Nuclear sites on film
1999–2000: some 450 360° spheres shot on slide film inside EDF nuclear power plants and CEA research centres, scanned one circle at a time, between the Biron CD-ROM and the Accor platform.
Between the Biron and Lascaux CD-ROMs and the Accor platform, there were two years when 360° photography became an industrial job, on film, in some of the most controlled places in France: EDF nuclear power plants and the research centres of the CEA.
My customer was Abstract Interactive, in Pessac, who built image-based databases for EDF, the CEA and GIE INTRA. My team went on site with the cameras, then scanned and assembled the spheres. Some 450 of them, from 1999 to 2000, every one of them on slide film.
Rebuilt in 2026 from the original 1999 and 2000 film scans. Drag to look around.
spheres on film, 1999–2000
rolls of slide film at Civaux alone
spheres across five CEA centres
to scan each fisheye circle
No digital camera in a controlled zone
Digital cameras existed by then. We would not take one inside. Radiation could damage the sensor, and anything found contaminated on the way out stays inside the plant. A camera body is easier to lose than a roll of film.
So we went in with film cameras and a big bag of film. Every visit came with access passes, dosimeter films and radiological surveillance. At Civaux, two of us spent five days on site and came out with 56 rolls of slide film.
From slide to sphere, one step at a time
Each sphere meant four fisheye views, one every 90°, and most of the time two or three exposures of each. That is eight to twelve circles to scan for a single sphere, at about two minutes each, before any stitching could start. Multiply by 450 and you get thousands of scans and well over a hundred hours at the scanner.
We learned to work from mounted slides rather than film strips: the scanner could be fed in batches, and picking the right exposure was quicker. Then every image went through Photoshop: from fisheye to the six faces of a cube, then to an equirectangular sphere, with the tripod painted out. Ten minutes per image if the picture had been taken properly, up to an hour if not. All of it on Windows 98 and Windows 2000 machines, on the processor alone. There was no GPU. A heavy process.
Two circles, one master, one sphere
In a research reactor hall, one fisheye looks down into the reactor pool and its blue glow, the other up at the dome and the polar crane. Assembled, they made the editable master that went to the client; in 2026 the same two slides became the sphere at the top of this page.
EDF power plants and CEA research centres
The CEA centres were delivered in December 1999 on ten CD-ROMs. Civaux and GIE INTRA followed in 2000. GIE INTRA is the robotic intervention group of the French nuclear industry; its database was used by maintenance teams and by the operators of emergency robots.
Between Biron and Accor
The nuclear years are where the protocol was hardened: nothing left to chance, every room documented, every frame accounted for. When digital cameras became reliable, we carried the same discipline straight into the Accor hotels.
Doo Interactive for Abstract Interactive, 1999–2000. End clients: EDF, the CEA and GIE INTRA.
Photography, scanning and assembly: Stéphane Jacob, with the Doo Interactive team.