What version of firmware are you running on your theta z1? The latest Firmware is a great improvement over the last few firmware updates.
I edited my photos from time to time myself depending on how the capture went. However, I don’t use Lightroom because it’s too time consuming. I use aurora hdr as it’s a lot faster and brings out better details and colour.
Version 2.20.3. According to the Theta website, the only thing that has been changed in the one more recent update is a bug fix.
Are you using the Ricoh HDR or one of the other settings?
Can you upload your pictures? I’m curious to see the difference.
And here is a link to the iGuide. I actually switched part-way through the job from the Ricoh HDR to the -5EV/+2EV (the scan of this area was Ricoh HDR), but color accuracy did not improve.
Well, my best guess is that there are a couple factors at play here.
There isn’t a lot of natural light in darker areas (based off your cellphone photo). And it’s quite busy with the different colours of lighting. It looks like the Theta tried to bring that lighter exposures up a bit too much, even the table colour doesn’t show properly.
The -5EV/+2EV, in my experience, doesn’t perform very well in those conditions. Either Ricoh HDR or -3EV/+3EV would give you better balance. I would have experimented with those shutters for natural light to tone down the interior lighting over powering the situation there. I have found in SOME cases that lights off, with enough natural light, will produce better results. You’ll see a big difference in your preview as you take them.
Hope this helps you some. 
How much post-processing do you do in Stitch? I pretty much always lower yellows and get rid of blues in most shots in Stitch; does the job for me, but IG is a secondary offering for my business. Fact of the matter is that the Z1 simply isn’t that a good a camera: I had much better results using IM-5 camera, but I sold that and went Planix for the speed.
I edit shadows too, exposure and yellow and blue. Shadow edits are done in photoshop.
The dynamic range is better with the ims-5 which is why i bought that first. I have blth and the speed is so much better with the planix but clients have never commented on the quantity difference so i plan to sell my ims- 5 and get a 2nd planix soon
Same: I was girding myself for the complaints when I went from IMS5 to Planix, heard only crickets. Seems Good Enough is often good enough.
Not my standard but was having to edit glars out of so many photos on my ims-5 that the benefits out weigh the negatives
@EvanH
I’ll have to try lights-off sometime to see. But my experience so far has been that open blinds produce a pretty bad glare. This pano was with the Ricoh HDR.
I really love the iGuide system, and Planitar’s support has been great. I just hate fighting color issues.
If there’s nothing that can be done about the colors that come out of the camera, maybe there’s something that can be done to help facilitate easier editing. All of the pano files are named the same thing, which is problematic. When I want to edit my panos with lightroom, I either have to import, edit, export, and replace original files - one at a time (because you can’t export multiple files with the same name), or import, edit, and export in a batch with exported files getting renamed (e.g. h1(28).jpg), and then trying to match those up with the folder in which they originated and deleting the old file, placing the new one, and renaming it. Both of those options are too cumbersome to be practical. But if the pano files were already named in sequence (e.g. h28.jpg) when they were created, that would avoid the issues caused by working with multiple files with the same name. I don’t know if it is possible for Planitar to do that, but it would make my work a lot easier if that change could be made.
@schmal
I usually get rid of most blue and some-to-most yellow, but in this case it looked awful if I brought down the yellow more.
To your point, the client ended up raving over how great it turned out. It doesn’t look great to me, but if they are happy then that’s good enough.
But if the pano files were already named in sequence (e.g. h28.jpg) when they were created, that would avoid the issues caused by working with multiple files with the same name .
Are you Mac or PC? I developed software a couple of years ago to deal with same-name issues, but it’s only for PC.
Sorry it took me so long to respond! I am a PC user.
