Panorama

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A 360-degree panorama with stereographic projection

A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "sight") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model.

A panoramic view is also proposed for multi-media, cross-scale applications to outline overview (from a distance) along and across repositories. This so called a cognitive panorama is a panoramic view over and a combination of cognitive spaces. For more see the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics.

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Paintings [edit]

The word was originally coined in the 18th century[1] by the Irish painter Robert Barker to describe his panoramic paintings of Edinburgh and London. Shown on a cylindrical surface and viewed from the inside, they were exhibited in London in 1792 as "The Panorama". The motion-picture term panning is derived from panorama.

In the mid-19th century, panoramic paintings and models became a very popular way to represent landscapes and historical events. Audiences of Europe in this period were thrilled by the aspect of illusion, immersed in a winding 360 degree panorama and given the impression of standing in a new environment. The Dutch marine painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag created and established the Panorama Mesdag of The Hague, Netherlands, in 1881, a cylindrical painting more than 14 metres high and roughly 40 meters in diameter (120 meters in circumference). In the same year of 1881, the Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne, Switzerland, which exhibits a circular painting, was created by Edouard Castres. The painting measures about 10 metres in height with a circumference of 112 meters.[2] Another example would be the Atlanta Cyclorama, depicting the Civil War Battle of Atlanta. It was first displayed in 1887, and is 42 feet high by 358 feet wide.[3] Even larger than these paintings is the Racławice Panorama located in Wrocław, Poland, which measures 120 × 15 metres.[4]

A panorama of London by Robert Barker, 1792

Photographs [edit]

Panoramic photography soon came to displace painting as the most common method for creating wide views. Not long after the introduction of the Daguerreotype in 1839, photographers began assembling multiple images of a view into a single wide image. In the late 19th century, panoramic cameras using curved film holders employed clockwork drives to scan a line image in an arc to create an image over almost 180 degrees. Digital photography of the late twentieth century greatly simplified this assembly process, which is now known as image stitching. Such stitched images may even be fashioned into forms of virtual reality movies, using technologies such as Apple Inc.'s QuickTime VR, Flash, Java, or even JavaScript. A rotating line camera such as the Panoscan allows the capture of high resolution panoramic images and eliminates the need for image stitching, but immersive "spherical" panorama movies (that incorporate a full 180° vertical viewing angle as well as 360° around) must be made by stitching multiple images. Stitching images together can be used to create extremely high resolution gigapixel panoramic images.

On rare occasions, 360° panoramic movies have been constructed for specially designed display spaces—typically at theme parks, world's fairs, and museums. Starting in 1955, Disney has created 360° theaters for its parks and the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, features a theatre that is a large cylindrical space with an arrangement of screens whose bottom is several metres above the floor. Panoramic systems that are less than 360° around also exist. For example, Cinerama used a curved screen and IMAX Dome / OMNIMAX movies are projected on a dome above the spectators.

One final form of panoramic representation is digital mapping generated from SRTM data. In these diagrams, a computer calculates the panorama from a given point.

Gallery [edit]

The gallery shows panoramas created at different dates, with the earliest precisely dated panorama here being 1875.[5] It also shows different methods of creating panoramas, the simplest, the Tblisi panorama being several photos glued together, and the later photos showing a range of sophisticated digital methods. The gallery also demonstrates the range of subjects, from townscapes to landscapes, to interiors.

View of Sydney, a French print of albumen silver photographs taken in 1875 by Holtermann and Bayliss
A panorama of Beirut by the Maison Bonfils, (1867-99).
A panorama of Tbilisi in 1900s created by sticking individual photos together.
A multi-row panorama of buildings in Vesoul, France, 2013
A multi-row panorama of San Francisco taken from Twin Peaks, 2009
Panorama of Mt Batur, Indonesia, 2002
A panoramic view of Venice, 2008
The Reading Room of the British Museum, panorama of 2x5 segments. Taken with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS lens
A cylindrical projection panorama from multiple images stitched together using PTgui.
360 degree panorama picture of the center courtyard of the Sony Center at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. This picture was calculated from 126 individual photos using autostitch

See also [edit]

References [edit]

External links [edit]

 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Panorama". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.