Photographer creates amazing New York City 360-degree panorama photos

Photographer Nuno Madeira has created dozens of 360-degree panorama images of New York City, allowing viewers to tour the city using nothing more than a computer.

Google Street View is a nice way to get around cities and locations all over the globe. However, the search giant’s street view cars do not have access everywhere, they can only go on public roads.

New York 360-degree panorama photo of Times Square. Credits: Nuno Madeira.

Interactive New York 360-degree panorama images are amazing

A Portuguese-born photographer has decided to compile 360-degree interactive panoramas of New York City, as he got caught in the spell of the iconic town when he arrived there.

Nuno Madeira started visiting New York back in 2010. On his second visit in August 2010, he began working on providing virtual tours of NYC through panoramic photography.

New York 360-degree panorama photo of Brooklyn Bridge. Credits: Nuno Madeira.

Photographer Nuno Madeira proves that imagination is useful when running on a low-budget

According to the photographer, the panoramas have been manually stitched together. Furthermore   he has never used a tripod. Madeira claims that his gear consists of a Canon 1000D DSLR camera and a Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens.

The photographer used the Tokina lens at its widest focal length of 10mm. This means that he has been able to encapsulate about 180 x 360 scenes, using up to 15 photos. They were enough to capture a 360-degree view of the surrounding area.

New York 360-degree panorama photo of Brooklyn Bridge. Credits: Nuno Madeira.

Only 50 of 84 New York City panoramas made the cut

However, the hard part began after that, as processing the images has been really time-consuming. Madeira tried to stitch together 84 panorama photos. Unfortunately, many of them could not be perfectly aligned, therefore only 50 full panoramas have been posted on his website.

The photographer uploaded all of these panoramas on a website called New York 360-degree experience. Some images were easier to be stitched together, while others were harder and the whole projected took less than three years to be completed.

New York 360-degree panorama photo of the Guggenheim Museum. Credits: Nuno Madeira.

Iconic New York City locations available in full details

The New York 360-degree panorama images show several important locations in full detail. The list includes places like the Times Square, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, and Guggenheim Museum among others.

The Tokina 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 fisheye lens is available at Amazon for $669 with support for Canon and Nikon mounts.

However, the Canon 1000D is no longer available on the market, as it has been replaced by the 1100D / Rebel T3 DSLR in early 2011.