPhone’s inbuilt camera app, it is still possible to film in 360 degrees. One of the cheapest and easiest ways to capture 360 photos and videos with an iPhone is to use the Nano360. The Insta360 turns your iOS device in to a 3K 360-degree video camera. It is compatible with the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and allows you to take and post live 360 degree streams, panoramic stills, and videos directly from your iPhone.
For those wanting to know a little bit more about the Insta360…It uses the phone as a viewfinder, and features two fish eye camera lenses to capture those treasured moments and it can store 360 photos and videos on to an external memory card. Read more here
In addition to this if you want quality 360 degree footage your going to need a mount on a tripod, having jittery video footage will not work with 360 degree immersive videos. There are a number of options and they are reasonably priced. We recommend one of the Mini 360° Electric Panorama Head Tripods which you can buy here
