The first doubt of almost every business owner who wants a virtual tour is the camera. Do you have to buy a 360° camera? Will the phone do? Does the difference show? The short answer: to get started, the iPhone you already have is enough; a dedicated camera is justified when the space is large or when you are going to capture many scenes.
The long answer is this article. We are not going to compare models or prices, because they change every few months and what is true today is not tomorrow. What does not change is what a photo needs in order to work in a 360° tour, and which factors make one option suit you better than the other.
What kind of photo a 360° virtual tour needs
A tour is built from spherical photos: images that cover everything around the camera, ceiling and floor included. To store them in an ordinary file they are “unrolled” into a rectangle, the way a world map unrolls the globe. That format is called equirectangular, and you can recognise it because the image is exactly twice as wide as it is tall: a 2:1 ratio.
That is the only real technical requirement. Any camera or app that delivers a 2:1 equirectangular photo works for a tour. In ViewNexo, the photo must also be at least 2000 pixels wide and in JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC.
Panoramas from the iPhone camera's Pano mode do not work: they are a horizontal strip, not a full sphere. Everything above and below is missing, and they are not 2:1.
There are two ways to get that photo. One is to take many ordinary photos around a point and join them with software. The other is to use a camera with two opposite lenses that captures the whole sphere at once. The first is what a phone does; the second, a dedicated 360° camera.
Option 1: the phone
With the ViewNexo 360 app for iPhone, the phone becomes a 360° camera. The app shows you on screen where to point; you turn on one spot and it shoots by itself when the phone is aligned. It is about 30 photos per scene: around, up, down, the ceiling and the floor. When you finish it uploads them, the servers join them into a single 360° image in about a minute, and the scene appears directly in your tour.
For
- You buy nothing. The app is free and you already have the phone. It is the cheapest way to find out whether a tour works for your business.
- One flow. You capture and the scene is in the tour, without moving files from camera to computer and from there to the web.
- A good camera to start from. Current phones handle indoor light well, and each of the photos being joined uses the full sensor.
- Always to hand. If you rearrange an area of the shop, you recapture that scene on the spot.
Against
- Each scene takes a few minutes, because it is many photos. For five scenes it does not matter; for forty, it does.
- Nothing can move while you capture. If a person walks between one photo and the next, they may come out cut off. You need the space still for a minute per scene.
- It depends on you not travelling. The phone has to turn on its own axis. It can be done handheld, but a tripod or monopod improves the result a great deal.
- For now, iPhone only. The app requires iOS 16.4 or later; the Android version is on its way.
Option 2: a dedicated 360° camera
A 360° camera has two wide-angle lenses, one on each side, and captures the whole sphere in a single shot. Brands such as Insta360 or Ricoh Theta make cameras of this kind. The camera itself or its app joins the two halves and exports the equirectangular photo ready to upload.
For
- One shot per scene. You put the camera on the tripod, step out of frame and trigger it from your phone. Capturing large premises takes a fraction of the time.
- It tolerates movement better. Because everything is captured in the same instant, no people appear cut off between one photo and the next. That is a real advantage in places you cannot empty.
- More sharpness in large spaces. In a wide showroom, a warehouse or a car lot, where objects are far from the camera, a dedicated camera usually resolves detail better.
- It works with any platform. The file it exports is standard.
Against
- You have to buy it and charge it, and learn its app.
- One more step. You export the photo from the camera's app and upload it to the tour, from the computer or from the phone's gallery.
- The tripod stops being optional. If you hold it in your hand, your arm and face are in the photo.
- It is a single-purpose device. If you are going to make a five-scene tour and update it once a year, it is hard to justify.
Phone and dedicated camera, side by side
What really matters, more than the camera
Two tours made with the same equipment can look very different. The difference is almost never the camera, but these four things.
Light
It is the factor that weighs most. Turn on every light in the shop, including display cases and shelves, and avoid strong backlight: a window with the sun straight on leaves the interior dark. In poor light, any camera produces a grainy image with dull colours; in good light, even modest equipment looks good. If your premises are dark, capture at the hour when most daylight comes in without direct sun.
Tripod and height
A fixed point is what makes the photos fit together. Put the camera or the phone at the eye level of a standing person: lower, and the shop looks as if seen from a chair; higher, as if from a ladder. And place it where a customer would stand to look, not against a wall.
Resolution, up to a point
More pixels let you zoom into the image without it breaking up, which is welcome in large spaces. But in a shop where the shelves are two metres away, few people notice the difference between a good photo and an excellent one, especially on a phone screen, which is where most tours are opened. Besides, in an interactive tour the product's detail does not depend on the 360° photo: the customer taps the shelf and sees the product's card with its own photo.
A tidy space
Everything is in a 360° photo. No camera fixes a box in the middle of the aisle or a cluttered counter. Ten minutes of tidying pay off more than any equipment upgrade.
Which to choose for your case
- Small or medium premises, up to about ten scenes: start with the phone. That covers most shops, cafés, practices and workshops. See examples for phone shops or restaurants.
- Large spaces (furniture shops, car dealerships, warehouses, hotels with many areas): a dedicated camera saves you time and wins on sharpness at a distance. See furniture shops, car dealerships and hotels.
- Many different properties or premises (estate agencies, chains): if you are going to capture every week, a dedicated camera's single shot pays for itself in hours of work. See estate agencies.
- Places you cannot empty (a gym during opening hours, an open restaurant): a dedicated camera avoids people cut off. Or capture with the phone before opening.
- You have Android and no iPhone: for now, a 360° camera is your route, or borrowing an iPhone for an afternoon.
- You already own a 360° camera: use it. Export the photo and upload it to the tour.
And you can mix. A tour accepts scenes from both sources: the main room with a dedicated camera and, months later, a new scene taken with the phone when you open one more space.
Start without buying anything
If you are unsure, the sensible order is this: make your first tour with the phone, publish it and see whether your customers use it. If it works and falls short on time or sharpness, that is when you buy a camera, already knowing what you want it for. The opposite, buying the equipment before knowing whether the format suits your business, is the most expensive way to find out.
Switching loses you nothing: the scenes you already have keep working, you can replace a scene's photo from the editor whenever you like, and your products are untouched, because they live in your catalog and not in the image.
For the capture step by step, read how to make a 360° virtual tour with a phone or the 360° photos chapter of the tutorial, which includes how to upload photos from a dedicated camera. And if you want to see the result before deciding, walk through the demos.