Panoramic and 360°

This article is about the term Panorama in cinema and photography. For other uses, see Panorama (disambiguation).

The word panorama was coined by the Scottish painter Robert Barker in 1792 to describe his panoramic paintings of Edinburgh shown on a cylindrical surface viewed from the inside, which he soon was exhibiting in London, as "The Panorama". Today "panorama" signifies any high aspect ratio or wide screen image or film format, especially suitable for landscapes, where a lot of scenery can be taken in at a glance.

Panoramic painting

Main article: Panoramic painting

Panoramic paintings were patented by Robert Barker in 1787 and became at 1792 London a very popular way to represent landscapes and historical events. The Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne, Switzerland still exhibits a circular painting of 1881 painted by Edouard Castres. The painting measures about 10 metres in height with a circumference of more than 100 metres.

Panoramic photography

Main article: panoramic photography

Especially in panoramic photography, the panoramic format can be taken to extremes, as in this example showing Riddarfjärden in Stockholm:

Example of a panoramic photograph.

Panoramic images such as the above may be taken using specialized cameras or they may be pieced together from multiple digitized photographs in a process called stitching. However, the most common method of producing panoramic photos is to simply crop away the top and bottom portions an exceptionally wide angle photograph taken on a standard camera (such as 35mm or medium format) so that the aspect ratio of the remaining image is between 2:1 and 3:1. Portions of an image such as that above may be rendered into an undistorted view in response to user control in an image-based form of virtual reality, such as QuickTime VR.

Panoramic cinema

Extreme panoramic formats in cinema are also possible, but require special projection rooms and projection systems. The first Circle-Vision 360° installation was at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

Another 360° system was shown at the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland. The theater is a large cylindrical space with an arrangement of screens whose bottom is several meters above the floor. This allows viewers to enter and exit through doors in the lower part of the cylinder and view the presentation without visual interference from other viewers. There is no seating but there are rails to lean against and to hold on to in case of vertigo induced by camera motion. The projection system consists of an odd number of screens arranged in a circle with a gap between each, which avoids minor disruputive discontinuities by introducing major discontinuities that can easily be overlooked. Within the gap between each screen is the lens of a movie projector that displays an image on its specific screen, which is diametrically opposite across the room.

There are a large number of lesser Panoramic system, for example Cinerama which used a curved screen, as well as the IMAX dome system.

See also

• Panning
• Film format