What's the Deal with Panoramas?
One of the largest limitations of photography, and indeed two dimensional art in general, is that we humans perceive the world in three dimensions with a much wider field of view than the small rectangles that make up the artist's canvas, photograph, etc. In photography, there are some workarounds to this with wide angle lenses that can capture a larger field of view than most lenses, but even these suffer from the same, rectangular limitations to some extent (for context, the human eye is said to have a focal length of around 20 MM, although estimates vary; the 1x zoom on an iPhone is 24 MM).
This shot was taken with a very wide lens in order to capture more of what I was seeing (you might recognize this picture from one of my other blog posts!) (taken with a nikon d5100 & sigma 12-24 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 12 mm, 6 sec, f/20)
At 12 MM, this shot above would certainly qualify as wide and encompasses a good amount of what I actually saw, however, my peripheral vision was able to take in even more than this in real life. Additionally, some parts of this image are distorted due to the lens being as wide as it is (the sidewalk in the foreground appears significantly larger than it actually is, relative to the other subjects in the image, as an example).
On top of suffering from this limitation of not being able to caputre a human's full field of view easily, some subjects are hard to caputre in one image. The easiest example is, of course, vast landscapes. However, some other subjects can be hard to capture in one go, particularly when you are close to a large object (like a large building or group of people).
In both of these cases, and many others, a panorama can be a great option to showcase more of what you, the photographer, would like to. So, what is a panorama? Nowadays, most people have a phone that can easily make panoramas. But what is the phone doing? Well, no matter who makes it, a panorama is a picture that stitches multiple smaller images together to form one continuous, sweeping (or perhaps panoramic?) image. By merging multiple, smaller images together, panoramas offer a way to capture much larger subjects or views than a standard picture can.
As I mentioned before, landscapes are one particularly useful application for panoramas. Often, the landscape in front of you is more expansive than one picture could accurately capture. When someone talks about a panoramic view, it is a landscape that they're often talking about, after all.
The northern lights (taken with a nikon z6 & nikon 50 mm f/1.8 @ 10 sec, f/1.8)
Beyond landscapes, though, panoramas have a lot more great applications. I'm a particular fan of panoramas for architecture. Whether it be one building or a full skyline, buildings tend to be well suited for a long, skinny image when framed in the right way.
The bodleain library at Oxford (taken with a nikon d5100 & tamron 18-400 mm f/3.5-6.3 @ 18 mm, 1/125 sec, f/11)
Boston from the harbor (taken with a nikon z6 & nikon 50 mm f/1.8 @ 50 mm, f/5.6, 1/30 sec)
Another great application of panoramas is sporting venues. The field of play (or court, ice, etc.) for most sports seems to be a rectangle that is a fair bit longer than it is wide. So, capturing a full sporting venue tends to lend itself well to a panorama.
Iowa speedway (taken with a nikon z6 & sigma 12-24 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 12 mm, 1/500 sec, f/8)
The final great application for panoramas that I have found in my experience is long lines of people. This has come to be very helpful during pre-game lineups at sporting events. You could achieve this same effect by cropping one image down, but doing a panorama gives your final image more resolution and therefore detail if you care about that, like me! Also, I often shoot with a lens too long to actually get the entire lineup in one image, so this is a clever workaround for that.
MSU soccer's starting lineup prior to a game against kansas city this season (taken with a nikon z6 & nikon 200-500 f/5.6 @ 200 mm, 1/800 sec, f/5.6)
While these are some great applications for panoramas that I have found, I encourage you to go out and find what works well for you! The largest limitation of panoramas that should be mentioned before I conclude is that due to their nature as being multiple images stitched together, panoramas unfortunately cannot capture fast action. You will know this well if someone has ever moved during a phone panorama that you are making. Since they consist of multiple pictures, if the scene changes between shots, the final panorama will not look right. In these cases, panoramas simply won't work (unless you want to make them look different for some artistic effect, perhaps).
I hope that you enjoyed this little exploration of panoramas. As always, let me know if you have comments or suggestions. Until next week!
