I have to say that I am extremely disappointed with the photo quality. I don’t understand how the beautiful pictures on the iGuide website came about. You buy the thing and think it works perfectly with the Theta Z1.
Why is it not possible to take the pictures as RAW with the Theta Z1, download them and then edit them properly than with this primitive and old-fashioned Stitch software?
I have tried everything with editing: Stitch software, editing images in Lightroom, editing in Affinity or Luminar. Without RAW images it is practically impossible to get good images.
And why is it not possible to use the Dual Fish Eye plugin?
Simply a pity.
With pictures like these, I feel like a total beginner and amateur. I simply cannot show such tours with such poor image quality to my clients.
What can be changed with this system to get better pictures? Could I use a different camera or change the Theta Z1?
What are the possibilities?
Thank you.
What firmware is your theta using? I found that the older firmware on my theta was a big issue. Since the latest update the picture quality has improved a lot.
Also are you using the Ricoh HDR setting? I don’t ever use the Ricoh HDR as it’s not quite there yet for quality purposes.
If you look at this post I made here (see below) This is my process with the photos. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! I’ll do my best to help you
I feel the same. I am done with my Planix after 3 shoots last week. Back to the IMS5. Its a Shame as the lidar is stellar and the Theta alone takes beautiful photos…
I have the latest Theta software on it. I have also tried Aurora HDR. Nothing works. Look at the pictures… horrible.
Maybe the -5EV/+2EV setting will help. I will try that.
Thanks a lot for your help!
Hi Evan, I am having the same issue and will be updating my Z1 tonight. Would you be kind enough to share your Aurora settings with me too please? I have taken two bad iGuides this month and I thought it was just the lighting in the room.
Thanks in advance!
Three words: 1) daylight—lots of it, 2) incandescent, 3) florescent. My thought is even if you were shooting raw, you have would trouble balancing this not so ideal lighting nightmare. It’s a wonderful space, but not camera friendly. I imagine this place looks awesome to the naked eye, but you would be hard pressed to balance color and exposure in this situational with any camera unless you were using flash ambient blending.
You can’t expect the camera to work miracles when you have full-on daylight and areas of barely lit incandescent/florescent interiors. Not only is the color temperature way different, the light levels are WAY outside the boundaries of latitude for any camera to handle properly.
Post-processing won’t be the miracle either, since the camera won’t balance such a drastic difference between cool and warm light in one scene for you to make it look presentable, even if you they were raw files. It’s pretty obvious you have desaturated the blue coming into the main room as there are complete areas of gray, and so yes, in your words, the finished product “has such poor image quality”.
My friend, you are in an uphill battle with this one without adding additional light into the situation. I think I’ve seen some threads about using flash with the Planix system. Give that a search and perhaps you can improve the quality with flash. This will make a great iGuide tour if you can manage the extremes. It’s a good challenge, have fun.
Even the IMS5, I feel doesn’t have the greatest picture quality. I haven’t shot with the other iguide variants, but I have shot with the matterport system and the quality feels night and day. I’ve learned recently to remove auto exposure and set it manually every time. Settings are usually -5EV/+1-+2EV. I dont know about you but sometimes the preset light settings can’t quite capture the tint properly - it would be great if there was a Tint slider to dial in the magenta and greens, to compliment the temperature slider. Sometimes the color sampler just can’t get it perfect.
Try underexposing a tiny bit on your next shoot with challenging light - looks like there was a bit of noise in the blacks and the highlights are hard to handle with all that light coming from outside. I’ve even gone down to -7EV at times to handle all the light. You’ll get a little more pull from the highlights but a little less detail in the shadows of the blacks, its pretty much a game of give and take. I wish iguide would let us change the amount of images the camera takes instead of the standard 3, but then comes the size factor of the files, uploading etc. Good luck on your future shoots man.
Go to the website and you will find videos showing how it’s used. Basically it mounts between the tripod and the Planix as it has threads on the top and bottom.
I’m getting pretty sick of the image quality too. Editing with Lightroom helps some, but then replacing the original images with the edited ones is super time-consuming, and still not good enough. I’ve been working for hours on a project to try to get it to look ok, with no luck. I took a cell phone picture while at the shoot of the wall color in a particular room so I could be sure to match it (I made sure at the time that the cell photo showed an accurate color). The wall is beige and the iGuide photo shows it as straight-up yellow. Nothing I have tried has been able to correct it.
