Historically, the term ‘panoramic’ was normally reserved for images with aspect ratios in excess of 2:1 (i.e. the long side being twice the length of the short side). However, the problem with this approach is that it does not take field-of-view truly into account.
Field of view is important because it dictates the amount of ‘sweep’ and ‘swoosh’ you get in a panoramic frame (try cropping a picture taken with a wide-angle lens down to 3:1 and then compare it with exactly the same crop of an image taken with a telephoto lens).
In fact, the reason I love the 90mm lens on the Linhof 617 is precisely because of its unique combination of aspect ratio and field-of-view (both of which, by the way, resemble almost exactly our human stereoscopic vision).
You can imagine my head-scratching, therefore, when I was recently sent a link of a ‘panoramic photo’ of Prague. You see, this one is an incredibly well-executed, completely immersive ‘virtual world’ in which aspect ratios and field-of-views are completely redundant. Additionally, it’s presented in such hi-definition, that one can literally zoom all the way to the horizon and still make out discernable details such as window frames and people!
Although I am not sure where this leaves the humble ‘panorama’ (and I am not sure how you would sell something like this in a commercial environment), I am certain that such visualizations are going to push panoramic photography to the limit in the coming years...
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