I have been experimenting with panoramic photography for the last few weeks and I wanted to share some of the things I have learned and offer some tips for anyone wanting to learn how to take panoramic photos. This isn’t a comprehensive panorama tutorial, but it should cover the basics and point you in the direction of panoramic websites where you can learn more.

Panoramic photography can be breathtaking. Even really wide angle lenses can’t come close to showing the range of view that you can get with a true panorama. The shot at the top of this page shows a 360 degree panoramic shot. Another method is to take a 360 degree shot by 180 degrees that results in a complete view of your surroundings. Once you have a 360×180 image there are some really interesting things you can do with them. For example, the shot to the right demonstrates a stereographic projection that is created from a panorama. Anther applications for a panorama include Quicktime VR’s which allow you to scroll up, down, and around the image as if you were standing in that spot. So how do you create panoramic photos?

Step 1: Taking the Photos

The first thing you need to know about panoramic photography is that it usually involves taking multiple photos and “stitching” them together into a single shot. While there are expensive cameras with swinging lenses, most panorama photos are made with ordinary cameras. You take lots of photos until you have taken a photo of your complete surroundings. Rather than just going crazy shooting photos in every direction it is a good idea to use a system that will make it easy to assemble the photos later.

In order to improve your chances of having images that will work optimally for stitching together you should definitely consider purchasing a high quality tripod. It is possible to hand hold your camera, but this really increases your chances of having images that don’t stitch together nicely. A normal tripod should work well for single row 360 degree shots. If you are taking multiple row, 360×180 shots you should consider purchasing a panoramic head.

A panoramic tripod head will allow you to move your camera in specific increments until you have completed the full 360. Each photo you take should overlap the shot you took previously. The overlap is important because this redundant data is what the software will use to stitch the photos together later. With my Panasonic Lumix LX3 (which has a pretty wide lens) I can capture a 360×180 degree image by taking 38 photos. That translates into 3 rows of 12 images and a photo for the ground and another photo of the sky straight above. I use the markings on my tripod to know how to turn the camera 30 degrees.

A panoramic tripod head can be an expensive investment. The Nodal Ninja tripod heads get great praise, but they are cost hundreds of dollars. A cheaper option is the Panosaurus that costs about $80. If you are the do-it-yourself type like me, you can build your own. I had some old tripod parts lying around so I decided to build my own panoramic tripod head.

The photo below shows my DIY panoramic tripod head.

This looks intimidating, but once you understand how a panoramic head works it isn’t that bad. The purpose of the head is to position your camera so that the “nodal point” of the camera stays in the same place no matter which direction the camera is pointing. What is a nodal point you ask? You can read the technical definition on wikipedia, but in general terms, this is the point of the camera lens that your camera will rotate around to produce images that aren’t distorted. If you simply rotate a normal tripod the nodal point will be different for each shot causing distortion. You can find the nodal point of your lens following the tutorial here. Don’t obsess over this, because as long as you are close you should be in good shape. Most likely, the nodal point of your camera is towards the front of the lens. There is a good thread on Flickr where you can see a bunch of DIY panoramic tripod heads that should give you some inspiration.

Step 2: Stitching the Photos Together

Once you have the photos taken it is time to create the panorama. Stitching multiple photos together presents some challenges. First of all you need some software. I use Hugin because it is free and has some advanced features. I haven’t used any of the other panorama photo stitcher software options out there, but search the internet and you should be able to see some of the other options out there.

Before you commit to learning Hugin, I should warn you that it wasn’t very easy to get it working for me. I am on a Mac running Snow Leopard and it took some work getting it installed and running. I ended up using MacPorts to help install the autopano-sift-c software required to run Hugin.

Once I had Hugin installed, learning Hugin presented its own challenges. I am the kind of person that jumps right into software without much training, so if you follow some tutorials online you might pick it up quicker than I did. Check out the Hugin Flickr group for additional info.

I hope this post was enough to get you interested in panoramic photography. There are plenty of great resources online if you are looking for more information. My advice would be to join Flickr and plug in to the many groups and passionate users creating panoramic images. There are lots of tutorials on Flickr and most people are more than willing to help out other photographers. Good luck!

Also worth noting is a pinhole Lego Camera Spotted on Flickr.

That’s about all going on around here. I recently purchased a dry mount press on Craigslist and am going to start framing some prints one of these days.

Photographers on Twitter from Photocritic.org
Photocritic has a great list of photographers on Twitter that is constantly being updated. If you are a photographer on Twitter you can follow @twittogs to get your name added to the list. Right now they have 406 photo twitterers and counting.

80+ Photographers On Twitter
Virtual Photography Studio has a good list of 80 photographers on Twitter that you should be following.

17 Great Photographers on Twitter
Darkwegmo.com has a list of 17 photographers on Twitter that have very high quality photos.

Flickr Photographers on Twitter
Flickr has a group called “The Twittering Photographers Society” that is dedicated just to Flickr photographers on Twitter.

Wedding Photographers on Twitter
This isn’t actually a list of photographers on Twitter but rather a list of 40 Twitter resources for wedding photographers.

20 Photographers to follow on Twitter
The Photog Formula has a list of 20 more photographer’s on Twitter.

I hope you enjoyed these links to lists of photographers who twitter. If you come accross another good list of twitter photographers let me know and I will add it to the list. And don’t forget to follow me (ade3) while you are adding photo followers.

Oh, one more thing. If you happen to be a photographer and a web designer like me, you might be interested in my list of web designers on Twitter. Cheers!

You will need: 1. An exposed roll of film (one that you won’t be devastated about losing if it doesn’t turn out) 2. 5 teaspoons of instant coffee (caffeinated) 3. One quarter teaspoon of vitamin C (you can crush tablets of vitamin C) 4. 3 teaspoons of washing soda (you might have to search your local grocery stores for this or buy it online) 5. Water 6. Fixer (I used print fixer since I don’t have film fixer) 7. Processing tank, 3 glasses, a spoon, and a couple measuring cups 8. Thermometer (I didn’t use one, but if you want to be precise you need one) 9. A stopwatch 10. Bottle opener (if you need help opening a 35mm film canister) 12. Scissors

Step 1: Load Film in Processing Tank In a dark room, take the film out of the canister and load it onto your spool and stick it in the processing tank. Close the lid and set aside.

Step 2: Prepare the Caffenol Developer Mix 6 teaspoons of coffee crystals with 125ml of water. Mix 3 teaspoons of washing soda with with 125ml of water. Mix 1/4 teaspoon of crushed vitamin C powder with 100ml of water. Combine the coffee water, washing soda water, and vitamin C water together. The measurements above aren’t critical as long as you end up with 350ml of water (12 ounces). Mixing them separately helps to make sure it all gets dissolved. Honestly, it is tough to get it all perfectly dissolved. Don’t worry about it too much, because this is meant to be an imperfect process. If we wanted perfection we probably wouldn’t be doing this ourselves anyway, right?

Once you have everything mixed together, let it sit to to get rid of bubbles. (Again don’t stress too much about bubbles.)

Step 3: Developer Add the chemicals to your film processing tank. Turn the tank over repeatedly for the first minute and continue to agitage it every three minutes after that. This step is 20 minute.

Step 4: Rinse Pour out the coffee developer and add 350ml of room temperature water (68 degrees). Agitate it 5 or six times and dump it out. Add more water, agaitage. Dump it out. Do this one more time (3 times total).

Step 5: Fixer Add 350ml of fixer. Agitate it for 5 minutes. You can save the fixer and reuse it many times.

Step 6: Rinse Rinsing is the final step and the better you do at rinsing, the more archival your film will be. I rinse it with water three times with lots of agitation and then do a final rinse with distilled water with a couple drops of liquid soap. The soap helps cut down on water marks when the film dries.

Once you are finished rinsing, take the film out, hang it up, and let it dry thoroughly. With any luck you should have negatives that are ready for printing or scanning.

(Note: if you are developing 120 film, like I usually do, you can make a double batch. 350ml is not enough to cover the larger 120 film.)

I hope this tutorial on how to process film with coffee was helpful. If you have any additional tips, please add them to the comments.

As I continue to explore solargraphy, I wanted to show you my latest experiment. After about two months sitting in front of my house, I finally couldn’t wait any longer to see if my extra long exposure would turn out. The photo above is a solargraph taken with a pinhole camera using photo paper as the “negative.” The streaks in the sky are the sun as it passes through the air. If you missed my first post explaining what a solargraph is, you can read it here.

If you would like to see a bigger version of this photo you can see it on Flickr by clicking here.

There are plenty of articles online praising the technical prowess of this camera praising it as a point-and-shoot that can compete with an SLR. The only other camera that might give the LX a run for its money is the Canon G10. So rather than rehash the technical specs of the Panasonic Lumix LX3 I thought I would throw out some ideas that might get you thinking how to “hack” this camera to create non-traditional digital photos. If you have some ideas of your own, please add them in the comments.

1. Long Exposures Switch the Panasonic Lumix LX3 over to manual mode and you can control the shutter speed. Try it at night, or in situations where a long exposure can give you unexpected results.

2. Multiple Exposures The Panasonic Lumix LX3 allows you to create multiple exposures in camera. You have to scroll through some menus to get to this setting, but it can give you some really fun and interesting results.

3. Street photography The LX3 is small and quiet so it is a great camera for street photography. Some times I like to “shoot from the hip” and take photos by just pointing the camera in someone’s general direction and snapping a shot. Every once in a while this technique can create some real gems.

4. Manual Focus You paid good money for the fancy focusing technology of the Panasonic Lumix LX3, but why not turn it off? The manual focus of this camera is another way to get back to basics with your camera. Or add some creative blur to your shots.

5. Macro It’s amazing how much things change when you get really close to them. The macro ability of the Panasonic LX3 is pretty impressive and opens a whole new world of possibilities.

6. Black and white I find that unless color really adds something to a photo, I typically prefer the image in black and white. Why not save yourself the trouble of converting to black and white in Photoshop later and shoot in black and white mode. Another advantage of shooting in b&w is that it puts you in a different mind set. I feel like I am looking at the world differently when I have black and white film in my camera.

I hope you found these ideas inspiring. As always, follow me on Flickr if you are curious about what my latest work.

For my test I used color slide film and it worked just fine. The pictures were taken with my trusty medium format Lego camera. I wasn’t sure what I would get, but the results were black and white negatives (as opposed to color positives). Interesting. Here is a photo from the roll:

Click here to view my solargraph experiments on Flickr.

There is amazingly little information online about solargraphy or how to make a solargraph. Trial and error being the best teacher I decided to do some experiments and teach myself how to create these images. The following is my attempt to document my experiments and hopefully give you some details that will help if you want to tackle the world of the solargraph.

So what is a solargraph? A solargraph is a photograph that was made by making an exposure long enough to track the movement of the son in the sky. Exposure time can be anywhere from a couple hours to six months.

How do you make a solargraph? A solargraph is typically made using black and white photo paper instead of traditional film. The reason for using photo paper is that it is less sensitive than film. Photo paper is 20-200 times less sensitive than film. This allows the paper to survive unthinkably long exposure times without getting over exposed.

What kind of a camera do you use? Solargraphs are typically made with a pinhole camera because the extremely small aperture (the hole that lets light in). However, I have had success making solargraphs using lens cameras. Simply load the camera with photo paper where the film usually goes. Then rig your camera so that the aperture can stay open indefinitely. Since a typical camera lets more light in than a pinhole camera your exposure time will be significantly shorter. By using a lens you can make a half-day to week long exposure. A pinhole camera is ideal for longer exposures of a week to several months.

How do you process the photo paper? Unlike a print made in a darkroom, the photo paper you use to make a solargraph is never ran through photo chemicals. This may come as a surprise to anyone with darkroom experience. Because the exposure time is so long the image actually appears on the paper without processing! If you were to run the paper through developer it would turn instantly black.

How do you preserve the image if you can’t use chemicals? After the photo has been taken you need to immediately scan the paper. Scanning itself will damage the paper because it is till light sensitive. You get one good scan before the paper starts getting dark and destroying your image. I have not come up with a reliable way to preserve the photo paper. Fixer seems to destroy the image, although not completely. If someone has a solution to this dilemma please share it.

Does a solargraph result in a black and white or color image? This is perhaps the most amazing thing about solargraphy. The image is made using black and white photo paper. The image that is created is in color! I can’t really explain how this happens, but it does. I suppose that since the paper is never ran through the the typical chemicals it is able to preserve some color.

I will try to update this page as I learn more about how to make solargraphs. If you know of resources or can correct any of my mistakes please let me know.

You might remember that I had a copy of Tom Ang’s Fundamentals of Photography to give away. Thank you to everyone who left a comment and entered there name in the drawing. My son pulled the winning name out of a hat and the lucky winner is Amod Rahatkar. Congratulations Amod!

After setting up my Eye-Fi card I have literally never had to plug my camera into my computer again. Just by turning my camera on the card will detect my wireless network and start transferring photos. I don’t have to carry cords around with me. I have it set to send photos to my Flickr account as well as iPhoto. You can set it up do that the photos are private when they go to Flickr which is nice so people never have to see your junk shots. Then you can go back into Flickr and name, tag, and organize your photos before making them “live.”

More than likely, the next round of digital cameras will all have wireless capabilities built it. If I had to make a guess I suspect wireless will probably be the next “buzz” feature for consumer cameras. With the Eye-Fi card you can turn your camera into a wireless machine instantly. Visit the Eye-Fi website to learn more.