Question of the day: What's your next gear purchase?21441
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 Owner,Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
TomSparks private msg quote post Address this user | |
 WGAN Question of the Day As 2026 has started, i'm just curious what everyone's next gear purchase will be? What's something you want to get or need to get? for me, i'm looking at a new drone (dji alternative). I haven't settled on one yet. Tom |
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ron0987 private msg quote post Address this user | |
@TomSparks here your go Tom, only $150,000, you can take your own pictures. |
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Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
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| @ron0987 ha! actually, i'd love one of these... sitting in traffic is so un-productive. | ||
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MeshImages private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Very small investment. I am looking for a 2-lens 360 camera. I have the Insta360Pro camera with 6 lenses, but I am now looking for the perfect 360 camera. Not so much for Matterport, but for selfhosted workflows especially with Pano2VR and 3DVista. 60+ Megapixel panos plus Minimum 4K 60 fps video. Cannot decide between Insta X5 and the Theta X. I think I want this timeshift functionality from the Ricoh cameras, where you can shoot one lens after the other and move with the tripod. Speeds up everything. |
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Realwalk3D private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @TomSparks Drone 360 Insta + xgrids | ||
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Realwalk3D private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @ron0987 And in futures https://jetson.com/ Interestingly, these drones are already actively flying in Poland in rescue services in the mountains, including in Zakopane. |
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Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
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| @MeshImages Insta360 partners with me on some of my youtube videos and sent me the X5.. its nice! tom |
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Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
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| @Realwalk3D I hear @Matterfix has some portal cam's and k1's for sale. | ||
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Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
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| @Realwalk3D I wonder how high you can go with them.. $148k... there's a few GM vehicles at that price point, not bad! | ||
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Fathom3D private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Kind of a boring answer, but a 4th Pro3 seems most likely. | ||
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Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
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| @Fathom3D if it makes you more money its not boring! that's great that you need a 4th. side question of the day: if you could think about your top 3 ordered use cases what would they be? real estate marketing? something else? | ||
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Fathom3D private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Top 3 would be: Commercial RE marketing, renovations, residential RE marketing | ||
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 WGAN FanClub Member Queensland, Australia |
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Quote:Originally Posted by MeshImages if you have a mirrorless/dslr camera especially something with high resolution like Sony a7rIV you can do a great quality pano with it with a lens that has just come to the market. Not instant 360 as you have to rotate the camera to get 360 horizontal FOV but it seems you do not want that anyway as you want to shoot one side at a time. Despite it having 220 degrees FOV I do not think though you will get away with two shoots. Full frame sensor is not square and two sides of a circle will be shaved off by a sensor shape reducing a circular 220 FOV to something that will be less than 190 and even 180 horizontally. However 3 shoots in 4:3 aspect ratio should work very well with plenty of overlapping and it will give you by my estimation something well over 128MP(around 16K) on Sony7RIV And it is finally a very good candidate you can build a professional rig to capture instant 360 photos and 360 video with but you will need 3 cameras and 3 lens. If you have A7RV which can do 8K video you can get a clear full frame quality video in 16K resolution. Unfortunately A7RIV does not record in 8K so for 360 videos you will be limited to 8K. AstrHori 6mm F2.8 Full Frame Circular Fisheye Lens, 220° if you are interested. I'd buy it for testing but I need to finish my project with building a 360 rig from action cams. It is just two cams and two lens left to finish as I have 2 already. It is not going to be as clear as setup with full frame cameras but at least it is a wearable rig while I cannot imagine anyone walking with 3 heavy mirrorless full frame cameras and 3 quite heavy lenses. BTW, it seems to be councils in my area are struggling to get Google to update street view. Even their CBD has 7 old years capture on most streets. So there could be a lot of business opportunities to do it instead of google. I talked to one about it when they reached me to train teens how to capture 360 for bush trails and another reached out asking me to update street view on 7 islands. The last one probably is not coming back as there is a ferry involved and quite a hefty fare to get my car to each island. I gave them 5 digit # doing it in 7-10 days accounting for all additional expenses 3 months ago and still waiting to their reply. They did not want to pay for rental of Mosaic camera to do it properly but it was extra AU$500/day for rent only. As for Insta360 Pro, I had a chance to own it but it could not even beat Pilot Era in the picture quality so I sold it straight away. P.S. You can use Matterport Pro3 to create a custom self hosted tour enhanced in Pano2VR. It is actually quite easy using Google Maps just to get all 360s and linking from a Matterport tour downloaded to your PC and then adding custom menus and features to make a self hosted tour. |
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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| Actually I may be wrong about resolution and number of cameras required to do full 360 with this lens. I have just finally found how it projects on a full frame and it seems it is almost a full circle both vertically or horizontally. I cannot calculate an actual resolution when the sensor does not have full coverage by lens projection at least vertically in portrait mode but it loos like this lens will waste at least 40% of sensor space so 360 final resolution will be reduced quite a lot. So there are two options: 1) use only two cameras setup to build 360 at reduced resolution(stitching should be easy as there will be a huge overlap in both directions 2)use clear zoom in Sony camera to bring projection closer to fill it with projection circle close to a sensor edges in portrait mode. This will give a maximum possible resolution as in my post but you will need 3 cameras to do the full 360 degree horizontally  |
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MeshImages private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @wingman - Thanks for sharing such a detailed and thoughtful reply – that’s really helpful. I’m still using the Insta360 Pro, but exclusively for 3DVR photography. For high‑resolution panoramas, I work with a Fuji GFX 50S II on a PT4Pano head, which gives me a solid pano in four moves. Unfortunately, my TTArtisan fisheye is fully manual, and I have to admit my results with it are not great. That’s one of the reasons why native Fujinon GF glass with AF is important for me – I really benefit from a reliable, integrated workflow. My interest in a 2‑lens one‑shot 360 camera comes from a slightly different angle, though. I’m looking for a solution for 3D Gaussian Splatting video and for fast, standardized and scalable capturing. All the manual DSLR/mirrorless workflows are great in terms of maximum quality, but they don’t scale well when you want to work with different operators in different locations. In that sense, a more automated camera like the Ricoh Theta X is probably one of the most interesting options right now. The main goal for my business is to enable less experienced photographers – nationally and internationally – to capture in one consistent format and workflow, quickly and reliably. A clearly defined, scalable and repeatable system is more important to me than the last bit of image quality from a manual rig. But it’s good to know that for Queensland, Australia, I already know someone who can deliver much more than just a one‑click shot  |
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ron0987 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @MeshImages The one-shot solution would be nice I also have be experimenting with both a Nikon Z5 an 15mm and a Sony A6500 and Samyang 8mm on a rotator for quick 360 and get good results but would, like you would rather have a simple one-shot solution, and I am also thinking the Theta X maybe the best. Only for the time shift function. Which is probably my 2026 purchase. | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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Quote:Originally Posted by MeshImages If you want a simple and inexpensive solution for 3DGS check my thread about Insta360 Ace Pro action cam. That is about my 360 rig with four of them however I have tried just one action cam for 3DGS and results are fantastic. There is a link in that thread that shows what a little action cam can do. From another point you have a professional camera already and you can do 3DGS with it. I did try both SonyA7RiV and Ace Pro for 3DGS. I liked the action cam results better but its quite possible it was only better because I tried to be more thorough with the action cam capturing all surfaces that I needed to be in good quality. While with Sony camera I just walked back in forth pointing it only to a path in front of me. But size and weight wise it is definitely easy to do with an action cam. I am going to try my 360 rig for 3DGS too but my last test for 3DGS with three action cams(2x Ace Pro 2 and 1x Ace Pro) has not delivered anything good. However it is harder to process as you have three separate videos instead and none of training free solution I have accepts three videos. So I have to split each into frames and I am probably not doing it right or/and simple need much more frames which I cannot do because I am hitting the limit of photos a training tool can accept on free processing. |
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MeshImages private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @wingman Thanks for the detailed breakdown. I will put the Ace Pro on my list. I'm just getting started with 3DGS – using my new iPhone Pro and my Quest3. I´m capturing small spaces - just for quick experiments. Right now I'm focused less on capture gear, because I have not found anything, that is really scalable without a 2,000 USD annual paycheck for the software. Therefore my current focus is on exploring what you can actually do with the data. Working backwards from the use cases to the technology. I found this PlayCanvas demo that is pretty mindblowing: Open this link and then press 'n' for day/night and click to throw lightning balls. Simple, but impressive. That's the kind of interactive playground I'm diving into. Trying to figure out how 3DGS fits into my existing digital twin work and my clients use cases. Your rig setup is definitely on the roadmap, but I need to dive into the presentation side first. |
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WGAN Fan Club Member Queensland, Australia |
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Quote:Originally Posted by MeshImages Check 3Dvista if you do not have it already. They can display 3D models and 3DGS. I could not find a good example of 3DGS touring under 3DVista but their examples of using 3d models are exactly what I have been looking for years. They are kind of addressing a problem of any 3d model web based viewer that barely cares about a simple user experience navigating inside a 3D model. 3DVista addresses it in full including, setting a height of a camera or turning on collision detection which will let a user navigate inside a 3d model without going through walls/ceiling and furniture. I hope their 3DGS support comes with all these features too. People need to look at it all from a user experience point of view because sometimes getting out of 3DGS cloud means most of users will give up finding their way back inside. However there is still a huge problem with how big it all is. Even a small 3DGS cloud can be half of GB and 3D models are not small either. Expecting a user with unknown connection speed to wait for minutes to load it all up is kind of killing the whole idea. So size and usability are bottlenecks for it to be accepted widely. |
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MeshImages private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by Wingman Yes, I have 3DVista, Pano2VR and KrPano with their latest releases. I´m not really using KrPano, because it is too code-based for me. But Pano2VR is interesting because they have an API and of course 3DVista is a phantastic tool, when you´ve successfully mastered the initial learning curve. I´m also using Arrival.space and Varjo and I want to take a look into Playcanvas. 3DGS is not only about capturing as you can create synthetic 3DGS worlds with AI tools like Marble. Very powerful technology. Especially 3DGS in combination with AI workflows. The reason I am looking for a one-shot 360 camera is that the details (zoom) from many 3DGS captures is slightly poor compared to Matterport. I think the combination of 3DGS with 360 photo captures could make sense. And of course the capturing efficiency from 360 cameras is something that I want to test. 3DGS capture with the Quest3 is also really impressive. |
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 WGANStandard Member Los Angeles |
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| Hi there @Wingman We're doing a lot of 3DVista using 3DGS models, here is one (demo work in progress) Anacapa Apartments In the Left Menu, click any of the last three links, to apartments. It's set to fly you to the building, launch a MP tour, and when you close the MP, it flies you back to start. Love this. Generally, these look better than photogrammetry plus they're easier to create as long as the site is not too large. Getting back to the title of this thread, latest acquisition we've made for our Pro 3s is lighting. When gathering spacial data in dark spaces, this has worked really well. Two small lights affixed to Pro 3 via GoPro snap-on mounts, cables run under the Lidar canyon to a 20,000 mAh battery that powers them all day. Now standard equipment in all our kits. Not for beauty work like residential RE, but for data collection, fantastic. Simple, bright, just great. Two lights plus battery, cables and mounts, about $160.   And on the high-res pano front, we do a lot of work with our Sony a7iv full frames with 12mm Rokinon on Nodal Ninja head. Takes six photos around, one up, two down, stitch and HDR via PTGui yields great results at about 15,000 x 7,500 pixels. That's about the same as a Pro 3 pano but MP won't let you download it. You can only extract / download 8,000 x 4,000 through the desktop interface. Plus the big benefit is you have these hi-res 360 panos as equirectangulars that you can retouch, enhance, do anything you like to, just like all professional photography. THIS is the way to deliver high-quality marketing tours you can self-host or let the client do the same. |
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ron0987 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Home3D are you worried about the battery putting any stress on the rotator since that seemed to be the weak leak on Pro3? | ||
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WGAN Standard Member Los Angeles |
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| @ron0987 - We used three Pro 3s all last weekend set up like this. Camera's performed normally throughout and the motors sounded normal, in no way strained. What we did do is attach everything to keep the weight balance as centered as possible. The two lights are on opposite sides and positioned virtually at the rotational center. The battery for lights is an addition to the offset weight of the "tail" side of the camera, but we found these particular batteries that, although 20,000 mAh, are designed with a much shorter height. So the weight is kept as close to the rotation center as possible while staying clear of the lidar canyon. So far we've clocked about 75 hours on our Pro 3s this way with no sign of a problem. Only way I see to improve this further is to create a mount so the battery can hang vertically below the front section of the camera, positioning it BESIDE the tripod adapter. This would put its weight, like the lights, virtually on rotational center. The other benefit would be the light battery would not need to be untaped to change Matterport camera batteries. Not a big deal, but could be good. By angling the two lights about 10-15° away from the lens' optical center, these emit excellent coverage of the full 90° required for each of the four optical exposures. |
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