February 10, 2006

Panorama Cameras and Lenses

Panorama photography is not something that first emerged in the digital age, allthough computers and internet helped a lot to make it more popular of course.

As you can read on www.panoramicphoto.com in an article by Bill McBride, panorama cameras have been produced at least the last 160 years, from the beginning of photography.

Besides ‘for fun’, panorama cameras have also many other (commercial) uses, like security, military and all other situations where a really wide view comes in handy.

Types of Panorama Cameras

In the sixties, the Russian Horizon, a camera with a rotating lens, creating a 120 degree image on ordinary roll film was popular and there are several other similar camera designs based on the rotating lens, some of them able to create a true 360 degree around picture.

An other way to create a wide angle view on film is to use a medium format lens, intended for 120 roll film, and put it on a suitable 35mm film camera (with wider negative format), the Hasselblad Xpan is a sample of that. Also large format lenses on a 120 rollfilm type of camera with not 6×6 but a 6×17 space for exposure makes a nice wide angle on film. The Linhof Technorama is a sample of that.

Please note that these ‘old’ type of cameras are still for sale! (Allthough for the prices you have to pay for these cameras you can have a very nice digital camera with some good lenses as well)

One Shot 360 degree Cameras

The easy way of making a panoramic picture. It uses a parabolic mirror which you mount on your digital camera lens, and with smart software the mirror image is remapped to a 360 degree around image. The advantage is very clear, in one shot, 360 degrees around. The disadvantage is that the quality of the picture is much less then a stitched picture, but with the ever increasing number of megapixels in digital cameras, very suitable for web presentations. These type of one-shot lenses are popular amongst real estate photographers.

Rotating Digital Lens Cameras

Actually this type of “camera” works on with the same principles as the early Russian Horizon camera. Only the input from the image sensor is now fed into a computer where the image is re-constructed, and these cameras are able to create a full 360 degree image. The most famous of these type of cameras is the Panoscan, a very high quality (and resolution) system. These 360 camera systems are not for everyone because of the price tag, and are in use by companies like Industrial Light and Magic and specialized professional photographers.

Stitched Panoramas

Panoramas created from multiple images stitched together. And this type of panorama can be created by anyone with a (digital) camera, and the willingness to learn. There is plenty of freeware available to help you with the sometimes complicated task of stitching your images together, and many forums, mailinglists and websites where you can learn and communicate with others, amateurs and professionals, about creating panoramas. And the quality and creativity of the panoramas that you see “around there” is sometimes really amazing.

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