Practical panoramic photography
John Wade
Regular AP contributor John Wade became fascinated with vintage panoramic cameras as a collector rather than a user before moving on to the ease of panoramic photography with more modern film and digital cameras. Find him here: www.johnwade.org.
Panoramic photography is something that appeals to many photographers, but is practised by few of them, even though its techniques are as old as photography itself. The simplest way to make a panoramic picture – and this applies to both film and digital cameras – is to shoot with a wideangle lens crop . even you a camera that allows shooting in a 16:9 format.
Another time-honoured method from the film days was to mount the camera on a tripod, then to take a series of pictures, rotating the camera between each one so that the processed prints could be joined together to make a panorama. The technique worked, but you could usually see the joins.
Today, practical panoramic photography is much simpler with the right type of film camera or with just about any kind of digital camera. You can even take panoramic pictures with your mobile phone.
A little history
AS FAR back as the daguerreotype age that began in 1839 (the first practical method of photography, producing pictures on
