Panorama

Panoramas are an exciting creative application of photography and recently, of computing. Panoramas offer a unique, immersive perspective to the viewer. To the photographer, panoramas present an interesting artistic and technical challenge.

Panoramas come in different shapes and flavours, so let's set a definition. A dictionary tells us a panorama is "a picture (or series of pictures) representing a continuous scene". This continuous scene can come straight from a (special) camera or it can be assembled from multiple images using the panorama tools.

Technically three different types of panoramas are distinguished

Partial panoramas

A partial Panorama is an image created from assembling together 2 or more images to create a single wide angle image. Partial panoramas are created in exactly the same was as full spherical panoramas, but cover only a fraction of the view sphere (less than 360 degrees in longitude around the horizon, and/or less than 180 degrees in latitude). Example partial panos include Max Lyon's GigaPixel image, created with 196 source images! Partial panoramas are often printed, whereas full spherical panoramas are more often viewed online with special panorama viewers.

Immersive panoramas

Immersive panoramas are panoramas that allow you to look everywhere around you, including straight up and straight down. Immersive panoramas come in two subflavors, spherical and cubic ones. (this needs text, guys)

Projections

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Spherical/ Equirectangular projection

See definition for equirectangular.

Cylindrical projection

See definition for Cylindrical_panorama

Rectilinear projection