Panorama

A panorama is an extremely wide-angle photograph. It usually uses some special projection method instead of the “normal” equirectangular used when shooting a picture with a standard lens. It can either be used to create a virtual environment or just a visually appealing picture.

To create a panorama there are two methods:

• Using a special camera. The camera is circular and the lens rotates around the camera. A special piece of opaque material with a vertical slit rotates alongside the lens but is on the opposite side just above the film to ensure just a portion of the film is exposed. As the camera rotates the film is exposed with the opposite direction environement view. After one rotation a full 360° picture has been generated. The rotation speed is variable resulting in just the same thing as changing the shutter speed on a regular camera. When shooting a panorama with this kind of camera at night it’s possible to do multiple revolutions as the speed has a minimum value. It’s also possible to hide some portion of the scene with your hand for just 1 rotation on 5 for instance so as to avoid over-exposing some parts of the panorama. These cameras tend to be expensive and complex to use.
• Using special software. Thanks to the digital world it’s possible to make a panorama by using a series of individual pictures taken with a regular camera (film or digital). Depending of the software used, some tasks explained here can be automated. First, some feature of each image has to be identified on overlapping pictures, then the relative position of each picture is determined using these features, and then the pictures are blended together to form one big picture. There are a number of software programs which can do this, some free while others are not. Some are automatic, and some require some manual steps.

When shooting some pictures to put in a panorama using your digital camera, use the AE lock button to ensure all the pictures get the same amount of light and blend smoothly. If you can, lock the white balance too. If your camera has a panorama function, use it as it does all that automatically and can help you to align your pictures correctly. Finally, do your best to rotate your camera around the nodal point of your lens to avoid parallax errors.

Software to create Panorama images from multiple pictures.

Some real nice panoramas of Paris and some further information on http://www.arnaudfrichphoto.com/ (some info is only in French)