hey guys in this video we're going to talk about the tools you need to create a Google Street View virtual tour so to create Google Street View virtual tours you're going to need some Hardware now you have multiple options you can rent Hardware you can find someone who already has the hard Hardware but it's good to know and talk the language the lingo because you put your hands on and touched and at least played around with proper Hardware to create 360 images and therefore 360 virtual tours that you can also place on Google Street View okay so let's start from the ground from the bottom you need a camera stand up some kind now most camera stands are not the typical 360 stand what you need is what's called a monopod a monopod is essentially a very thin camera stand that uh projects upwards and has a heavier base on the bottom so it doesn't uh kind of balance on that tripod type uh wide stance and the reason why that is is because the stand will appear in the photos if you're not careful so you want to avoid the stand being in the photos okay really big deal so the best way to do that so you can research monopods or be like me and I actually originally had a mic stand that I converted that could handle a camera uh on top just had a little a conversion kit and it was easier to plug in and it was heavy on the bottom cuz it was a mic stand um and it was an easy uh use case for walking around and capturing 360 photos so once you have your stand uh you can now get the capture device the camera or you can capture with an iPhone so let's talk about the iPhone first and how you can easily convert your iPhone into a 360 camera so essentially you can use what's called a rotator kit um Cloud panel provides these you can place your phone into the Rotator kit make sure you place a fishey lens onto the capture lens and what you can do is go into the cloud p mobile app uh select your capture mechanism to be mobile phone tap the button to get started and press start on that little Rotator kit and it will rotate around in 360 and Stitch the photos together that it captures into a 2:1 ratio Echo angular image which is just a 360 photo now there can be at times some stitching areas or some small little things that um can come up from capturing with just your mobile device you don't have as much control of the image I mean and if you really want to get Pro level and do a lot of fancy things you're going to have to upgrade to a 360 camera so you basically rather than converting a phone which is meant to be a phone into a 360 camera we get a 360 camera to shoot 360 photos Okay um and of course a level above that maybe a little bit more old school is a is DSLR camera with a fisheye lens um you know that's also an option and your highest resolution option but we're going to talk about some of the hardware 360 camera options now in this section of the series so um real quick I want to just show some examples so this right here in my hand is a RICO Theta Z1 camera it has two lenses uh one on the front one in the back and when you capture this in the center of the room you just set a timer and you go hide for 10 seconds or so and they will capture a full 360 photo inside the camera plus they have some uh fancy plugins like the Dual fishey plugin where you can capture in nine different brackets and different exposures in the camera and it'll combine those into one file it's uh so there's a lot of things that you can do um with that camera that are a little bit more advanced so if you're sourcing a photographer somewhere make sure they have some experience with the rec Theta Z1 camera that's your best bet it's going to get you going fast when it comes to high resolution photos that don't cost an arm and a leg or require special stitching software U now if the photographer you Source from or if you really want to get fancy you can learn how to how to capture 360 with the solar camera and in a fish Highlands um if a photographer you find shoots in this mechanism and is good at it and they can show you an example that's going to be your best quality your best bet photo so if you're going to pay more for higher resolution and better quality photos find someone who shoots with a DSLR and can stitch it for you edit it for you and send it back to you that's going to be their best quality photo it's going to make you look really good and it's going to obviously um U you know cost more so that that that specific skill set uh you know he he'll make more or she will make more but but you'll get this better quality output as well there's also alternative cameras out that that exists as well too so this is called a trolly 2 camera I think that's what it's called um and what's interesting about it is that it only has one lens the lens is a little bit smaller but it Ro has a little motor and it rotates as it captures the photo and stitches it together has a 8K output so pretty nice camera U very interesting it's a little bit cheaper too one lens so it's not as expensive um so you can't get as much out of it if you really want to get fancy when it comes to editing or or sending it off to your editor but it's an option for someone who's just trying to get started and get rolling um so that that triio camera is is pretty good and it's definitely worth trying out um as you get experience so you see a 360 camera you hear about DSLR shooting you hear about the app you know where do you start what do you do um when it comes to the Hardwares and tools uh and I'm going to discuss some more in a second but you just want to keep things simple right right so if you if you buy a camera to go test it out and use it um then just capture in the B most basic way possible Auto HDR there is in here just automatically chooses kind of the best settings that are uh in camera and and just go shoot and and see how it looks put it on your computer check it out upload into Cloud Pano same thing with the trizo camera if you go out you shoot a virtual tour and it's okay then hey you know how to do it you've done the experience you've created a 360 photo you've downloaded those to your computer you've uploaded them the cloud panel and you know started to use that software and click publish so keep it simple create a virtual tour um so you can have the experience um and also lastly if you use your iPhone keep in mind that um even with Cloud piano you can capture just by freehand you can use the wideangle lens just inside that's built into the iPhone camera um but it's not a fisheye lens so what that means basically it's not going to fully capture that but you can get a good idea or a feel for how the photo is captured right so you just want to get the experience so that um when you're sourcing and building your team later uh you know what it takes and know how to create one of these 360 experiences or interactive media pieces of content so that's the hardware you need you need a stand or a monopod you need a camera or you see to use the app or an iPhone Ed to just look look up Cloud Pano virtual tour Creator on the App Store um to create a a 360 photo on the on iPhone is for the for the in camera or the or the in phone camera capture mechanism and then um and go out there and capture some photos uh I always say you know you can buy if you have to you can buy it for Amazon go to your big project and then ship it back if you have to right if you don't want to have a camera sitting around so there's lowrisk ways to get started you can rent a hardware piece from for for 3 or 4 days and learn it really fast right so that's how that's the hardware you need um to get started and of course there'll be other additional things that uh you will need in the in the back end as well so once you capture 360 now what now you want to take those specific photos and um we want to make them look pretty so the next steps are going to be to create your virtual tour so we'll get into that in the next video um now that you've seen some camera options and examples you can go out there to your own um in your own space play around take a make a virtual tour of your own home if you must and then uh and then in the next video we'll talk about um software tools and and what what to do next I'll see you there