shooting 360° in a clean room

date: June 8, 2020

Problem: Capture photorealistic 360 degree content of a pharmaceutical production facility. Clean room standards meant minimal equipment, strict protocols, and limited time. One day. One person. Two cameras. Five rooms.

Solution: Pre-planned every shot before entry. Used a DSLR rig for ultra high-res capture with HDR bracketing. On-site tablet verification caught issues while fixing was still possible.

The challenge

Pharmaceutical clean rooms maintain strict contamination control. Every piece of equipment entering the space must be approved, and the list has to be minimal. This ruled out standard film production: no large crews, no multiple lighting setups, no particle-shedding materials. 60 minutes per room. Suiting up ate into that window.

Production plan

Pre-production happened outside the clean room. We walked through the facility, identified key equipment, and planned five shots per room. Every camera position got marked on a floor plan.

The on-site workflow was sequential and unforgiving. Suit up. Enter with pre-positioned equipment. Set up the DSLR rig, capture multiple exposures for HDR bracketing, rotate to capture the full sphere. Verify on tablet. Move to next position. No time for second attempts. Post-stitching issues discovered back at the office would mean rebooking facility time.

Technical decisions

Standard 360 degree cameras weren't sharp enough. We used a DSLR rig capturing multiple photos per position, then stitched them into seamless spheres. Higher quality, but more points of failure.

Clean rooms have challenging lighting: bright overhead lights, dark corners, reflective metal surfaces in the same frame. We couldn't add film lights. HDR bracketing compensated by merging multiple exposures for proper dynamic range.

The hardest part was stitching metal surfaces. Stainless steel creates reflections that confuse stitching algorithms. The same surface looks different from slightly different angles, so automated matching fails. We budgeted for manual seam correction in post-production.

Every camera position and rotation angle was predetermined. Miss one rotation and the sphere wouldn't stitch. The tablet let us verify captures on-site before moving to the next position.

What we captured

The spray drying towers were the visual centerpiece, requiring careful positioning to show both full height and control panel detail. Beyond equipment, we captured environment details: clean room suits, air handling systems, the airlocks between zones. These demonstrated pharmaceutical standards without explanation. We also recorded ambient audio because a silent clean room would feel artificial.

Clean room sterility worked for pharmaceutical trust-building but provided minimal visual interest. Equipment detail compensated for the visual minimalism. The spray drying towers translated well to VR, where their scale became tangible.

Post-production

Each position had 20-30 individual DSLR shots merged into one seamless sphere. Automated stitching handled 80%. The remaining 20%, mostly reflective metal, required manual correction.

The 360 degree photos formed the photorealistic base in Unity. Interactive hotspots revealed technical specifications. Navigation followed product flow. The real value came from the multiplayer layer. Sales reps joined remotely, standing in the same virtual space as customers, pointing at equipment, talking in real-time.

What we learned

Limited equipment and time forced thorough preparation. Days of planning enabled smooth execution in a one-hour window.

360 degree capture reveals everything. There's no off-frame space. You're not framing a shot, you're capturing an entire environment. DSLR stitching provides the quality needed but demands manual correction on reflective surfaces. Budget for that work.