As you can see from the galleries, the panorama has near-endless possibilities and the examples found there are but a mere fraction of those we have made.

Here are a number of common questions regarding panoramas ...

Q: "How many different panoramas are there ?"

A: There are 2 types of panorama: those for the internet and those which are printed as still images. Of the internet variety, there is the Full Spherical 360° and the Partial Panorama.

The Full Spherical 360° displays the whole sphere that surrounds us: 360° along the horizon, 90° up and 90° down.

The Partial Panorama stops short of displaying the upper and/or lower portions of the image. It's up to you as to how much of your display you want to show.

A Partial Panorama

A Full Spherical 360° Panorama

Q: "How can I incorporate panoramas within my website ?"

A: There are two ways: the full-screen or the embedded panorama.

The full-screen panorama display opens in a sepatate widow and weighs in at around 2Mb in file size.

The embedded panorama is integrated within a page and does not open in a separate window. The advantage of an embed is the smaller the file size, the less time it takes to load. A typical embedded panorama is around 500 x 300 pixels in size and weighs-in at approximately 500kb.

Q: "Can panoramas only be seen on the web ?"

A: No, panoramas are not only for the internet - they can be printed as photographs as a piece of artwork. A highly unusual and eye-catching application for the 2:1 ratio equirectangular or rectilinear image. These can be reproduced up to 2 meters in width, on photo paper or canvas.

Q: "How long does it take to make a panorama for the internet ?"

A: Well that depends on a) the subject matter b) what the end result will be.

A single view of a place of work, a building or a gallery could take only an hour to photograph. However, an aircraft cockpit or the interior of a car may well take anything up to half a day to complete.

After that, the images are colour-corrected, edited and stitched together. The single resulting panorama is then made into a Quicktime or Flash file. A simple panorama can be made and delivered to the customer on the same day but individual requirements can delay this.

Q: "How do you actually make a panorama ?"

A: Probably the most popular question.

To make a panorama we would start with a rock-solid tripod with a steel a ball-pivot head. Then we would mount a special panoramic head onto the pivot. Onto that we'd fix our camera, a Canon 5D a 12-megapixel full CMOS DSLR.

Once the camera and the 'pano-head' are levelled on the tripod, we would decide on the lens to use - it all comes down to location and subject matter. Say we were in an enclosed space, we'd probably use the 8mm and take 6 images around the horizontal circle and one image in the vertical. With more available space, we might go for the 15mm and take 16 images in the horizontal and one in the vertical.

All our images are taken in RAW format and converted into uncompressed TIFFs, each image weighing in at 36Mb. So, for a panorama using the 8mm lens, you have a total of 7 images weighing 252Mbs and 17 images weighing 648Mbs with the 15mm.

The images are then colour balanced and edited (if necessary) and passed through a dedicated stitching programme. The resulting single-shot panorama (approximately 96Mb) is then sent to the 'cubing' process, where it is electronically 'folded' into a cube. It is at this point where it becomes a QTVR (a Quicktime Virtual Reality file) or a Flash file.

If 'hotspots' are required (clickable on-screen links to another view within the same image), then the stitched panorama is sent to one of our partner programmers.

So, the more images that are taken and the more technical the end result, the longer the process takes to complete ...