Go and check it at https://thepanoawards.com/2016-winners-gallery/ to appreciate it all. And, maybe, you’ll get some inspiration for your own future shots…

The EPIC costs $349, the EPIC 100 $449 and the EPIC Pro $895. All three should start shipping in April 2010.

With these, you will be ready to do great panoramas. If you want to get some inspiration, I suggest you jump to this panorama of Paris, France: 26 billion pixels.

Nota bene: I love this image image because I live in Paris, but I have to admit that when you zoom deeply into it, you will see that the photo should have been a little more crispy and detailed. And be sure to cut to loud speaker before jumping to www.paris-26-gigapixels.com.

If you want to have fun, you could look for the two clocks showing a different time and the old guy in front of his window.

Thanks to Pierre.ch and Mash.

When you are in a plane of a light plane flying near a mountain range, it is quite tempting to shoot a few landscape photos; But the conditions will stay very difficult for the photographer. There are many traps and the results may loose a lot of quality compared to what you expected.

For example, problems could be:

1. The presence of visible obstacles
2. The atmospheric turbulence
3. The atmospheric veil
4. The vibrations of the plane
5. The optical limitations of the cabin window

First, you must be seated near a window (and on the right side) and you must avoid the presence of the wing and/or an engine which could reduce the view. Choose your seat wisely at check-in time or politely negotiate with the passenger better seated.

The engines of the plane produce a lot of air turbulence that is very perceptible just behind them. Seat sufficiently in front (unfortunately, the more expensive seat are often in the front of the plane).

Air moisture and dust are less problematic at high altitude than at ground level, but you will probably shoot your landscapes from very far. Only when the sky is very clear can you try a flight. Then you would limit the atmospheric veil to its minimum. It’s even better to fly early in the morning (the light is nicer and the air moisture is still mostly on the ground). Chance must fly with you (or you will have to compensate with perseverance).

Then, a plane shakes a lot. Even more when it’s a small plane. Not as much as a helicopter, but it is definitely not stable! So, choose a fast shutter speed. Worse: Those vibration frequencies are not well compensated by the image stabilizer of your camera or lens; They are targeting the smoother moves of the photographer. For an 80mm lens, I would advise faster than 1/200 s; For a 35mm, faster than 1/100 s. You may have to crank your ISO up a little for that.

But the biggest interference will probably be the window itself. Nothing much you can do: It is not a neutral photo filter. It will darken irregularly the image. It is not really compatible with polarizing filters (color shift and forced shading in the sky part of the image). It usually has a lot of scratches and stains (those inside may be cleaned, but going outside is tougher…)

In the end, shoot! Don’t hesitate to shoot twice, think about building panoramas (shoot according to the advice for good panoramic photos at Roumazeilles.net, and assemble them with PhotoMerge in Photoshop or with AutoPano Pro).

The photos illustrating this article are Copyright (c) 2009 – Yves Roumazeilles (all rights reserved)
Click on the thumbnails to see the larger photo.

Closr solves this conundrum by providing you a way to upload your image to their web site. In return, you get a ready-to-install widget for your web site and all your friends will be able to zoom in or zoom out their hearts out.

Test the service with this panorama image I shot in the Masai Mara National Park in Southern Kenya in October 2008. You will have no difficulty finding the gnus (wildebeests) assembling themselves in a huge collection in preparation of the Great Migration crossing of the Mara river.

By the way: The Closr web site does not currently work with Opera v10, but Firefox is OK.

You cautiously shoot a few pictures (see my advice in the side box) and here you are, ready to stitch them with a computer and some software. Let’s admit that it tends to eat up hours of pure computer calculation, but who are we to complain while our analog photos took days to come back from the photolab at the mall.

Please note that if you are not armed with special equipment, you don’t need to go very far: A tripod with a ball head allowing a smooth rotation around the optical center of the camera+lens system. As this is not so easy to find (and it may be expensive), I want to tell you about a tutorial on How to Build a Panoramic Tripod Head for $10. You’ll get the perfect head made mostly of wood. But if your subject is not near the camera (as in my example below), any tripod with a ball head will be enough.

Then, what tool should you use to stitch the images? Most naturally, I would advice to start your prefered Photoshop. Be it CS3 or CS4, the Adobe software does panoramas very easily. But there are plenty of other offers on the market.

I used Photoshop CS3 for the example panorama below taken out of 11 images shot on tripod in a safari during a mid-day stop in front of Rhino Ridge in the heart of Masai Mara National Park in Kenya. I reduced drastically the size of the image (you would probably not want to observe all the details of wildebeests/gnus appearing on the horizon in a 28790*2561-pixel image weighing more than 21 MB):

But there are many other possibilities. As a matter of fact, I wanted to point at a few of them which apepared of specific interest to me.

Under Windows, I was regularly advised to try Panorama studio and Panorama Maker 4. They seem totally able to solve the stitching problem even for simple users.

Then, for Linux lovers (Yes! Some photographers share their love between cameras and Linux machines): Autopano and Hugin are the tools of the trade (in association with TheGimp). They are not perfectly easy to use, so I advise you to check the s1axter‘s guide to Linux panoramas. It even explains how to avoid a Hugin installation bug by manually adding Enblend, then describes the preparation with Autopano and the panorama stitching with Hugin.

But if you are still on Windows, I want to volunteer an idea around a curious little tool, WPanorama, which offers nice features starting with an egine to display your panoramas in a show. Event better, you can make it a video movie (a .AVI file) or a screen saver (unfortunately, it won’t detect the presence of a second or third display if you have them). Really a fun way to eplxoit your panoramas.

So, what’s holding you? Go and shoot some panoramas!