A Panoramic Preview of RICOH THETA at SXSW 2021 l RICOH360 Blog

We are excited to announce that we will be exhibiting at the 2021 Virtual SXSW Creative Industries Exhibition March 16 – 20. Our booth will be packed with 360-degree content creation tips, tricks, and resources and virtual sessions led by our product experts and industry pros.

Pop by our booth to view an exciting video showcasing the capabilities of our RICOH THETA 360-degree cameras and information on all of our various models (THETA Z1, THETA SC2, and the THETA SC2 for Business). As an added bonus, booth visitors can score a unique discount code for 10% off THETA cameras and kits valid March 16 – 26.

See below for a full schedule of our in-booth events, as well as the featured Creating Creative Content Roundtable featuring Sam Rohn and other top content creators.

FEATURED EVENT: CREATING CREATIVE CONTENT ROUNDTABLE

Thursday, March 18

4-5 PM CDT

Registration Link Available via RICOH THETA SXSW Booth

Join RICOH THETA and a panel of leading creatives, including 360 and Virtual Reality Photographer Sam Rohn, for a discussion about the latest trends and best practices in content creation today. Meet the expert panel:

Sam Rohn: Sam specializes in high quality architectural 360° VR panoramic photography and stereographic (little planet) panoramas. Based in New York, Sam has been working as a location scout and manager since 1992 for television, motion pictures, music videos, still photography for fashion, editorial, and advertising.

Keith Martin: Based in London, UK, Keith has been shooting 360-degree media seriously since 2005. He captures everything from festivals to fashion and is author of the widely used Exif Fixer, a utility for helping 360 photos work properly in Facebook, Flickr, Google Photos and other platforms.

Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto: Based in Venezia, Italy, Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto is an illustrator and designer who has been creating 360° contents for 15 years. She specializes in hand-drawn spherical illustrations as well as designs and develops visual communication projects for many clients worldwide, swinging between the analogue and digital worlds.

Yuqing Guo: From Beijing, China, Yuqing Guo is a 360 panoramic photography enthusiast and a YouTuber dedicated to 360 photography. He is a certified 3rd party RICOH THETA Developer and was awarded Silver Award in EPSON International Pano Awards in 2015, 2018-2020. Yuqing has given presentations about his work at Photoworld Magazine on panoramic photography and has also contributed articles to the magazine.

Shinobu Fujiki: Shinobu leads the business unit responsible for the development, manufacturing and sales for RICOH THETA 360 cameras.

IN-BOOTH EVENTS + WORKSHOPS

If you’re unable to join the roundtable discussion, check out our other virtual sessions throughout the week. Zoom details will be available on our booth page.

MARCH 16

11:00 AM CDT | High Quality Live Streaming Virtual Art and Travel Experiences with Mobile THETA Plug-in

Stream high quality mobile data from anywhere using your mobile phone! Intended for use in museums and other cultural institutions, but for individuals too. Special innovations enable higher quality light and images in live streaming from the RICOH THETA Z1.

2:00 PM CDT | RICOH360 Tours: “Create high-quality, easy to use Virtual Tours”

With Ricoh’s unique Image Enhancement technology, anyone can create a high-quality virtual tour in less than 15 minutes. With RICOH360 Tours, you can show your customers the true appeal of your properties and facilities online.

4:00 PM CDT | RICOH360 Projects: “Fast, 360° Construction Reality Capture App”

The fastest and simplest tool out there to create and share automated 360° jobsite views. Drawings, progress tracking, on site communication & off-site monitoring all in one place. Intuitive solutions that require no professional or technical experience to instantly create immersive digitized photo-realistic views of a physical environment.

MARCH 17

10:00 AM CDT | Visual Special Effects and THETA

The HDRI mobile app by Goldgewicht Consulting allows you to take a number of photos using a THETA which are stitched together to constitute a high-dynamic-range image (in HDR or EXR format). This image can then be used as a source of lighting and reflection for a 3D scene. Lionel Goldgewicht is based in France and has 20 years specializing in the development of mobile and 3D applications for clients like Disney, Orange, and many more.

11:00 AM CDT | Building a Global Team of Content Creators using the Ricoh Theta Z1

Will Barrett, Director of Field Operations at Threshold 360, will cover how Threshold 360 has built a tech stack compatible with Ricoh cameras including a capture app, dashboard, viewer, and publishing tools enabling a virtual tour to go from capture to live on a customer’s website in 24 hours. Threshold 360 has recruited, trained, and worked with hundreds of photographers throughout the world capturing on high volume projects for hospitality & tourism partners. This Creator community is imperative to their success. This is possible because of the speed of capture, ease of use, and software integration that Ricoh hardware provides.

12:00 PM CDT | Platform for highly technical data collection for Telecom Infrastructure during construction, installation and commissioning

ECSite is an end-to-end Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for highly technical data collection for Telecom Infrastructure during construction, installation and commissioning. Subbu Meiyappan, Founder and CEO, will describe how THETA is used to monitor equipment on cell phone towers. This presentation is 15 minutes long, so don’t be late!

2:00 PM CDT | RICOH360 Tours: “Create high-quality, easy to use Virtual Tours”

4:00 PM CDT | RICOH360 Projects: “Fast, 360° Construction Reality Capture App”

MARCH 18

10:00 AM CDT | Create a stunning 3D virtual tour in minutes

Create a stunning 3D virtual tour in minutes. Co-founder & CEO Eric Tsai will explain how using a smartphone, THETA and the Asteroom 3D tour kit, you can create high-quality 3D virtual tours in minutes. No training or past experience required!

12:00 PM CDT | Real-time 360° Live Streaming from THETA to Millicast Streaming Platform with WebRTC

This full end-to-end workflow, presented by Ryan Jespersen, Streaming Engineer at Millicast, will show how you can enable a new generation of interactivity with a 360 degree live feed from THETA to the Millicast real-time streaming platform to deliver WebRTC natively in any browser, on any device, at-scale, with sub-second latency and immersive quality colour and sound.

MARCH 19

2:00 PM CDT | RICOH360 Tours: “Create high-quality, easy to use Virtual Tours”

3:00 PM CDT | Global Expedition from Home Tours to Field Trips through Tele-operated Drones and Robots

Tourmato builds a system that emulates in-person experience, letting e-learners or remote trippers see, learn and interact with exotic places and people by tele-operating drones and robots without travel pains. Luke Lu, Founder at Tourmato, will cover how the THETA is used as a part of the expedition.

At the wrap of SXSW, we will also be sharing the winners of our #THETAFreshPerspectives contest. Haven’t entered yet? Don’t worry! The content closes on March 23 so get out there and get photographing!

Be sure to tune in on our social media channels for updates and highlights throughout the week. We’ll see you at SXSW!