Panoramas - A history and a future.

A Panorama image is a wide angle image, created by taking a series of photographs and stitching them together in image editing software. 

A panorama of Beirut dating back to the 19th century.

Panoramas have been in use from the 17th century, becoming a popular way to represent landscapes and events. These early panoramas were painted, rather then photographed. In Europe, Painted Panoramas on a massive scale were created, for audience viewing. The paintings would be massive sizes, ranging from 14m high x 40m circumference (Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Panorama Mesdag) to the 'Racławice Panorama' which is 120m x 15m. 

A cylindrical projection panorama. 

Images from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panorama

Panoramic Photography, once mastered, became alot more popular than panoramic paintings. I imagine this is because panoramic photography is alot faster and widely-available. Digital photography of the late 20th century made this process even more easy and streamlined due to technological advancements. Panoramic Photography is widely used online and the technology is still advancing. 


Gigapan, a new technology being created and tested, is the revolutionary new panoramic technology. It is a high resolution camera mounted on a robotic arm. The user inputs data to set up the shot, and the camera takes alot of images (set up across a grid) extremely fast. The data is then downloaded and stitched together automatically in a program. The final image is a absolutely huge image that is a panorama. It can be zoomed in, very close, with no real loss of quality. Gigapan technology, I'm sure, is changing the way that panoramas are created. With this technology, no real manual input is required (apart from setting up the shot) and the final image can be breath taking. Examples of completed gigapans can be found at http://gigapan.org