panoramic photography panoramic photography panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. it is sometimes known as wide format photography. the term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio, like the familiar letterbox format in wide-screen video. while there is no formal division between "wide-angle" and "panoramic" photography, "wide-angle" normally refers to a type of lens, but using this lens type does not necessarily make an image a panorama. an image made with an ultra wide-angle fisheye lens covering the normal film frame of 1:1.33 is not automatically considered to be a panorama. an image showing a field of view approximating, or greater than, that of the human eye – about 160° by 75° – may be termed panoramic. this generally means it has an aspect ratio of 2:1 or larger, the image being at least twice as wide as it is high. the resulting images take the form of a wide strip. some panoramic images have aspect ratios of 4:1 and sometimes 10:1, covering fields of view of up to 360 degrees. both the aspect ratio and coverage of field are important factors in defining a true panoramic image. a panorama of sydney featuring (from left) the sydney opera house, the central business district skyline, and the sydney harbour bridge photo-finishers and manufacturers of advanced photo system (aps) cameras use the word "panoramic" to define any print format with a wide aspect ratio, not necessarily photos that encompass a large field of view. history the device of the panorama existed in painting, particularly in murals as early as 20 a.d. in those found in pompeii, as a means of generating an immersive 'panoptic' experience of a vista, long before the advent of photography. in the century prior to the advent of photography, and from 1787, with the work of robert barker, it reached a pinnacle of development in which whole buildings were constructed to house 360° panoramas, and even incorporated lighting effects and moving elements. indeed, the careers of one of the inventors of photography, daguerre, began in the production of popular panoramas and dioramas. the idea and longing to create a detailed cityscape without a paintbrush, inspired friedrich von marten. von marten created panoramic daguerreotype by using a special panoramic camera that he created himself. the camera could capture a broad view on a single daguerreotype plate. in complete and vivid detail, a cityscape is laid out before the viewer. the development of panoramic cameras was a logical extension of the nineteenth-century fad for the panorama. one of the first recorded patents for a panoramic camera was submitted by joseph puchberger in austria in 1843 for a hand-cranked, 150° field of view, 8-inch focal length camera that exposed a relatively large daguerreotype, up to 24 inches (610 mm) long. a more successful and technically superior panoramic camera was assembled the next year by friedrich von martens in germany in 1844. his camera, the megaskop, used curved plates and added the crucial feature of set gears, offering a relatively steady panning speed. as a result, the camera properly exposed the photographic plate, avoiding unsteady speeds that can create an unevenness in exposure, called banding. martens was employed by lerebours, a photographer/publisher. it is also possible that martens camera was perfected before puchberger patented his camera. because of the high cost of materials and the technical difficulty of properly exposing the plates, daguerreotype panoramas, especially those pieced together from several plates (see below) are rare. an 1851 panoramic showing san francisco from rincon hill by photographer martin behrmanx. it is believed that the panorama initially had eleven plates, but the original daguerreotypes no longer exist. after the advent of wet-plate collodion process, photographers would take anywhere from two to a dozen of the ensuing albumen prints and piece them together to form a panoramic image (see: segmented). this photographic process was technically easier and far less expensive than daguerreotypes. while william stanley jevons' wet-collodion panorama of port jackson, new south wales, from a high rock above shell cove, north shore survived undiscovered until 1953 in his scrap-book of 1857, some of the most famous early panoramas were assembled this way by george n. barnard, a photographer for the union army in the american civil war in the 1860s. his work provided vast overviews of fortifications and terrain, much valued by engineers, generals, and artists alike. (see photography and photographers of the american civil war) in 1875, through remarkable effort, bernard otto holtermann and charles bayliss coated twenty-three wet-plates measuring 56 by 46 centimetres to record a sweeping view of sydney harbour. following the invention of flexible film in 1888, panoramic photography was revolutionised. dozens of cameras were marketed, many with brand names indicative of their era; such as the pantascopic, (1862) cylindrograph survey camera (1884), kodak panoram (1899), wonder panoramic (1890), and cyclo-pan (1970). more portable and simple to operate, and with the advantage of holding several panoramic views on the one roll, these cameras were enthusiastically deployed around the turn of the century by such photographers as the american adventurer melvin vaniman, who popularised the medium in australia where it was taken up by both pictorialist and postcard photographers, such as robert vere scott,. richard t. maurice (1859-1909), h.h. tilbrook (1884-1937), and harry phillips (1873-1944). view from the top of lookout mountain, tennessee, albumen prints, february, 1864, by george n. barnard panorama of sydney from lavender bay, 1875, by bernard otto holtermann and charles bayliss center city philadelphia panorama, from 1913. panoramic cameras and methods stereo cyclographe a camera with combined two-fixed focus panoramic camera in one mahogany-wooded box. the lenses were eight centimeters apart from each other with an indicator in between the lens to help the photographer set the camera level. a clock motor transported the nine-centimeter-wide film along with turning the shaft that rotated the camera. the camera could make a 9 × 80 cm pair that required a special viewer. these images were mostly used for mapping purposes. wonder panoramic camera made in 1890 in berlin, germany, by rudolf stirn, the wonder panoramic camera needed the photographer for its motive power. a string, inside of the camera, hanging through a hole in the tripod screw, wound around a pulley inside the wooden box camera. to take a panoramic photo, the photographer swiveled the metal cap away from the lens to start the exposure. the rotation could be set for a full 360-degree view, producing an eighteen-inch-long negative. periphote built by lumiere freres of paris in 1901. the periphote had a spring-wound clock motor that rotated, and the inside barrier held the roll of film and its take-up spool. attached to the body was a 55mm jarret lens and a prism that directed the light through a half-millimeter-wide aperture at the film. short rotation a 1900 advertisement for a short rotation panoramic camera short rotation, rotating lens and swing lens cameras have a lens that rotates around the camera lens's rear nodal point and use a curved film plane. as the photograph is taken, the lens pivots around its rear nodal point while a slit exposes a vertical strip of film that is aligned with the axis of the lens. the exposure usually takes a fraction of a second. typically, these cameras capture a field of view between 110° to 140° and an aspect ratio of 2:1 to 4:1. the images produced occupy between 1.5 and 3 times as much space on the negative as the standard 24 mm x 36 mm 35 mm frame. cameras of this type include the widelux, noblex, and the horizon. these have a negative size of approximately 24x58 mm. the russian "spaceview ft-2", originally an artillery spotting camera, produced wider negatives, 12 exposures on a 36-exposure 35 mm film. a negative from a 35 mm swing lens camera short rotation cameras usually offer few shutter speeds and have poor focusing ability. most models have a fixed focus lens, set to the hyperfocal distance of the maximum aperture of the lens, often at around 10 meters (33 feet). photographers wishing to photograph closer subjects must use a small aperture to bring the foreground into focus, limiting the camera's use in low-light situations. the distortion of architectural subjects is severe when using a rotating lens camera rotating lens cameras produce distortion of straight lines. this looks unusual because the image, which was captured from a sweeping, curved perspective, is being viewed flat. to view the image correctly, the viewer would have to produce a sufficiently large print and curve it identically to the curve of the film plane. this distortion can be reduced by using a swing-lens camera with a standard focal length lens. the ft-2 has a 50 mm while most other 35 mm swing lens cameras use a wide-angle lens, often 28 mm]. similar distortion is seen in panoramas shot with digital cameras using in-camera stitching. a digital camera image of franklin d. roosevelt east river drive made with a sony cyber-shot, showing faults (discontinuities) caused by objects in fast motion during image capture. the panorama is stitched from multiple exposures taken while the camera is manually rotated. full rotation 360-degree panoramic projection of the vlt survey telescope rotating panoramic cameras, also called slit scan or scanning cameras are capable of 360° or greater degree of rotation. a clockwork or motorized mechanism rotates the camera continuously and pulls the film through the camera, so the motion of the film matches that of the image movement across the image plane. exposure is made through a narrow slit. the central part of the image field produces a very sharp picture that is consistent across the frame. digital rotating line cameras image a 360° panorama line by line. digital cameras in this style are the panoscan and eyescan. analogue cameras include the cirkut (1905), leme (1962), hulcherama (1979), globuscope (1981), seitz roundshot (1988) and lomography spinner 360° (2010). fixed lens fixed lens cameras, also called flatback, wide view or wide field, have fixed lenses and a flat image plane. these are the most common form of panoramic camera and range from inexpensive aps cameras to sophisticated 6x17 cm and 6x24 cm medium format cameras. panoramic cameras using sheet film are available in formats up to 10 x 24 inches. aps or 35 mm cameras produce cropped images in a panoramic aspect ratio using a small area of film. specialized 35 mm or medium format fixed-lens panoramic cameras use wide field lenses to cover an extended length as well as the full height of the film to produce images with a greater image width than normal. pinhole cameras of a variety of constructions can be used to make panoramic images. a popular design is the 'oatmeal box', a vertical cylindrical container in which the pinhole is made in one side and the film or photographic paper is wrapped around the inside wall opposite, and extending almost right to the edge of, the pinhole. this generates an egg-shaped image with more than 180° view. because they expose the film in a single exposure, fixed lens cameras can be used with electronic flash, which would not work consistently with rotational panoramic cameras. with a flat image plane, 90° is the widest field of view that can be captured in focus and without significant wide-angle distortion or vignetting. lenses with an imaging angle approaching 120 degrees require a center filter to correct vignetting at the edges of the image. lenses that capture angles of up to 180°, commonly known as fisheye lenses exhibit extreme geometrical distortion but typically display less brightness falloff than rectilinear lenses. examples of this type of camera are: taiyokoki viscawide-16 st-d (16 mm film), siciliano camera works pannaroma (35mm, 1987), hasselblad x-pan (35 mm, 1998), linhof 612pc, horseman sw612, linhof technorama 617, tomiyama art panorama 617 and 624, and fuji g617 and gx617 (medium format (film)). the panomorph lens provides a full hemispheric field of view with no blind spot, unlike catadioptric lenses. digital photography digital stitching of segmented panoramas example of a segmented panorama. taken with a nikon coolpix 5000 and stitched with ptgui. with digital photography, the most common method for producing panoramas is to take a