Spherical and Cylindrical Panoramas
This page is about panoramas made by stitching together several digital images.
There are two types of panoramas that I like to make:
spherical panoramas and
cylindrical panoramas.
They are distinguished by the image projection and the amount of area that they cover.
Spherical Panoramas
Spherical panoramas cover the entire sphere, i.e. 360 degrees horizontally
and 180 degrees vertically. You can see straight up and straight down.
This is also called immersive imaging. It provides the feeling of actually being
at the place where the panorama was taken. Interactive viewing software displays the
panorama and allows the user to pan around. The image on the sphere is difficult
to print without distortions, unless you make some sort of globe.
Cylindrical Panoramas
Cylindrical panoramas do not cover the zenith
(straight up) or the nadir (straight down).
Instead, they focus on a region near the horizon and typically provide
more detail than spherical panoramas. Cylindrical panoramas can be viewed without a special viewer
and are well-suited for printing and framing.
Galleries
Here are some examples of spherical panoramas.
The travel gallery shows some panoramas taken at travel locations.
A separate gallery shows beach panoramas.
Panorama Software
Software is required to turn a series of pictures into
a panorama. There are many software packages available. For the panoramas on this site,
I used PanoTools from Helmut Dersch, which
is probably the most universal panorama software. It is also free.
Equipment and Technique
I use a Nikon CoolPix 990 digital camera with a fisheye converter for the spherical panoramas.
Additional helpful equipment and shooting technique is described in the
equipment page.
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