Panoramic Photography

"The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera"
W.Eugene Smith

Panoramic photography is a wide format form of taking photographs. You are using specialist equipment or a series of photos to convey an extended field of view. While there are no real formal divisions between wide angle, and panoramic, you could say that wide-angle refers to the lens you are using, but doesn't have to mean it is a panorama.

Panoramas are at least twice as high as they are wide (a ratio of 1:2), and are usually in the from of a long strip. Unfortunately these are usually quite frustrating to view on computers as they are generally not going to be able to fit the whole thing on screen, So I reckon they're best viewed in printed form, on the wall of an art gallery, although seeing it on a screen really allows you to zoom in on one aspect of the photo.

The most common type is the stardard horizontal panoramas where you are capturing wide landscapes. You can also get Vertical ones, for example of skyscrapers. Although very compressed, and resized this photo <---- is a vertical panorama I took recently in Rome You can also get a clockwise panorama whereby you take a series of photos methodically in a clockwise fashion to build up a photo. There are also circular panoramas - where you take 360 degrees worth of photos and link the ends to form a circle - rather like this photo here -->




So what kind of equipment would you need for panoramic photography?! Well you can get hold of specialist equipment -cameras that rotate slowly and have an extended sensor but the majority of panormas are formed using a simpler method. If you have a 'fixed camera' like the Hasselblad Xpan then you would be able to take wonderful panoramas.

With the advent of digital technology and photo-editing software people are now able to seamlessly 'stitch' several photos together to form one panorama. The great thing with this is that you can even just have a simple compact camera to do this - they often come with software/settings that can aid you in taking panoramas.

Tripod can be very useful - but are not essential. If you want to get a very precise panorama - particularly if you're shooting in 360 degrees then you will want to use one so that the first and last photos line-up. You can also get special tripod heads that allow you to take panoramas more easily. but I think that you don't always need a tripod, and so long as you judge it right you can get a great panorama like this - you will probably have to do a little bit of cropping later on.

The sort of lens you use to take a panorama is really up to you. However taking photos with a wide-angle will mean you will need to take fewer over all - the only drawback is that everything will seem further away.

You should always try and overlap your photos by 30% in order to make sure your panoram turns out right and avoid putting key features in the overlapping area (although this is obviously sometimes unavoidable.)

You should avoid extreme lighting because this can cause a difference in light levels in your panoramas when they are stiched, making them very obvious that they are serparate photos. Photo-editing software however will sometimes correct this and make the scene look even.
So you should try and keep your photos even , get the correct exposure over all of your photos. One tip that could help you if you're using a DSLR is to use the AE-L (autoexposure lock) to help you.

I find the easiest way to stitch photos together is to use Photoshop (file --> automate --> photomerge

But a dedicated program like Autostitch would work very well, all though you have to pay for it:
http://cvlab.epfl.ch/~brown/autostitch/autostitch.html

Hugin is one that I have used before - it takes a little getting used to, but it does the job!
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

Panotools (free) is another one, but i havent used it myself. http://sourceforge.net/projects/panotools/

Theres also Pandora plugin for GIMP http://www.shallowsky.com/software/pandora/
but again i haven't used that either