• Flat: A very wide view of some subject. Shot by panning the camera back and forth in a single or multiple rows. It’s the same as if you stood still and looked left and right (i.e., up and down the street).
• Cylindrical: A full 360° view of a subject that is shot by panning the camera in a full 360° circle but without tilting from the horizontal axis. It’s like sitting in a swivel chair and spinning it slowly without tilting your head up or down.
• Spherical: A full 360° x 180° view of a subject. Shot by panning the camera in a full 360° circle and tilting it up and down to get full coverage. It’s like standing in the middle of something and turning around on your heels while you tilt your head up and down. You can look in every direction and it’s as close to being there as you can get without actually going there (or being in a starship’s holodeck). This is what panoramic photography is all about and it’s akin to viewing a picture from inside of the picture. It’s truly virtual reality.

Cameras: Basically anything that can capture light will work but you’ll find it much easier if you use a digital SLR because every shot you take is free and you have relatively instant feedback about the quality of the image. You should always shoot in RAW format because it’s everything that was captured by the chip vs. the lossy JPG format you’re probably familiar with. Shooting in RAW requires more work in post-production but the effort is well worth it and it will allow you to get much much more out of every image. Don’t fall into the trap of “I used to shoot Canon/Nikon and I want to use my old lenses.” Even though those lenses will probably fit your DSLR they were engineered for film and not for the demands of digital sensors (it’s different lens technology). Do your research on the body (basically the sensor) and buy that, then worry about what lenses to put on it. For my money Canon has won the sensor war (because they control the manufacturing chain from the sensor to the final shipped camera system and Nikon doesn’t).

Lenses: The easiest way to capture images for spherical panoramas is with a fisheye lens. They come in 2 types, full-frame and circular. A full-frame fisheye lens is, in essence, a very wide-angle lens with moderate distortion around the edges. A circular fisheye lens has radical distortion across the frame (they’re fun to use for all sorts of photography) but that distortion (in both lenses) will be corrected in the final panorama. Using a circular fisheye allows you to capture the entire sphere in 4 shots plus a zenith and nadir shot (the zenith is the point directly above you and the nadir is the point directly below you) while a full-frame fisheye requires more images to capture the entire sphere (this generally necessitates 2 rows of images plus the zenith and nadir shots). The trade-off is it takes more time and effort to capture the full sphere but the final resolution goes way up. You can also use a normal (rectilinear lens) but this will require substantially more shots (with a resulting higher resolution). 2 inexpensive lenses are the Peleng 8mm circular fisheye and the Zenitar 16mm full-frame fisheye (this is a fantastic lens equal to the Canon 15mm fisheye at a fraction of the cost). They’re both manufactured in Russia and are available virtually world-wide through several outlets. They are both manual lenses which will require you to set both the focus and stop on the lens but when you’re shooting panoramas you’ll always be shooting in manual mode so these lenses aren’t the handicap they might seem initially. An excellent circular fisheye is the new Sigma 8mm f3.5 (not the older f4 model). It is far superior to the Peleng and more expensive but while the Peleng is a flare magnet (it is especially prone to lens flare indoors with overhead lights) while the Sigma totally ignores them and it’s actually hard to get it to flare. The extra money spent now will be well worth it later when you’re not wasting time trying to get rid of the flares the Peleng gives you.

Heads: Because of the particular nature of panoramic photography you’ll need a specialized panoramic head that allows the NPP (no parallax point) of the lens to be the center of rotation (vs. the bottom of the camera on a normal head) as you pan and tilt the camera. You can either reinvent the wheel or spring for one that’s already engineered. I highly recommend the Nodal Ninja 3 MKII and now it’s big brother the Nodal Ninja 5 (it’s for full-frame bodies and/or long lenses and gives you room to grow in future when you buy new gear) panoramic heads. They’re inexpensive, well engineered, well built, lightweight, rugged and simple to use. It’s money well spent.

Camera support: A tripod is best (especially when you’re first starting out) but you can also use a monopod (to allow you to walk into areas where the weight of a tripod may be prohibitive or that might not allow tripod usage, e.g., museums, events, etc.). Get a good lightweight tripod (it doesn’t have to be carbon fiber, they’re pretty expensive, but it does need to be lightweight when you’re carrying it over hill and dale to shoot that killer sunset panorama you’ve always wanted and you can’t use your monopod because it’ll be a long exposure) without a head (you won’t need it for panoramic photography) that has a 3/8" x 16 stud on it (some heads allow you to use either a 3/8" x 16 or a 1/4" x 20 stud but check first before you buy anything) You can shoot with a Philopod (invented by Philippe Hurbain). Basically it’s a piece of string tied (or rubber banded) around the lens (close to the nodal point) with a weight on the other end. It sounds nutty but they’re very handy after you have experience in shooting panoramas. They weigh virtually nothing and take up zero space (keep one in a baggie in your camera bag) so you can take/use them virtually anywhere (especially when there are pesky guards around who are trying to look good to management). Finally, when you’re very experienced at shooting panoramas you can shoot completely handheld. It has its advantages in both weight and space savings but is limited to the height you can hold your hands and how carefully you’re able to shoot (generally you should shoot with a circular fisheye and shoot 6 shots around vs. the normal 4 shots around, plus the zenith and nadir). Stitching is obviously much harder when you shoot handheld but if that’s all you can do to get the shot, get the shot and worry about stitching it later. Something else to consider is shooting on a tall monopod or a pole held horizontally (e.g., out a window, over a bridge railing, etc.). This is an inexpensive pano pole project you can easily build anywhere on the planet except Antarctica (because there’s no Home Depot or Lowe’s there). You can have one at home and build one on location if you go on vacation and fly to get there (the pole is too long to take on the plane without paying an arm and a leg, so make one when you get there, it’s easy and will allow you to get those spectacular shots you’ve seen before).

Software:

• A layers-capable image editor (Photoshop is the obvious choice but there are others like GIMP).
• PTGui is a front-end for Helmut Dersch’s fantastic Panoramatools image stitching software. Panoramatools is something that rocket scientists shy away from because of it’s difficulty of use but front-ends like PTGui make it easy to use in either an automated or fully manual mode (which allows you great control of the program). PTGui comes in both Windows and Mac flavors. I can’t recommend this program highly enough. It’s flat-out fantastic. Period.
• Pano2QTVR is a Windows program that converts the flat equirectangular image PTGui produces into a spherical panorama in Quicktime format. It’s a very easy to use, powerful and sophisticated program. There is a free version for non-commercial use and a full-blown commercial version that allows you to add a host of features to your panoramas, output in both Quicktime and Flash formats and create object movies (where you move the object around with your mouse). Mac users can use CubicConverter to convert to Quicktime and add things like hotspots, etc.
• Pano2VR is the next generation of the Pano2QTVR utility except now it runs on all 3 platforms (i.e., Widows, Mac, and Linux) vs. only in Windows like Pano2QTVR. It’s cutting edge programming that is easy to use and creates excellent panoramas in both Quicktime and Flash formats. IMHO Pano2VR’s Flash output is vastly superior to Flash Panorama Player’s Flash output. It’s crisp and clean with no shimmering image when the panorama is rotated and it has no jagged edges. Another plus is it doesn’t force you to learn the cobbled together XML (it doesn’t follow XML standards) programming language of Flash Panorama Player.
• Presentation software/plug-ins: Besides the normal Quicktime format there are a variety of browser plug-ins that have increased functionality for the photographer and for the user experience as well. The best of the bunch are DevalVR for Windows and Pangea for Mac OS X. Flash is currently the main contender for dominance (it will win in the end) because of its very large installed base and the ability to work with it interactively (i.e., maps and/or hot-spots that link to other panoramas or things on the Web). Apple in their total lack of brilliance made changes in the v 7.3.1 release of Quicktime that prevents it from working interactively with Flash or other Quicktime panoramas (spelling its doom in the interactive Panorama world).

Further resources:

• PanoToolsNG Yahoo group If you really want to get into spherical panoramic photography you should join the group. It’s free and most of the best minds in the panorama universe hang out there. This is a closed list (requiring admin approval) but once you’re approved you’ll be a part of an extremely vibrant panorama community. This is THE place to be if you’re into panoramas. Seriously.
• PanoToolsNG Wiki is the collected knowledgebase of the PanoToolsNG Yahoo group with new articles being added several times a week. It is a wealth of information you will use often.
• WWP (World Wide Panorama) is an informal group of panorama photographers from across the planet that come together 4 times each year to participate in a non-judged “event” where each photographer interprets the theme of that event in any way he/she sees fit, then they’re presented for everyone on the planet’s enjoyment. There is no cost to join the group or participate in any of the events. It and they are done strictly for the pure enjoyment of panoramic photography on a world-wide basis. Events are held on both equinoxes and the summer solstice. The 4th event is held at the end of December and is “The Best Of (that year)” where everyone submits what they felt was the best panorama they shot during that calendar year.
• WWP Yahoo group gives people a place to discuss the WWP and anything about any event and/or panorama (although panorama techniques are best discussed on the PanoToolsNG list). It’s the contact point between the WWP and the event participants.
• IVRPA (the International Virtual Reality Photography Association) is a professional VR association but don’t be put off by the title, everyone is welcome and they’re a great resource for further information and/or professional contacts.
• NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) is the place for Photoshop information on the planet.