360 x 180 Panorama
Learning how to do this has been a journey, but now that I’ve mastered it the effort seems worthwhile, and making this one took only a few minutes. You can interact with this picture to rotate it left-right and up-down, or zoom in and out.
I’ve kept the image size small for the web, but at twice the size (4 x the pixels) it looks crisp and well detailed. The fisheye lens means that only three source photos are needed to create the whole sphere from overlapping shots, though this can be done with any lens. The shorter the focal length, the fewer pictures you need to use.
There’s commercial software available for stitching panoramas, but I used Hugin an open source UI for some open source tools.
The web viewer I’ve used has some options to explore the panorama in different ways on full-size screens and mobile devices. Click on the gear icon in the bottom right of the picture to take a look.
Postscript – This panorama is now uploaded to Google Street View, and I uploaded a second one at a different location here. There’s also a post on the blog page with another picture of The Obelisk.