Panoramic Photography

Panoramic photography is a technique of taking photographs with a much wider aspect ratio (ratio of horizontal to vertical) than a normal photograph. Although there is no defining ratio between a wide angle photo and a panoramic photo, the common thought is a panorama has a ratio of 2:1 or greater.

There are many ways to achieve such a photo:

• There are cameras with rotating lenses that scan an image onto a long piece of film with a pivoting lens on one side of a drum, and a slit shutter on the other. The film is curved so the lens is always perpendicular to the film plane being exposed. This works well for many photographs, but has the disadvantage of distorting anything that moves over the period of the exposure. The camera will elongate objects that move in the same direction as the shutter, and shorten those that move in the opposite direction.
• Some people shoot a normal photo and crop to a panoramic format. This can work if you are using a larger format film, but any format smaller than 4x5, and you are losing film area, and resolution along with it.
• The most popular way to shoot a panoramic photograph is with a camera or film back made for this purpose. Although film use is overall on the decline, one niche area where film is king is in panoramic photography. There are film backs for large format cameras and complete cameras made for photographing panoramic photographs in many formats. The most popular panoramic cameras use 120 roll film that has been made since 1902, and should be available for many more years to come. My camera of choice for 6x17 panoramic photos is a Shen Hao TFC617-A view camera with a dedicated roll film back which takes four shots on a roll of 120 film. I can use the same lenses on this camera as on my 4x5 camera, as both cameras use Linhof Technika style lens boards. I cannot use my widest lens on this camera (Nikkor 65mm f4) because the lens will not cover the film format.

• A modern technique used with digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) uses a panoramic bracket that rotates the camera around the Nodal Point of the lens. A series of photographs are taken, either in one row, or in multiple rows. These photos are stitched together using a computer program to form a large panoramic photo with very high resolution. These photos can be one long image, or a complete circele or sphere.
  
• A reletively new method of taking panoramic photographs using digital cameras is inspired by NASA, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Mars Rover. The technique uses a robotic device that controls the camera's movement as it takes a user-defined mosaic of photographs that overlap by at least 15%. The photographs are entered into a photo stitching program that matches detail from one photo to the next and blends them seamlessly into one large photograph with tremendous image detail. The following photograph was taken on such a device, called the Gigapan Robotic Mount from Charmed Labs. It is made up of 162 images and the image size is .91 Gigapixels, which is quite small compared to other images taken with the Gigapan Mount. This was my first photo taken with the robot (a Beta version), and it was photographed with a point-and-shoot digital camera. I have since adapted the Robotic Mount to hold a compact Digital SLR (a Panasonic Lumix G1) that produces images with much higher resolution.

Gigapan 1	Gigapan 2	Gigapan 3
Click an image for a larger view.

Tampa, Florida Skyline
Click on the picture above to view an interactive, searchable version at www.gigapan.org