The why and how of panoramas - Revision history

Erik Krause: Reverted edits by Jlhoyd05 (Talk) to last version by Flixh

2010-09-11T19:40:30Z

Reverted edits by Jlhoyd05 (Talk) to last version by Flixh

Jlhoyd05: /* The Why and How of Panoramas */

2010-09-11T19:05:33Z

‎The Why and How of Panoramas

Flixh: Undo revision 12377 by Empress09, link spamming

2010-05-12T06:16:08Z

Undo revision 12377 by Empress09, link spamming

Empress09 at 04:01, 12 May 2010

2010-05-12T04:01:03Z

Erik Krause: clarified

2010-03-30T18:52:08Z

clarified

Greatleo at 20:27, 14 February 2009

2009-02-14T20:27:38Z

Show changes

Erik Krause: 1 revision(s)

2007-03-21T18:09:04Z

1 revision(s)

Thomas Rauscher: Link fixed

2007-03-21T18:07:00Z

Link fixed

Thomas Rauscher: Link fixed

2006-08-26T13:34:14Z

Link fixed

WikiSysop: 9 revision(s)

2006-07-13T20:33:03Z

9 revision(s)

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:40, 11 September 2010
Line 40:		Line 40:

	[[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]		[[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]
−
−	~~==Related Links==~~
−
−	~~[http://www.unbeatable.co.uk/pages/Electronics/TV-and-Video/Flat-Panel-Televisions/ '''lcd tv''']~~

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:05, 11 September 2010
Line 40:		Line 40:

	[[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]		[[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]
		+
		+	==Related Links==
		+
		+	[http://www.unbeatable.co.uk/pages/Electronics/TV-and-Video/Flat-Panel-Televisions/ '''lcd tv''']

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 I do hope that some readers will attempt a few panoramic shots, and will enjoy the experience. The rigid 800-pixel limit on image size at usefilm.com may lead you to find another Internet home for your images, though. One final word; don’t forget that you can turn panorama cameras on their side and use them in “portrait” mode. Great for giraffes, if nothing else! (See http://www.usefilm.com/image/227996.html )
 --[[User:Roger|Roger]] 18:03, 9 Mar 2005 (EST)
 [[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 I do hope that some readers will attempt a few panoramic shots, and will enjoy the experience. The rigid 800-pixel limit on image size at usefilm.com may lead you to find another Internet home for your images, though. One final word; don’t forget that you can turn panorama cameras on their side and use them in “portrait” mode. Great for giraffes, if nothing else! (See http://www.usefilm.com/image/227996.html )
 --[[User:Roger|Roger]] 18:03, 9 Mar 2005 (EST)
 [[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 You may ask “Why bother with special adaptors, when you can take the same width photographs on 120/220 film and crop away the unwanted areas from the top and bottoms of the image?” This is a good question, and this option has the advantage of being able to choose exactly where the panoramic image shall come inside the full vertical height of the negative. This means you get some of the advantages of a perspective control lens with a “shift” adjustment. For example, by selecting the very top of the 6 x 7 image, you can often squeeze in the tops of buildings and reduce the area taken up by the large open foregrounds that wide-angle lenses tend to give. The reason for using 35mm film adaptors, though, is the much greater variety and availability of 35mm film.
-Yet another approach is to use a swing-lens camera. Examples include my old faithful, the Japanese-built Widelux (now out of production). This gives a full 130-degrees horizontal coverage by sweeping the lens through an arc while the focal plane slit follows it across the length of the image on the film. Winding on the film winds up the clockwork that drives the lens. The film is kept not flat, but in a curved plane centering on the nodal point (the optical center, if you like) of the lens. The Russian Horizon (there is also an earlier version confusingly called the Horizont; both operate on exactly the same principle) is still being manufactured, and if you buy from a reputable dealer who will replace or repair under warranty cameras with manufacturing defects, which unfortunately are common, it can be a very cost-effective choice and gives excellent results. Probably the most widely used swing-lens camera is the Noblex, produced in the former East Germany. This is not one but a whole family of swing-lens cameras, from 135 format to 120/220 and covering different angular ranges. They use an electric motor rather than clockwork to drive the lens. This has the advantage of accurate speed control but is rather heavy on batteries. Some models offer a centimeter of so of vertical shift (useful for the reasons described above) and an optional exposure-control accessory that alters the exposure as the lens swings round. When you think of it, this is a very desirable feature, as the optimum exposure from the same vantage point but pointing in two directions 120 degrees apart may be quite different. I would be interested to know how the digital cameras that offer stitching programs to create panoramas from a series of individual shots handle this problem. There is also a Chinese swing-lens camera for the 120/220 format, but opinions are divided on whether this a serious contender. One advantage of swing-lens cameras is that only light passing through the central portion of the lens is used, which reduces the effects of lens aberrations/distortions and gives high quality images even without the most expensive lenses. Here is a shot of mine that illustrates the problem of varying lighting over a wide range of “sweep.” http://www.pgallery.net/rogerama/image-27155.html. The version of this in my Usefilm.com portfolio has had the darker areas at both ends of the image cropped away. http://www.usefilm.com/image/258119.html.
+Yet another approach is to use a swing-lens camera. Examples include my old faithful, the Japanese-built Widelux (now out of production). This gives a full 130-degrees horizontal coverage by sweeping the lens through an arc while the focal plane slit follows it across the length of the image on the film. Winding on the film winds up the clockwork that drives the lens. The film is kept not flat, but in a curved plane such that the exposed part is always in focus while the lens turns. The Russian Horizon (there is also an earlier version confusingly called the Horizont; both operate on exactly the same principle) is still being manufactured, and if you buy from a reputable dealer who will replace or repair under warranty cameras with manufacturing defects, which unfortunately are common, it can be a very cost-effective choice and gives excellent results. Probably the most widely used swing-lens camera is the Noblex, produced in the former East Germany. This is not one but a whole family of swing-lens cameras, from 135 format to 120/220 and covering different angular ranges. They use an electric motor rather than clockwork to drive the lens. This has the advantage of accurate speed control but is rather heavy on batteries. Some models offer a centimeter of so of vertical shift (useful for the reasons described above) and an optional exposure-control accessory that alters the exposure as the lens swings round. When you think of it, this is a very desirable feature, as the optimum exposure from the same vantage point but pointing in two directions 120 degrees apart may be quite different. I would be interested to know how the digital cameras that offer stitching programs to create panoramas from a series of individual shots handle this problem. There is also a Chinese swing-lens camera for the 120/220 format, but opinions are divided on whether this a serious contender. One advantage of swing-lens cameras is that only light passing through the central portion of the lens is used, which reduces the effects of lens aberrations/distortions and gives high quality images even without the most expensive lenses. Here is a shot of mine that illustrates the problem of varying lighting over a wide range of “sweep.” http://www.pgallery.net/rogerama/image-27155.html. The version of this in my Usefilm.com portfolio has had the darker areas at both ends of the image cropped away. http://www.usefilm.com/image/258119.html.
 Finally, we come to cameras designed to swing through the entire 360 degrees, taking an all-round panorama (ideal for web-based VR displays) in a single shot. There is a surprisingly wide variety of these. You can go for a wooden one, hand made to order by Alan Zinn in your choice of woods, that you swing around manually, relying on the flywheel effect to keep lens motion constant. This uses either standard perforated 35mm film or—if you wish—it can use the rather restricted range of unperforated film to give a deeper vertical image (http://panoramacamera.us/ ). Or there is the much more sophisticated “Voyageur” hand made by Gildas le Lostec in France that comes with radio remote control (so that you can get out of the field of view and still fire your shot at the critical moment). Visit http://perso.wanadoo.fr/panorama to see Gildas’ camera and some sensational panoramas in his gallery. And at the top end of the range are the Swiss “Round Shot,” high-precision cameras for the professional or the wealthy amateur. There are others too numerous to mention in a brief survey like this. However, since there are so many digital camera enthusiasts on usefilm.com, and my own account is necessarily biased towards my own preferences for film, I should mention that there is at least one rotary lens camera that is entirely digital. The sensor, instead of being an area, is a line, and the line essentially scans the entire image like the slit of the focal plane shutter in the film-based swing lens cameras. The system requires a notebook computer to control it, and is expensive. But the results are impressive. If you have a very fast Internet connection, you may like to check it out. http://epan.net. (The quoted price was a cool US$25,000! and I see that the camera has now been discontinued.)

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:07, 21 March 2007
Line 39:		Line 39:
	--[[User:Roger\|Roger]] 18:03, 9 Mar 2005 (EST)		--[[User:Roger\|Roger]] 18:03, 9 Mar 2005 (EST)

−	~~[[Category:Tutorial]]~~[[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]	+	[[Category:Tutorial:Basic need]]

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 The easiest way to take panoramas is with a disposable panorama camera. At their widest, these have plastic lenses with focal lengths of 15 to 17mm. That's very wide--a 17mm lens will have a horizontal coverage of well over 90 degrees and a 15mm lens one of over 100 degrees! They produce the panorama format by masking off the top and bottom of the standard 24 x 36mm 135 format negative. If the aspect ratio is 2.5:1, the width of the image is 36mm and the height a little less than 15mm. APS cameras produce panoramas from even smaller areas of film. There are people in usefilm.com who can enjoy using the Holga, so it's not strange that there are those who enjoy taking panoramas with this simple equipment, even if they can't make wall-sized prints from them. But of course, if you have a reasonably wide lens on your camera, say at least 25mm or preferably 21mm for the 135 format, you can crop to the panorama format. Here is an example of a panorama made this way, http://www.pgallery.net/rogerama/image-38597.html.
-For me, the fun of photography is mostly in being able to capture the scene that caught my eye so that I can share it with others, and panoramas do this in a way that looks to me more natural, more the way it�really�looked. Our eyes have a very wide field of view, and a good panorama can create something of the overall�look�of the scene as it appears to us. I suppose this goes along with my preference for wide-angle lenses and the fact that I seldom reach for a telephoto. I'm more likely to want to�get everything in�than to zoom in on a tiny part of the scene. There's also a much less widely recognized feature of panoramas: they often have an almost stereoscopic sense of depth to them, particularly if there is a larger object in the foreground to establish the perspective. Those old enough to remember the introduction of the Cinerama format to movie theaters may recall that the advertising talked about the greatly enhanced sense of immediacy. This arises from the �wrap around� effect that mimics our normal vision, giving an illusion of depth and a greater sense of involvement in the action. There's something of that in the simple still panorama. There's even more of it in virtual reality panoramas on the web. If you have a fast Internet connection, here is a site that will astonish you with its beautiful interactive panoramas! http://www.panoramas.dk/index.html. You'll need the [http://www.panotools.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Quicktime Quicktime] plug-in.
+For me, the fun of photography is mostly in being able to capture the scene that caught my eye so that I can share it with others, and panoramas do this in a way that looks to me more natural, more the way it�really�looked. Our eyes have a very wide field of view, and a good panorama can create something of the overall�look�of the scene as it appears to us. I suppose this goes along with my preference for wide-angle lenses and the fact that I seldom reach for a telephoto. I'm more likely to want to�get everything in�than to zoom in on a tiny part of the scene. There's also a much less widely recognized feature of panoramas: they often have an almost stereoscopic sense of depth to them, particularly if there is a larger object in the foreground to establish the perspective. Those old enough to remember the introduction of the Cinerama format to movie theaters may recall that the advertising talked about the greatly enhanced sense of immediacy. This arises from the �wrap around� effect that mimics our normal vision, giving an illusion of depth and a greater sense of involvement in the action. There's something of that in the simple still panorama. There's even more of it in virtual reality panoramas on the web. If you have a fast Internet connection, here is a site that will astonish you with its beautiful interactive panoramas! http://www.panoramas.dk/index.html. You'll need the [[Quicktime]] plug-in.
 If the simplest and easiest way to take panoramas is with a disposable camera, the ultimate camera--appealing to the professional and the advanced amateur alike--may be the bulky Fuji 6 x 17, taking transparencies that measure all of 6 x 17cm on 120/220 film. This has interchangeable lenses, the most popular of which is the 90cm Fujinon. Visit www.fujirangefinder.com and note how many magnificent panoramas are taken with this camera!

← Older revision	Revision as of 20:33, 13 July 2006
(One intermediate revision by one user not shown)