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I remember seeing panoramic photos in books when I was young. I didn’t give much thought to the “how did they do that?” until I started doing photography in the 1970s, back in the pre-digital days when the time between taking a photo and seeing the results depended on how quickly the … Continue reading
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A panorama image of lower Manhattan, taken from across the East River in Brooklyn while standing south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge is on the right. The Manhattan Bridge can be seen beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. The Financial District and the South Street Seaport are across the river.
The Atlantic Ocean borders the hilly coastline on the eastern side of Saint Lucia. This scene was photographed from Moonrise, an overlook with a view of the Atlantic to the east and the Carribean Sea to the west.
Buildings along the Reuss River, the Spreuerbrücke (a 15th-century, covered pedestrian bridge), a 19th-century dam, and part of the ancient city wall and tower (top center) are shown in this panorama of Lucerne, Switzerland.
Victorian houses on Steiner St. shot from Alamo Square in San Francisco.
A panoramic view of Rodney Bay and Mount Pinard, as seen from Pigeon Island Public Beach, Pigeon Island, Saint Lucia.
The Eiffel Tower stands on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France.
Arromanches, a beach on the English Channel in northeastern France shown in this panoramic photo, played a critical role during the days following the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy when Allied forces began the drive to liberate Europe from the control of Nazi Germany. While the majority of the battles took place on neighboring beaches (code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword), Arromanches saw little fighting. Instead, it was the site that Allied forces targeted for construction of an artificial harbor (known as a Mulberry harbor) to use for resupplying troops instead of having to capture and liberate an existing harbor. Allied forces manufactured sections of the harbor (some of which can still be seen on the horizon) in England and floated them across the channel into position.
Fall leaves reflected in the pond in Central Park, New York City.
A panorama image of lower Manhattan, taken from across the East River in Brooklyn while standing in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Brooklyn Bridge is on the left. The Manhattan Bridge is on the right. The Financial District and the South Street Seaport are behind the Brooklyn Bridge. This panorama was created from 10 vertical images.
Fallen leaves around icy creek, Blendon Woods Metro Park, Westerville, Ohio.
A panoramic view of the courtyard and of Blenheim Palace in Blenheim, Oxfordshire, England. Blenheim Palace is the principal residence of the Dukes of Marlborough, and the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. The palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between 1705 and 1722. It was also the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom.
The mountains of Dominica extend into the Carribean Sea as seen from the island nation's capital, Roseau.
The Communs, across from Neues Palais (New Palace) in Potsdam, Germany, contained kitchens and other support facilities for the palace and housing for servants. The buildings are connected by an entry colonnade for the palace. The palace was built in the 1760s.
Yachts and boats line Great Bay, as seen from a cruise ship docked in the Port of Sint Maarten, Saint Martin.
Water taxi cruising on East River past lower Manhattan in this seven-photo panorama, New York City.
photographer could process the film and make prints. I could do a lot of things with the camera, but creating a seamless panorama wasn’t possible.
So I hit the library — this was way before Google — and researched the technology.
Early panoramic photographs from the Civil War era were created by photographers who placed multiple photographic plates side by side. The technique provided a wide view, but seams between plates and exposure differences were obvious.
In the early 1900s, a variety of cameras were developed that specialized in creating panoramas. These cameras would typically rotate the lens across a curved film plane to create a seamless image, but the cameras were expensive and processing the film was difficult.
Today, with digital cameras and modern software, creating panoramas is a modern version of the Civil War methodology. It takes multiple shots, planning, and a good eye, but it’s somewhat easy.
When I come across a skyline or a landscape that I think will make a nice panorama, I focus on the area I want to be sharp and check the exposure data. Then I switch the camera to manual mode, dial in the exposure data, turn the camera vertical without changing the focus, and aim at the furthest left area that I want in the scene. I click the shutter, then rotate my body slightly to the right and click off another frame. I keep repeating that process until I cover the entire scene.
I end up with a series of vertical photos that somewhat overlap each other on the sides.
Then comes the fun part.
I load the photos into Adobe Lightroom, the software I use for cataloging and editing my photos, select the group of images I want included, then instruct Lightroom to create a panorama. Magic computer stuff happens behind the scenes. Lightroom compares areas that overlap between frames and carefully aligns everything. Then — voilà! — I have a panorama on my screen.
I know I can automatically create panoramas using my iPhone by selecting pano mode and moving the phone across the scene while taking a photo. In my experience, these panos look very nice on the phone screen or even a computer screen, but when printed they lack the sharpness and detail of a multi-frame panorama taken on a digital SLR.
Also, I know a panorama look can be created by using a wide-angle lens on a digital SLR, then cropping off the top and the bottom of the image. It may look similar to a multi-image panorama, but the difference is obvious when printed.
A single-image “panorama-look” photo is limited by the resolution of the camera. For instance, my digital camera shoots a frame that is 5,472 pixels wide. Gallery-quality prints are typically made at 300 pixels per inch, so a “straight from the camera” panorama-look photo can be used for a high-quality 18- to 20-inch-wide print without some sort of software conversion to artificially increase the resolution of the file.
Some of my multi-image, stitched panoramas are 15,000 to 20,000 pixels wide, which can be used to create a gallery-quality print five feet wide. And every bit of detail in the image — a tree, a building, a boat on the water — would be comprised of three to four times as many pixels as the detail in the single-frame panorama-look photo. More pixels, more sharpness, better results.
I know I can automatically create panoramas using my iPhone by selecting pano mode and moving the phone across the scene while taking a photo. In my experience, these panos look very nice on the phone screen or even a computer screen, but when printed they lack the sharpness and detail of a multi-frame panorama taken on a digital SLR.
