Action 360 panoramic still photography

  • I have been doing high resolution 360 panoramic photography for years, using a DSLR (currently a Nikon D700), a Nodal Ninja mount, and a monopod. My field time to shoot a pano, between setting up, shooting, breaking down, and then moving on (usually backpacking) is about 15-20 minutes. Nearly all my work has been done in the Grand Canyon. I recently went down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon on a 20 day raft trip, but was disappointed to come away with only about 40 panos for the entire trip. Shooting was restricted to only on land (no way to set up and shoot with my gear on a moving raft), and even then many opportunities were lost, like during short stops of just a few minutes during the day to scout rapids.

    If I am ever fortunate enough to take another rafting trip, I want to have gear to really take advantage of it. I am aware of the any number of rigs out there for shooting 360 degree panoramic video, and have seen examples of people doing just that on rafting trips in the Grand Canyon, but my interest is not in video - I want to do as high quality as possible 360 degree still panoramas. I do assume that to be able to shoot from a moving platform like a raft on a river that I am going to need some kind of a multi-camera rig that is able to shoot all the pano images simultaneously.

    So any recommendations on gear for my use case? I've seen setups like the Freedom 360 Explorer equipped with 6 GoPro Hero 4 cameras that should work, but the 5K price tag is daunting to me, and I'm skeptical of the quality.

    Cheers,
    Larry Wieland

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