A History of Panoramic Image Creation Adapted from Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography (Rocky Nook) By Harald Woeste More Insight articles Mediabistro On Demand design and photo video tutorials The First Panoramas The word “panorama” is derived from the Greek words pân (= everything) and hòrama (= to see, that which is seen, the appearance, the view), and thus stands for the all-around view. Panorama images can be created in a variety of ways, from the first round paintings in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the first photographic panora- mas in the middle of the 19th century, right up to modern, digital panoramas created using computer-based image processing techniques. Historical Development Panoramas first became known when in 1787, Robert Barker (an Irishman) patented his plans for a cylindrical building that was to be erected around a large, panoramic painting. The building served the exclusive purpose of allowing the cylindrical painting to be created and subsequently displayed. The special painting technique, com- bined with sophisticated lighting, produced a new experience for the viewer, who stood on a special platform in the center of the circular room. The goal was to produce the perfect illusion of a real scene. Barker erected his first permanent circular panorama building (or “rotunda”) in Leicester Square in London in 1792, where one or two new panoramas a year were exhibited for the next half-century. Panorama etching, after the first great panorama painting of London by Henry Aston Barker, 1792 Source: Oetterman 1980: Leporello 1 (click to enlarge). These panoramas showed attractive landscapes, famous battles, or important cities. The new art form was a source of great excitement and became hugely popular, breeding many imitators not only in England, but also in Holland, Denmark, the USA, France, Switzerland, and Germany, where Johann Adam Breysig and his colleagues painted the first known German panorama in 1800 for exhibition in Berlin. These circular images (or better, circular paintings—the images were at this time still painted on canvas) mea- sured up to 15 meters in height and were often as long as 100 meters. In order to reinforce the illusion that the observer was an integral part of the scene, the panorama exhibitors began (around 1830) to experiment with placing three-dimensional objects and other props in front of their images, turning panoramas into a modern, commercial form of entertainment. Panoramas became a traveling spectacle, supported and transported from city to city by a well-organized industry. Diagram of a Rotunda A: Entrance and cash desk; B: Darkened corridor; C: Viewing platform; D: Observer’s field of view; E: Cylindrical canvas; F: Three-dimensional foreground (Faux Terrain); G: Trompe l’oeil objects painted on the canvas Panoramas as a mass-media phenomenon had their heyday in the middle of the 19th century: no other art form or medium was as popular and had such a radical effect on the way the public viewed the world. Film and television did not yet exist, and photography was in its infancy. Very few people were able to indulge in educa- tional trips, and tourism as we know it today was unheard of. The opportunities for the general public to gain an impression of foreign countries, people, cities, landscapes, events, or exotic animals were extremely limited. Panoramas made it possible for the citizens of the world’s big cities to see and experience such things. Not only were the panorama pictures impressive, but the opening ceremonies themselves became important social events, accompanied by music and speeches. Panoramas in Contemporary Art The success of Yadegar Assisi’s 2003 Everest panorama in Leipzig provides us today with a hint of the magic of those first 18th and 19th century panorama exhibitions. Assisi exhibited a huge collage consisting of 3D mod- els, detail photos, and panorama photos of the Himalayas in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first scaling of Mount Everest. The 36-meter-high exhibit—along with atmospheric background music—produced the illusion that the viewer was standing at the foot of the tallest mountain in the world. The largest panorama in the world remained on display inside an unused gas storage tank for two years. Everest 8848 Panorama installation by Yadegar Assisi celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first scaling of Mount Everest. Exhibited inside a gas storage tank in Leipzig, with multimedia light and sound effects. Everest 8848 The lower viewing level. In 2005, the “Gruppe 180” artists exhibited a painted 180° panorama portraying Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate at the end of World War II. A viewer standing in the center of the 28 × 5 meter installation had not only a strong sense of space, but also the feeling of being transported back in time. The transitions between the artifi- cial, historical image and the real, immediate environment were all but undetectable, and the vertical and con- verging lines within the image coincided perfectly with those of the surrounding contemporary architecture. Marcel Backhaus’ panorama effectively combined conflicting elements of past and present, destruction and reconstruction, and war and peace. Panorama installation at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany. Wide Images and Wide Angles—Photographic Panoramas If we had to describe what is special about panoramas using one short phrase, we would have to say, “field of view”. This has always been true in the the world of painting, and it is equally valid when we are creating photo- graphic panoramas. The most important characteristic of a panorama is the large field of view. Since the medium’s earliest beginnings, inventive photographers have searched for ways to capture ever wider angles of view. Unfortunately, the expression “panorama” is not always used consistently in a photographic context. Although the word was originally coined to signify an all-around 360° view, it has come to be used to describe images with wide formats—for example, with aspect ratios of 1 : 2 or 1 : 3. Although most panoramas have wide formats, they are not necessarily shot using wide angles of view. A wide-format panorama can be equally well shot using a telepho- to or a wide-angle lens. The advent of digital photography has, however, helped us return to the historical defini- tion of panoramas as all-around images, or images with a large field of view. Comparison of Fields of View. Wide angles of view are produced in the digital photographic world by using special cameras or specific shoot- ing and image merging techniques. Panoramic angles of view are typically much wider than the normal (approx- imately 50° horizontal) angle of view of the human eye, and extend through the 140° secondary angle of view of the (moving) human eye right up to 360° all-around views. In the real world, a viewer can only observe a 360° angle of view by physically turning around his/her own axis. Just in case this all sounds a little confusing: the viewer can see an entire panorama image at once if the image is small enough and if it is displayed on a flat plane in front of the viewer’s eye, like a photographic print. Freedom of Choice: Wide Images—Straight or Curvy Wide-format images set themselves apart through their dimensions, rather than through any particular aesthetic characteristics or unusual production techniques. Such images are often shot using specially constructed cam- eras, a similar result simply by cropping the top and bottom edges of a conventional photo. Cropping an image taken using a 6×6 Hasselblad produces the same basic result as using the specialized Hasselblad XPan panorama camera. Similarly, you can achieve results equivalent to those from a 6×12 or 6×17 panorama camera by crop- ping large format images. The digital photographic medium uses electronic image sensors to capture images. Most digital images can be cropped to wide/panorama formats without noticeable loss of image quality, thanks to ever-increasing sensor resolution. Truly wide-angle panoramic images are characterized less by their wide format than by the large field of view that they cover and their own, very specific curvilinear appearance when displayed as a flat image. These all- around images can only be produced (whether in analog or digital form) using specially constructed cameras or dedicated software—a situation which is not likely to change in the foreseeable future. The flexibility of modern, digital panorama creation processes means that we (fortunately) no longer need to construct specially designed buildings or oversized canvasses to display our images. These days, we can use the same source material to construct a wide-format, a wide-angle, or an interactive panoramic image for display on a computer monitor. Wide-Angle All-around view (cylindrical projection) of the above shot, cropped to the same horizontal angle of view, and showing curvilinear distortion. Wide-Format A conventional architectural shot, where straight lines are reproduced straight (rectilinear projection). The Challenge of Shooting Effective Panoramas The major aim, and simultaneously the greatest challenge, for every panorama photographer is capturing a wide field of view. In other words: how can I photograph something that cannot be photographed, and how do I make a useful image from the resulting raw material? The easiest way to understand how panoramas are made is to use three theoretical models of the various ways to make a conventional photographic image in one’s immediate environment. Model 1—A Sheet of Glass: Set up a (theoretical) sheet of glass at arm’s length in front of you and paint exact- ly what you see through the glass. This model represents the taking of a conventional photo, and the resulting image is described as flat (also “planar” or “rectilinear”).