PANORAMA PHOTOGRAPHY

Panorama pictures make good desk-tops. 
Your icons placed above and below the panorama make a tidy computer screen.

No frames? No image thumbnails? Press here to get into them.

How to make a panorama photograph

1 Cropping

If the top and bottom of a photograph are cut off, the picture has the shape of a panorama. 

Even a telephoto lens can cover a wide subject, if the camera is a long way off. The advantage of a telephoto panorama is lack of "perspective distortion"

     

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Many popular cameras have a panorama option. This is just a wide angle lens photograph in which the top and bottom are cut off the image. Often the lens is 28mm, which is not all that wide angle in 35mm photography.

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 Purists claim a panorama photograph must be wide angle and should have extreme perspective.
 Some camera clubs rule a panorama can only be a landscape or seascape. 
 This may even apply if the picture was taken with a panorama camera! 
     (e.g. the interior of the Dunedin Railway Station would not qualify).
 A wide picture without perspective "distortion", not deemed a panorama, is a "panel picture".
          
 The so-called distortion of panoramas is the way the world is mapped onto a flat surface from the camera position. 
 A wide angle view looks "funny" because humans cannot see wide-angle, except with optical aid.

2  Wide angle lens.

A short focus lens has low magnification and can encompass a broad scene from close by. If the top and bottom are cut off, the picture is a panorama. Nearly 180 degrees can be covered by a fish-eye lens. Extreme wide angle lenses suffer from vignetting: the centre of the image is brighter than the edges. A graduated neutral density filter, darker in the middle, overcomes that, but is expensive. A "cheap and nasty" method is a circular black spot of sticky paper in the middle of the lens, which gives good results only at one f number.

3  Multiple images

• The camera is placed on a Panorama Head on a tripod ("pan head").

• The axis of rotation should be vertical and the camera should be at right angles to the axis.

• This is best set up with a builder's level, since failure to get the geometry right is the main cause of failure.

• The rotation should occur around the optical center of the lens, not the film plane. This is not so critical if nearby objects are not in the picture.

• The horizon should run exactly through the middle of the picture, or else it will be curved.

     See the Pittenweem panorama for a slightly curved horizon line.
    
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• A centered horizon is not always good for the composition of the image. It can be avoided by using a rising front camera, in which the lens moves up (or down) but the film stays perfectly vertical. Or, what is the same thing, keep the camera vertical but cut off the bottom of the picture and not the top when mounting it.

• Multiple overlapping pictures are taken, rotating the camera between each shot.

• Any angle of coverage is possible.

 The Tongariro National Park panorama uses 4 pictures.
     2 pictures plus

     2 more pictures

  
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• The processed images are then stuck together.

• If the lens vignettes, the panorama will be dark at the joins.

• Wide angle lenses vignette badly, but a back focus wide angle lens (as used in large reflex cameras) does not vignette much.

• The joins are critical and should not be straight lines. The human eye has difficulty seeing a crooked join but is very sensitive to a straight line.

• The joins are easier set up after scanning into an image processing program.

• Cutting the photographic prints is not an easy option and is better done with a bevel cut than by attempting to butt the pictures together.

 The author has published several calendar quality panoramas
  without anybody realising they are multiple, joined images.

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• It is easy to do the job very poorly, so that the pictures will not match at the edges.

• If the photographs have not been taken with good geometry, there are computer programs of variable quality to distort and blend the edges to make them fit without a seam

4  Rotating lens / slit assembly.

One version of this geometry is to have the film curved in a semicircle. At the centre of the circle is the rear nodal point  of the lens. During the exposure, the lens rotates and a slit simultaneously moves in front of the curved film. 

The film exposure is set by three factors:

1. iris diaphragm opening in the lens (f number),

2. width of the slit (wider means more light),

3. speed of rotation of the slit / lens system (slower means more light).

It is possible to get up to about 150-160 degrees this way. Rotating lens panorama images on this page are from a 120 degree swing lens panorama camera. (Horizon camera).
The perspective can be very peculiar with a swing lens camera. 

 The Dunedin Railway station panorama makes the walls look curved.
  But you can see the entrance and exit from the booking hall, all on one picture.
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Apart from the telephoto panoramas, all pictures on this page show swing lens distortion, but it only becomes obvious with architectural subjects.

Who can tell if a landscape is "distorted"?
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Scenes which include curved curved structures disguise the "distortion" and look rather good.

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The buildings here are straight and this panorama is confusing.

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Distortion is disguised by curvature of the ship's bow.

5  Rotating camera

A full circle or more is possible with these cameras, but they are very expensive and no examples are given on this site.

6  Pin-hole camera

There are various systems, but the "coffee tin camera" gives nearly 180 degree panoramas and is very cheap.
The perspective is most unusual as the pin-hole is on the side of the can and the film is curved inside the tin, opposite the hole. Magnification is maximum in the middle of the picture and drops off to each edge. However, the exposure across the film is fairly even and vignetting is not a big problem.
By offsetting the pin-hole, a cheap and easy version of a rising front camera is obtained.

Giant Panorama

Two swing lens panoramas joined together gives twice as much "panorama distortion" but a landscape disguises it.

Very wide panoramas do not show well on a computer screen. If panoramas fill the screen vertically, they are so wide they vanish off the sides. Scroll buttons or arrow keys must be used to find the full lateral extent. Very wide angle panoramas seen in their entirety never look "natural" anyway. Human eyes can never see so much in one glance. The perspective seems wrong, when in fact it is correct. The unusual perspective shows up even with multi frame panoramas, in which each component looks perfectly familiar, but the assembled scene is "curved". Viewing the panorama on a computer and panning across it with the scroll bars is similar to the way we have to turn our heads to see a panoramic view. In fact, it becomes a simple version  of "virtual reality".

7 Vertical Panorama

• A vertical panorama is less common than horizontal and does not fit too well on a computer screen.

• The example here, taken with a rotating lens camera, spans 120 degrees.

• It shows distortion, but then it has to if both the ceiling and the floor are to show up on one picture.

• Larger versions of these panoramas are available by pressing links in the index frame at the top of this page.

Unusual panorama formats

A photo finish camera has a slit focussed on the finish line and the film moves to give a panorama in time but not in space.
A pantomogram is an Xray of the teeth in which the curved line of teeth is straight and flat on the radiograph.
An object on a rotating stage, in front of a fixed slit camera in which the film moves as the stage rotates, can show the circumference of a pot, laid out on a flat picture.
A diptych is a panorama on two panels, usually hinged in old churches, but often in two separate picture frames in modern houses. A triptych is in three frames. The advantage is: the picture can be closed to protect it. Usually a secondary picture is then painted on the outside of the closed panel.

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(escapes from the panorama frames).