When I told my friend Vinny from Cramer that I was heading out to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, he had an idea.
Cramer is a brand experience agency used to tinkering around with the latest tech in augmented reality, virtual reality, and 360-degree video. One of their newest toys was the Ricoh Theta S 360 Degree Camera.
The Theta S is a cool little handheld camera with two spherical lenses capturing 180-degree video, and simultaneously stitching it together to give you an incredible, fully immersive, 360-degree viewing angle.
Vinny suggested I take it along and play with the camera on the mountain, figuring in doing so, I would be capturing some of the most unique footage filmed yet on Mount Kilimanjaro. He was right!
What resulted was a 6-part series of the climb titled, “360-Degrees of Kilimanjaro,” which is available to watch on YouTube now. The videos are incredible, offering a never before seen perspective of the mountain, but what impressed me more with the Theta S was it’s photo quality.
Mission accomplished. At 6:40am on Thursday July 28, 2016. #Kilimanjaro #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
When compressing video for sharing, you lose a significant amount of picture clarity. It’s still cool to watch, but definitely not as high-def as I’d like. The pictures, however, are phenomenal! These have to be some of the coolest shots I’ve ever taken on an expedition because of the perspective and interactivity they provide.
Click the image below to browse my Theta channel and take in all the unreal 360-degree beauty of this expedition up Mount Kilimanjaro. Click and swipe around to spin the viewing angle. Zoom in, zoom out, have fun with it! I sure did.
To get the full Kilimanjaro experience, climb along with us while watching the 6-part “360 DEGREES OF KILIMANJARO” video series, filmed on the Theta S, and now on YouTube.
