With the advent of digital photography, it is very easy to produce panoramic photographs, providing a far wider field of view than possible with most cameras.  To produce a panoramic photograph, use "stitching" software to go from these:

To this:

To this:

Click on the final panorama to see a larger version.

Panorama Gallery Some panorama examples.

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Tips

• When shooting the series of stills from which the panorama will be made, be sure there is sufficient overlap of subject matter.

• Don't use a wide-angle lens, or a zoom set so wide that it introduces curvature to straight lines.

• A tripod will produce the best, most even results, but careful hand-holding will work, too.  The examples on the Panorama page were all hand-held.

• Use a program like Photoshop to color match the individual stills.  Many stitching programs will attempt to color match, but you'll get better results in a full-featured editor that gives more control.

• Set the stitch points manually to areas in the photographs that give a good, strong "join point" for the program to find.

• There are lots of stitching programs around.  I like to use Panavue Image Assember, which is available at: www.panavue.com

What does this have to do with video?

Though I make panoramas just for fun, as with digital stills, panorams can be useful in travel videos.  Panorama stills provide an opportunity to add movement to a still sequence, and to allow post-production pans and zooms to an extent that isn't possible with video.

Here's a title sequence that was assembled by stitching together a series of panoramic stills of the earth to produce a rotating globe effect:

The clip was produced by taking several copies of the stitched clip and laying them end to end on the timeline in Premiere Pro.  A little gaussian blur was added.  The animated "Travelers" was produced in Ulead Cool 3D Edit.  The "write on" effect for "A Video Journal" was done with a gradient wipe mask, created in Photoshop and composited in Premiere Pro.  The moving globes were animated on the Premiere timeline with the Lens Flare filter applied.  The final sequence was composited in Premiere Pro.  The globes and panoramic still (and lots of other amazing full-resolution stills and video) are available from NASA at:

 www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/