2.3.1. The new Ricoh Theta-Z1 – Brylka – TooDee

And my first HDRI from it.

A quick test with good results.

In July 2019 I had the opportunity to get some images from the new Theta-Z1 for testing. The images were taken on a sunny day with lots of direct sunlight to see how high the captured values are going to be in the HDRI.

The Theta-S HDRI clipped at around a value of 3 in direct sunlight.
The Theta-Z1 HDRI (created from the DNG-RAW brackets with PTGui) clipped around a value of 600.
Comparing the specs of the Theta-Z1 to the Theta-S. The shutter can be set 4x quicker (1/25000 instead of 1/6400) and the aperture is three stops smaller (5.6 instead of 2.0).

At 1% from the balanced HDRI – A big improvement over the Theta-S.

Balanced HDRI from the Theta-Z1. Thanks to Fabian Shaper for the images.

Quick render with Blender 2.8 in ACES. The sun casts a defined shadow in comparison to the examples from the Theta-S.

Balanced to the 18% grey patch.

The Theta-Z1 is a big improvement over the Theta-S. The RAW DNG stitching with PTGui is a good and fast workflow for this camera. It takes around two minutes to capture the images.

Compare this to a HDRI made with the Canon 7DMKII, ND filter and 7 exposures. The sun clipped here at around 30.000. It takes around 7 minutes to capture a full 360° panorama with my setup.

Blender render and balanced to the 18% grey patch.

stitched HDRI