Panoramic Cameras

Nothing is more beautiful or breathtaking than a panoramic picture of a sunset or perhaps, your favorite vacation spot. Panoramic cameras allow you to take shots that cover anything from 180 to 360 degrees.

There are several types of panoramic cameras: a wide angle, swing lens, rotation camera or fisheye lens. Using a wide-angle lens provides a film plane that is flat and wide. However, using this type of lens makes distant objects smaller and squares are lengthened into rectangles. This occurs because the distance between the object and the border of the film is greater than that between the object and the center of the film making objects in the center of the picture look smaller.

Swing lens cameras cover a field of 120 to 150 degrees horizontally and 30 to 50 degrees vertically. A narrow vertical slit between the lens and film rotates the lens allowing the image to be progressively exposed as it does so. Since the film plane is curved, you don’t get that size variation. To take a sequence of pictures, it is best to use a tripod and rotate the camera for each shot so that each frame overlaps the preceding one.

A third type of panoramic camera is the rotation camera, where the lens is fixed to the camera body, but the entire camera rotates. As it rotates, it synchronizes with the speed of any moving image. These will shoot up to 360 degrees or more and will keep rotating until they run out of film.

For close-up shots, you may want to try a fisheye lens, which has a 180-degree view, a wide depth of field and a short minimum focusing distance of 8 inches (20 cm). The lens has a fixed petal-type hood and a gelatin filter holder at the rear.

Good panoramic cameras can be expensive, but you can also make one of your own. First, you will need a 120-film size folding camera body that has spool holders for both supply and take-up. You will need a disk as well and the size depends on what will fit. For instance, for a 6 x 6 camera body, it would be approximately 70mm. You can make your disk from plastic, aluminum or any other suitable material in a drill press. Then glue an “O” ring to the circumference to prevent the film from slipping.

You will also need a lens that matches the diameter or the disc. If the disc is 70mm, use a 35mm lens. You can also use a zoom lens that can be moved to the desired focal length. Finally, you will need a DC electric gear motor; either 6, 12 or 24-volt will work fine. You will then connect the motor to the film take-up shaft.

Another method of making your own panoramic camera uses sheets of brass that are 0.2, 0.5, 1 and 10 mm thick, a tube of brass 80 mm in diameter with a 1 mm wall, a brass rod 4 mm in diameter, another brass rod 15 mm in diameter, and a rod of black PVC plastic 10 mm in diameter and two steel bars to support the film. You will also need a 3 mm thick plate of transparent Plexiglas, as well as screws, pins, a metal hinge, springs, spheres and ball bearings, a locking system, winding knobs, an anti-unrolling device for the film and a folding viewfinder.

The primary part of the camera body consists of upper and lower plates, which are separated by four brass columns. There is also the flange, guides for the film, the anterior and lateral walls, back door and front window. Since making this type of camera is much more complicated than say a pinhole camera, you will need to do your homework on how these parts go together.
If you wish to go the commercial route, there are a variety of digital panoramic cameras on the market.

Panoscan Inc. offers the MK-3 rotating camera that scans 360-degree images in a single pass. You can capture and view the images immediately. Then the images can be processed either as a flat panorama picture or as a virtual reality movie using a system like Apple QuickTime VR or iPix. Panoscan also has an item called the PanoMetric, which allows you to point to any pixel in a scene and accurately determine the distance and spatial data of any indoor or outdoor scene and can even capture minute details.

Panoramic digital cameras are now used by many police officers to capture entire crime scenes in a single, 360-degree image. The image from the camera is then transferred to a computer for a close-up view of anything within the shot.

There are also disposable panoramic cameras on the market that are very cheap to purchase. If you’re going on vacation, you might want to pick up a couple of these, rather than entering into the pricey range of professional panoramic cameras. Kodak offers a single-use panoramic camera that can be used in sunlight, low light, action and still pictures.