Panorama camera

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Glossary Terms

Panorama Cameras (or Panoramic Cameras) are cameras designed to take photos with a very wide horizontal angle, but normal vertical angle - resulting in normal height, but very wide photos. Typically these are of landscapes or large group of people arranged in a long row - such as the "classic" whole school or whole team photo.

There are several ways to design a panoramic camera to operate:

• Keep the camera still, but swing a normal lens across the scene - perhaps using a slit-shaped shutter. This is how, for example, the Horizont and Al Vista are built.
• Move the whole camera - manually, or with some motorised mechanism, keeping the film still by winding it in synchronisation with the rotation.
• Use a wide angle lens, but crop the picture vertically; this is how the APS panorama format is implemented.
• Use a normal lens, but arrange the frame to spread across a number of normal-sized frames; this is how some recent 35mm cameras with a panorama setting work.
• Move the camera, taking a number of separate, normal-sized pictures, and assemble the frames into a single picture later. This is a technique which can be used on a number of digital cameras - usually requiring the user to move the camera and operate the shutter-release, with software providing a guide to lining up the shots.
• Rotate the camera, making a video recording. Use software to convert the video into a still image.

See Category: Panorama (including 35mm and models).