360 Panorama Review

Using apps to take panoramic shots is pretty fun, but stitching together photos is a tedious process. You have to sit there and take a bunch of pictures, make sure they all turn out right, and then wait for them to render. Being the impatient person that I am, I decided to give 360 Panorama a whirl.

360 Panorama does things a bit different than the other panoramic photo apps on the market. Instead of stitching photos to make a nice picture, this app seems to use video to put them together. All you have to do is aim the camera at a space and then move the camera around the original image. The app, all on its own, takes the resulting image and makes is a panoramic shot. Best of all, if you want to get really wacky you can make your 360 degree image a stereographic panorama, making the picture seem to loop around in a circle.

The only downside of the app is that the resulting images don't come together as professionally as other panorama apps. They tend to have wobbly and lumpy borders, even with the most still of hands. I set my iPhone on a desk and slowly spun it around and I still got the jitters in my picture.

Still, though, even with the not so perfect images, the app was a joy to use. I found myself making picture after picture (with my pictures heavily weighted towards the stereographic variety), not caring if the resulting pictures were perfect or not.

Maybe 360 Panorama isn't the most perfect panoramic photo app, but it's by far the most fun to use. I have a feeling that by the end of 2010, most of the other apps of this kind will have been deleted from my camera and forgotten about, but 360 Panorama may just find a permanent spot in my little photo folder.