Panoramic Photography Technical Notes

General Tips on Panoramic Photography

Resources

The International Association of Panoramic Photographers is a great resource. They offer a periodical and sponsor conferences. Their home page links to other resources on the web.

The August 1995 issue of Shutterbug had an excellent rundown of the cameras available for panoramic photography. There is really an amazing variety now on the market. If you can afford it, the larger film formats offer the advantage of letting you make large prints, which are really the best way of enjoying the imagery.

Joseph Meehan has written a fine instructional book on Panoramic Photography, which is published by Amphoto and available from many mailorder photo places. If you are at all serious about the subject you should get a copy of this book.

What is Panoramic?

What qualifies as "panoramic"? It is probably not worth arguing about. (Nonetheless, I shall now proceed to argue about it.) I think panoramic photography starts with images encompassing about 100 degrees horizontal field-of-view. Others define panoramic according to the shape of the image, but it does not make sense to me that any picture cropped long and thin should called a panorama. There are point-and-shoot 35mm cameras that just mask out the top and bottom of the ordinary frame, leaving a long thin strip in the middle of the frame. This, of course, is cheating and does not yield a true wide field-of-view. Nonetheless, it is fun for many people and it hardly a crime against nature. It encourages "panoramic thinking" which is all to the good. Still, it is not as much fun as making images with a true panoramic camera.

A true panoramic camera not only makes more spectacular images, it provides an opportunity to frustrate you spouse and your friends as you fool around with a 30 pound tripod and a mechanical monstrosity that needs to be set up with a bubble level. Serious panoramic photography tends to be a solitary sport. [Well, not always, see my notes on hand-holding the Noblex 6/150.]

Where is the sun?

Chief among the artistic challenges of panoramic photography is the problem of where to put the sun. If the sun is behind you, the lighting will tend to flat and uninteresting. If the sun is to the side, the lighting will be more interesting, but you will be in danger of ruining part of the image near the edge of the frame. If you are shooting into the sun, the image will be ruined unless a cloud or a tree or something blocks the direct rays. There is no single solution. The most spectacular images are often those taken into the sun, with the direct sun blocked creatively. The best pictures taken with flat lighting are those that have a lot of color contrast to make up for lack of defining shadows.

When selecting a site for your camera, keep in mind the problem of shading the sun. For example, you may be able to set up with the shadow from a tree running over the camera from the left or right. Don't always take the coward's way out of keeping the sun behind you.

Tech Notes: The Widelux 1500

The Widelux 1500 is a short-rotation panoramic camera. The camera uses a lens mounted in a cylinder that rotates. The film is wrapped around the back of the cylinder. The lens is opposite a slit in the cylinder, so that when the cylinder rotates the slit sweeps along the film and lays down the image on the film.

The advantage of this type of camera is that a very wide angle image can be obtained with an ordinary lens. The lens only has to cover the vertical dimension of the film and the width of the slit. The Widelux 1500 produces images that are about 2 inches by 5 inches, yielding six exposures on standard roll of 120 film. The negatives will easily withstand enlargement to 2 feet by 5 feet with high quality.

With the image being produced on film wrapped around a cylinder, straight edges in the real world appear curved in the image. If you keep the camera level, the horizon will be straight. However, this also puts the horizon dead center across the picture, which is a challenge to making a pleasing composition that uses the full frame.

You can make an interesting "virtual reality" experience with a large panoramic print. You need a print that is about 30 inches wide. Bend the print into a circular arc that matches the field of view of the camera. For a Widelux print, that is about a 150 degree arc. Then put your eyepoint at the focus of the arc and view the curved print with light coming over your shoulder. Bending the print into a curve exactly matches the cylindrical projection of the image, so that when you view it all the lines in the image which should be straight actually appear straight. It is a fair approximation to being at the original site of the photo. The effect is most impressive with scenes that have some close-up objects as well as lines that extend into the distance.

The Widelux camera is an extremely delicate item. Owning one will engender a long term relationship with your Widelux service shop. There are newer designs on the market from other vendors. The maintenance is a burden, but when the Widelux is tuned up and working right, it is capable of taking impressive images.

Tech Notes: The Noblex 6/150S

I have recently switched to a Noblex 6/150S which is similar to the Widelux 1500 in negative size, coverage, and general operation. The Noblex, however, uses an electronically governed shutter, which may be more accurate and reliable. It also means the camera uses batteries -- four standard penlight batteries, which are consumed rather quickly. There is a delay of a fraction of second between the time the shutter is pressed and the picture is taken. This delay is only slightly annoying to me, but I've heard others complain about it more seriously.

I have now run about 15 rolls of film through the camera with consistant high-quality results. A recurring problem with the Widelux was that the travel spped of the moving slit would vary, causing bands of exposure change. Perhaps the electronic shutter will avoid this problem.

The 6/150 comes in several versions. The one I have has a shift option. The shift mechanism offers only two choices: the horizon can be either centered or six degrees up, i.e., showing more foreground. The dealer from whom I bought the camera said that the lens provided with the shift option is not quite as sharp as the regular lens, but it has proven adequately sharp for my purposes.

The Noblex is designed so that it is possible to hand-hold the camera with only moderate difficulty. The Widelux 1500 has a single "bull's eye" bubble level on top of the camera, so it is very difficult to hand hold and keep level. The Noblex has two carpenter's type bubble levels, one on the side of the viewfinder and one visible in the viewfinder. The trick is to use the side level to get the tilt right (which puts the horizon in the center of the finder) and then to not change the tilt when looking through the finder to see the horizontal level. It is not as difficult as it might seem.

Being able to hand hold the camera is an advantage. Even though one would want to use a tripod whenever possible, there are situations when being able to take hand held pictures allows capturing images that would otherwise be impossible or nearly so. The images on my Monterey Beach page were hand held.

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