Panorama Styles

Photography is only part of the battle in creating your artwork; the next step is deciding on the style of panorama. 

Creating an extreme wide angle field of view in a two dimensional medium has it challenges, and, as such, many different panorama styles have been created to help deal with those challenges.  Below are the styles we choose to work with.

Our most commonly utilized panoramas are Hybrids that blend multiple versions of the view into one backing. By doing this, we are able to correct the horizontal perspective in the center(s) of view while allowing the edges to swing into the distance, helping to maintain proper scale. Below is a brief description of each panorama style we use to create our hybrids.

Vedutismo is a style of panorama named after an 18th century Italian painting technique that keeps the vertical and diagonal lines straight while curving the horizontal lines in the image.  The panorama can be compressed to adjust the degree of horizontal curvature, but can never be fully straightened. This is our default style for on location proofs, however we rarely use it by itself to produce a final backing due to the curvature in the center. Exceptions to this would only be for landscape backings only.

A cylindrical panorama is a simulation of the field of view projected on the interior of a cylinder. It is probably the most popular panorama style amongst the general public and allows for the greatest amount of information to be included in the final crop. However, only the vertical lines remain straight with all other lines becoming curved, and, unlike with Vedutismo, the level of curvature is not adjustable. Due to this, we greatly limit our use of this style for far edges of backings that need to swing into the distance.

Rectilinear panoramas keep all vertical, diagonal and horizontal lines straight. However, in order to do this, objects must be progressively stretched the further they are from the center of view, creating odd distortions at the edges. We typically utilize this style for the center of our backings where horizontal perspectives must be maintained abject are not yet far enough away where scale/distance does not need to be adjusted for.