I purchased my first panoramic camera, an old Widelux F5, in 1991.  This camera records a panoramic image by panning it's lens 140 degrees, creating a negative 1 1/2 times wider than the typical 35mm image.  Traveling around the western U.S. with this camera, I began taking panoramas of many places.  Using traditional darkroom enlarging techniques to make the prints, I found myself frustrated by the desire to combine serveral images into large panoramas.  Mounting several photographs together worked somewhat but resulted in a seam running through the images.  Digital photographic manipulation was becoming more widespread and I began experimenting with Adobe Photoshop to combine images.  This process is the technique I still use for many of my images.  Recently, I've also begun creating "telephoto" panoramas by combining several images taken with a Pentax 67 II and several long focal length lenses.

FILM

    I started panoramic photography as a purely black and white medium.  This decision was caused by the expense of printing color in a panoramic format and my belief that black and white was the most artful type of photography.  Kodak  TMAX 100 was my film of choice because it had the finest grain structure possible. 

    As I started doing more digital work, I discovered the limitations of 16-bit imaging software, such as Photoshop, to reproduce all the tonalities of a fine black and white print.  Inkjet photo printers had made large color printing much more affordable, and I discovered how easy Photoshop made advanced color manipulation.   These reasons and my exposure to the work of photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore and others, opened my eyes to the opportunities of color.

   Eventually,  I started shooting more color film than black and white.  My experience with non-panoramic color work had convinced me that reversal film was the best for color reproduction.  I started using Fuji Velvia film for panoramas, but discovered that I was having trouble, with the limited exposure range a reversal stock offered, capturing the wide range of tonalities a panorama contained.  I began using color negative films exclusively.  Recently, my favorite film is Fuji NPH 400.  This stock had beautiful color reproduction, a wide contrast range and an amazing pastel-like feel when printed.

    Using 400 ASA film for my 120 work, has given me the ability to work at a deeper stop for added clarity and in lower light conditions.  The use of a large 120 negative offsets the problem of larger grain in a faster stock.  I expose for the best overall stop, keeping highlights and areas around the sun from burning out.  A fine scanner allows me to capture the large dynamic range from the negative image and extensive burning and dodging is almost always necessary.

RESOLUTION

    Image clarity as always been an important quality that I have tried to maintain.  With the 35mm Widelux, the negative produced is as wide as the typical 120mm image, so image quality was excellent from the beginning.  However, I found that the image was not quite a sharp as I liked, when enlarged to a moderate sized print.  Since I composed most of my photographs for large reproductions, I purchased a Noblex 120mm camera.  The 50mm Tessar lens of this camera is very sharp and the negative image produced is as wide as a 4x5 sheet film negative. 

    Although I have always originated my work on film, most of my manipulation is done digitally.  Scanning from the original negative is one of the most important steps in this process, and I purchased an Imacon Flextight Photo scanner for this purpose.  This scanner is one of the finest negative scanners available to the consumer.  I scan all my negatives at 3200 dpi, the finest resolution the scanner can perform and the level at which film grain becomes visible.  I prefer to start with the highest quality image manageable and scale down my work for printing.  Below is an example of the resolution of the scanner.

   Since Photoshop has a built in size limit of 30,000 pixels in width and height, I often have to reduce wide panoramas (270 degrees or more) to this number.  The file size is usually around 350 meg of uncompressed TIFF format, a drain on computer resources.  Still, the 30,000 pixel image can produce a 300 dpi print (very sharp for printing purposes) that is slightly over 8 feet wide if desired.  Obviously retouching a image file this size is time consuming, but because you are working digitally, it only has to be done once!

PRINTING

   An Epson 2200 Photo is the printer I use for most of my final prints.  An amazing device, the Epson prints at 2880 ppi and uses archival inks that are fadeproof for seventy years, longer than almost all other color photographic print processes.  Since the Epson can print an image up to 13" x 44", it is excellent tool for panoramic image work.  Before printing, I scale all my images down to 300 pixels per inch at the width I'm printing, usually 42" wide,  to make the file size more manageable. 

CONCLUSION

  Panoramic photography has been around since the earliest days of the medium.  I first became interested in the format because I felt that it presented a different way of seeing the surfaces of the world.  No other camera system can photograph both the sun and land that is being directly illuminated by it.  We're physically unable to see in several directons at once, but when viewing a panoramic print, you can.  Thus, you find your eyes wandering through a panoramic image much as they would at any place where you stop and take in a view.