Panorama Photography:Expand your images.

© 2004 by Frederick L. ShippeyElectronic Imaging Consulting

The National Aeronautics andSpace Administration (NASA) land-ed the Spirit and Opportunity rov-ers on planet Mars in January.Since that time we've been treatedto some fantastic images from theRed Planet, including some greatpanoramic shots. If you haven'tseen the images, go tomarsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html. I've always enjoyed work-ing with panorama photographyand seeing the Mars imagesreminded me that panorama pho-tography would be a great topicfor an article.

Panorama photography is almostas old as photography itself. Thefirst panoramic camera was patent-ed in 1843 and used Daguerreo-type plates. Most of us are familiarwith using wide-angle lenses in35mm photography. With a 35mmcamera used in the landscapemode (horizontal), a 'normal"50mm lens has a 40 degree angleof view, a 35mm lens gives 54degrees, a 28mm lens gives 65degrees, a 24mm lens gives 74degrees, while a 20mm lens gives84 degrees.

Wide-angle lenses can squeeze a lot

of information onto a single 35mmframe, but they don't really makepanoramas. Panorama photogra-phy is more than just wide-anglelens photography; it's ULTRA wide-angle photography. Panoramashave a much wider aspect ratiothan 35mm photography's 3:2(width to height) aspect ratio andcan have angles of view well over100 degrees.

There are three general categoriesof panorama cameras – swing lens,rotating, and extreme wide-angle.The first two categories, swing lensand rotating, expose the filmthrough a narrow slot that "scans"the image on to the film.

With swing lens cameras, the cam-era's body remains stationarywhile the lens swings in arc. Thefilm is fixed with a curved filmplane that keeps the image infocus as the lens swings. Theexposing slit is moved in synchro-nization with the lens movement.These cameras generally cover amaximum of about 150 degrees.

With rotating cameras, the camerabody rotates while the lens and slitremain fixed in relationship to thecamera body. The film moves insynchronization with the cameramovement. These cameras canmake a full 360-degree panorama.

With the third category, extreme

wide-angle cameras, both the bodyand lens are fixed and the camerahas a flat film plane with a longnarrow format. The wide-anglelens used must have an image cir-cle sufficient to cover the entirewidth of the film plane.

Kodak Cirkut panorama cameraswere probably the most popularpanorama cameras. They were firstintroduced in 1907 and are of therotating camera body design. Theywere used to make shots of largegroups of people without having toposition the camera a great dis-tance from the group. I've seenschool class group photos from the1920's made with such cameras.As the cameras slowly rotated,scanning the group from one sideto the other, it was possible foryoung boys who positioned them-selves at the starting edge of thecamera's scan to run behind thegroup and also be photographed atthe other edge of the group.

There are still a variety of panora-ma cameras of the various typesbeing made, including some thatyou can build from kits.

In 1994, Apple announcedQuickTime VR (for virtual reality)technology that changed the waywe can create panoramic images.QuickTime VR technology definedtwo new kinds of computer images:QTVR Panoramas and QTVR

Objects.

QTVR Objects can be very useful ifyou are trying to sell objects onone of the Internet's many auctionsites. I'll cover QTVR Objects in mynext article.

A QuickTime VR panorama is madefrom a carefully shot series of pho-tographs, "stitched" and blendedtogether and mapped onto theinside of a virtual cylinder. On acomputer screen, a viewer has a"window" looking out on the wholepanoramic image. To explore thepanorama, the viewer can pan andzoom across the entire image withtheir mouse. Apple says"QuickTime VR panoramasimmerse you in a photorealisticenvironment".

The first actual software to createsuch images was released in byApple in 1995. The first two ver-

sions of Apple software were diffi-cult to use. In the fall of 1997,Apple released QTVR AuthoringStudio which was far more userfriendly and it was updated once inthe fall of 1998. It no longer runson the latest Macintosh computers,but it's a great program and I stilluse it.

Images that are to be stitchedtogether need to have some over-lap. Ideally they are shot using atripod and a panoramic tripod

head that keeps the camera levelwhile making it possible to easilyrotate the camera in uniform stepsaround a circle. Kaidan is a goodsource of such tripod heads(www.kaidan.com).

All lenses produce some level ofimage distortion. If you were tophotograph a square grid of lines,the grid would be distorted – espe-cially towards the edges of imagesmade with wide-angle lenses. Wedon't normally care about the dis-tortion in our photos, but the dis-tortion becomes a problem whenwe are trying to superimpose imag-es and stitch them together to cre-ate panoramas.

To produce the highest qualitypanoramas, software like Apple'sQTVR Authoring Studio must cor-rect for this distortion as well ascarefully blend the images.

Apple's primary intended use ofQTVR technology was on comput-ers and the Internet, but the soft-ware also creates panoramic imagesthat can be printed and viewed tra-ditionally.

To demonstrate Apple's QTVRAuthoring Studio, I shot a series ofimages of the George EastmanHouse and International Museumof Photography and Film, Roches-ter, New York. Go towww.eastman.org/home.htm for

more information about the muse-um's collection. I used my Olym-pus C-2020Z digital camera with itszoom lens set to the wide-angleposition (roughly equivalent to a35mm wide angle lens on a 35mmcamera). I mounted the camera inthe vertical (portrait) position on aKaidan KiWi+ Panoramic Head andshot 10 images in 20-degree incre-ments. This gave plenty of imageoverlap for the stitching process towork.

Figure 1 shows the QTVR AuthoringStudio user interface, Figure 2 isthe completed panoramic imagethat covers approximately a 200degree angle of view, while Figure 3shows how the panorama appearson a computer screen when viewedwith Apple's QuickTime Playerapplication. Using your mouse,you can pan and zoom to explorethe entire image. By the way,Apple's QuickTime Player applica-tion is available for both Mac andPC computers and can be used as aplug-in with most Internet webbrowsers.[www.apple.com/quicktime/products/qt/]

Since 1995, a number of panoramasoftware developers and productshave come and gone. However,there are several great panoramicproducts available today for arange of prices. Apple's originalapproach wrapped the panorama

image around the viewer like a cyl-inder, but new hardware and soft-ware makes it possible to also putthe viewer inside cubes andspheres, creating totally immersiveimages.

In 1996, Omniview's Photo Bubbles(now iPix) were introduced. iPixuses back-to-back fisheye lensimages to give the viewer a windowon their computer screen to see theVR world as if they were inside asphere. IPix has a patent on theuse of fisheye lenses to create suchimages, so other software develop-ers like RealViz (www.realviz.com)must rely on special tripod headsthat make it possible to captureimages in vertical rows as well ashorizontal steps to create spheresand cubes.

If you want to get started in pan-oramic imaging, it's actually prettysimple to create panoramas with-out a lot of fancy equipment. With-out a computer you'll be limited toa "cut and paste" approach usingprints and the prints will limit yourfinal quality. However, if you havea computer and a digital camera, orcan get some of your film imagesscanned, you can get great resultswithout spending much money onadditional hardware or software.

To demonstrate the Cut and pasteprints method, I made 5 overlap-ping images of the George Eastman

House with an Olympus Stylus cam-era. The camera has a 35mm lensand I hand-held the camera in theportrait mode (vertical). The totalangle of view captured is about 110degrees. Figure 4 shows the resultsof the cut and paste process.

This method has some obviousproblems. You have no controlover how your photo lab makes theprints and they may have color anddensity differences. When piecedtogether, such differences can pro-duce a very visible seam betweenimages. Because of the lens distor-tion problem mentioned earlier,you may also have difficulty in lin-ing things up when matchingobjects in the overlapping areas.The cut and paste method worksbest with using only the center areaof images taken with long focallength lenses.

If your computer has photoenhancement software like Adobe'sPhotoShop Elements, you can cre-ate panoramas with Elements'Photomerge function. A version ofthis is also included in the newAdobe Photoshop CS software. ThePhotomerge approach is a lot likeusing the cut and paste methodwith a computer, although it doesoffer some control over color anddensity differences.

Figure 5 shows the PhotoShopElements Photomerge user inter-

face and Figure 6 is the resultingfinal image. For consistency incomparing methods, I used scans ofthe original 35mm color negativefilm images used to make the printsI used in the cut and pasteexample.

Photomerge works well for somepeople, but I prefer to use softwarewith a slightly more sophisticatedapproach.

ArcSoft's Panorama Maker 3 is agood, low cost, cross-platform pan-orama photography application(www.arcsoft.com/en/products/panoramamaker/). It's about $40USand is available by Internet down-load from ArcSoft.

Panorama Maker 3 combines hori-zontal, vertical, or tiled sets ofimages to create panoramic photosup to 360 degrees wide. After theprogram automatically stitches theimages together, it is also possibleto manually adjust their positionsto create the perfect panoramiceffect. Panorama Maker includes acamera lens focal length setting tocorrect for lens distortion; its auto-matic setting has worked quite wellfor me.

Figure 7 shows the PanoramaMaker 3 horizontal panorama userinterface, Figure 8 is the resultingfinal image. Again for consistency,I used the scans of the original

35mm color negative film.

Panorama Maker 3 also makes itpossible to create super-wide shotsfrom several images tiled together.In this example, I shot 8 hand-helddigital images with the Olympus C-2020Z set to the wide-angle posi-tion with the camera in the land-scape (horizontal) position.

Figure 9 shows the PanoramaMaker 3 user tile interface whileFigure 10 is the resulting finalimage.

Once you've created your pan-oramic images, you may want tocreate large prints to display orshare them with you friends. Ihave an Epson ink-jet printer thataccepts their Panoramic PhotoPaper (2210 x 594 mm) and itmakes great panoramic prints.Have fun!

Figures:

Figure 1. The QTVR Authoring Studio user interface.

Figure 2. The completed panoramic image created by QTVR AuthoringStudio that covers approximately a 200-degree angle of view.

Figure 3. This is how the panorama appears when viewed with Apple'sQuickTime Player application. Using your mouse, you can pan and zoomaround the entire image.

Figure 4. A panorama created by the cut and paste process coveringapproximately a 110-degree angle of view.

Figure 5. The PhotoShop Elements Photomerge user interface.

Figure 6. The resulting final Photomerged panorama.

Figure 7. The Panorama Maker 3 Horizontal Panorama user interface.

Figure 8. The resulting final Panorama Maker 3 panoramic image.

Figure 9. The Panorama Maker 3 user Tile interface.

Figure 10. The resulting final Panorama Maker 3 tiled image.