What is Panoramic Photography?

Panoramic Photography is a new photography technique which is using special hardware of digital cameras, lenses and mounting tripod that focusing on the fields of view to create 360 photo virtual experiences.

If you have ever used a camera in your life, then you must have seen the word "Panorama" in it. Almost all digital photographic devices including smartphones, DSLR cameras and even low budget point and shoot cameras have a panorama mode in it.

Panoramic Photography helps you to take wide angle photos. Now these angles can be 180 degrees or even 360 degrees, depending upon the hardware you are using.

Cropping the top and the bottom portion of an image might make it look like a panorama image. But the problem is that the resolution gets reduced if you do so. Panoramic photography can produce high-quality images (well, depending upon the camera you are using) with better resolution because many small images are stitched together to form one large wide angle photo.

The benefit of such a photo is that you get to capture a very broad area in a single image. Suppose you wanted to capture a locality"s every corner. The usual way is to capture multiple shots. But then in the future, when you are viewing those images, it won"t be much good to look at. The only way to capture an entire area is to take a panorama shot.

When you capture a panorama image, what happens is, your camera is stitching together multiple images to form a single image.

Types of Panoramic Photography images?

We can categorize the panorama images into 3 categories, based on the angle.



The first one is wide angle panorama, in which the picture is usually less than 180 degrees wide angle.



The second one - 180 degrees angle panorama is when the image will be taken by panning the camera in 180 degrees. So half the area in your surrounding is included in this mode.



The third one - 360-degree angle picture is when someone takes a shot by panning the camera in full 360 degrees. In these types of pictures, the whole area in your surroundings or in a horizontal plane, will be captured. Modern smartphone cameras allow you to view these 360-degree pictures as if you were actually in the location. It is never ending since you have captured the whole surroundings. Special post processing will connect both ends of a 360-degree picture so that you can view it without having an end on either side.

How to take a Panoramic Photography images?

If you are using a digital camera or a smartphone, then capturing an image in panorama mode is very easy. You can begin by simply opening the camera app on your phone or turn on your camera if you are using a digital camera. Then somewhere in the menu or settings, you will be able to find panorama shots.

It"s hard to say exactly where to find this option because it varies with different manufacturers. In most DSLRs and point and shoot cameras, the choice is provided as one of the shooting modes. You can switch to it just like switching between different other shooting modes like portrait, landscape, etc.

Once you have enabled the option, the rest is entirely in your hands. Since digital cameras and smartphones have only one lens, you will have to rotate the device to capture the scene in a full format. Once you click on the "start capture" option, the camera will start taking the shot. Your job is to rotate the camera with as minimal vertical movements as possible. The quality of the output image will depend entirely on how you move the camera.

It is the photographer who determines the degree of rotation. One advantage modern digital cameras provide is that you can even capture a full 360-degree image. The entire scenes around you will be captured if you make a full rotation when capturing an image.

One important aspect to note in the environment is to make sure there are no movements in the area surrounding you. Since we are moving the camera in one direction, if something moves, a bird for example, then the problem is that the moving object will appear multiple times in the final image. This is more than enough to ruin your panorama photo.

Taking panoramic photography photo manually

You can use any camera for panoramic photography. The quality of the image depends on how good your camera is. The easiest way for panoramic photography is via the inbuilt feature provided in the cameras. But some people like to do it manually. Capturing each image individually and then stitching it together with photo editing software is a way.

When doing so, a number of things need to be considered. Assuming you are using a DSLR, the things to consider begins at lens selection. Some say wide angle must be utilized, and some other says standard lens will do. Maybe you should choose based on the scene you are capturing.

It is best to place the camera on a tripod or any other type of stand. This practice can be followed even if you are using the inbuilt panorama option.

Since we will be using manual mode, you need to consider everything from focus modes to ISO values. Examine the surroundings and set a value based on it. There is no predefined method for this. This is important especially if you are going to capture a 360-degree pictures.

Different area in your surrounding will have different light conditions. When you capture each image, all of them must look matching to each other. This is the whole reason why you can"t shoot in auto mode. The settings will adjust based on the scene.

Once you have chosen all the values and parameters, you can start capturing each image carefully. One advantage of shooting in this mode is that even if something moves when you are taking the photo, you can just shoot it again. But be warned that it takes extreme patience to create panorama images entirely manually.

The final step is to stitch together all the individual images to form one wide photo. You can make use of modern image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop to do so.

[Tweet "What is Panoramic Photography?"]