Panorama pictures - if landscape or portrait - appealed to me whenever I saw one. For years I toyed with the idea of buying a special panorama camera, such as Noblex or Hasselblad have in their portfolio. I never was decisive (nor rich) enough to do so, although the ultra-wide or -high format appealed enormously ...
Now - in digital times - panoramas are easier to obtain.
Just take your normal analog or digital camera, put it on a stable tripod with a panorama
head, adjust the tripod carefully to really cover the whole area without
distracting elements, take several pictures rotating the camera after each shot
a certain angle and care for a certain overlap, scan the pictures 8if not using
a digital one directly), use a
stitching-SW and finalize the outcome of some 100-200 Mbytes by
improving the picture transitions additionally with the PC.
Conceeded - a long way, but at least much cheaper than a special camera, which I
would likely seldomly use.
The special gag of not cutting the stitched picture (as the panorama SW usually does as default) gives the outcome a more artistic approach, remembering a little on large format prints with their frayed boundaries. I like it !
The enormous data volumes are hard to cope with when working
with the PC, as they lead to long loading and manipulating times. But they also
open the possibility to make large-format prints with high resolution.
On the web you can of course
only feel a fraction of the real size and impression.
Here some examples - the full range of available panoramas can
be found in the regional sections (Regions) of the different countries.
Click on the pictures to get to the
panorama viewer:
Blavandshuk Lighthouse, Denmark
World Championship of Sand Sculptures, Søndervig, Denmark
Nørre Lyngvig Fyr Lighthouse, Denmark
Please note that either Java or Flash is required to display the panoramas.