page_title: Panoramic photography
section_title: Digital stitching of segmented panoramas
hierarchical_section_title: Panoramic photography / Digital photography / Digital stitching of segmented panoramas
caption_attribution_description: Panorama of the courtyard of my old apartment complex after it had been raining. Equipment used was a Nikon Coolpix 5000, Kaidan pano head, and Manfrotto tripod. Image was stitched together using PTgui.
context_page_description: Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio, like the familiar letterbox format in wide-screen video.
  While there is no formal division between "wide-angle" and "panoramic" photography, "wide-angle" normally refers to a type of lens, but using this lens type does not necessarily make an image a panorama. An image made with an ultra wide-angle fisheye lens covering the normal film frame of 1:1.33 is not automatically considered to be a panorama. An image showing a field of view approximating, or greater than, that of the human eye – about 160° by 75° – may be termed panoramic. This generally means it has an aspect ratio of 2:1 or larger, the image being at least twice as wide as it is high. The resulting images take the form of a wide strip. Some panoramic images have aspect ratios of 4:1 and sometimes 10:1, covering fields of view of up to 360 degrees.
context_section_description: With digital photography, the most common method for producing panoramas is to take a series of pictures and stitch them together. There are two main types: the cylindrical panorama used primarily in stills photography and the spherical panorama used for virtual-reality images.
  Segmented panoramas, also called stitched panoramas, are made by joining multiple photographs with slightly overlapping fields of view to create a panoramic image. Stitching software is used to combine multiple images. Ideally, in order to correctly stitch images together without parallax error, the camera must be rotated about the center of its lens entrance pupil. Stitching software can correct some parallax errors and different programs seem to vary in their ability to correct parallax errors. In general specific panorama software seems better at this than some of the built in stitching in general photomanipulation software. Some digital cameras can do the stitching internally, either as a standard feature or by installing a smartphone app.
caption: Example of a segmented panorama. Taken with a Nikon Coolpix 5000 and stitched with PTgui.
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