Most recent digital cameras and smartphones have a ‘panorama capture’ or similar feature, where the photographer pans the camera slowly (usually with hints from the camera about speed, etc.). When the panorama capture is finished, the software in the camera ‘stitches’ the images it has captured into a single wider-than-usual panorama image.
The result is a ‘single-row’ panorama, created from a series of images from a series that are all taken with the camera at the same pitch angle (usually close to horizontal).
Please see the imaging page for other panorama types.
Taking a single-row panorama
However, better panoramas can be captured manually with any camera (including analogue film cameras, although these require more precision and attention to detail than using digital cameras). With digital cameras, hand-held sequences often work well (a tripod can help, especially in low light, but is not required).
To do this (assuming using a digital camera, and a subject that is some distance from the camera):
- Set and lock the exposure (aperture, shutter timing, and ISO) and focus of the main point of interest of the scene to be captured.
- Take a ‘marker’ picture of (say) the ground or a hand to mark the start of the panorama sequence.
- Starting at one end of the panorama to be captured (I start at the left) take the first picture with the left-most feature that is to be included in the middle of the frame.
- Then pan towards the other end taking as many photographs as necessary
with a 30% overlap between images, ending with at least 30% more
included in the final image than the right-most feature of interest.
Note: keep the camera is the same place and rotate around it (instead of rotating the camera around the photographer).
- It’s often helpful to take a second ‘end marker’ picture at this point.
When done, the images taken can be stitched together using software such as PTGui, MS ICE, Hugin, etc., and then cropped and edited as desired.
Examples
Here are some that were created some time ago using early small compact digital cameras. Click on any of the thumbnail images to view the full size image (zoom in to see detail). More can be found from the Gallery home page.
 Playa La Ballota, Asturias (JPEG 2008) |  Las Vegas, Nevada – The Strip-at night (JPEG 2008) |
 Near Fuente Dé, Picos de Europa (JPEG 2003) | |
Legend:
| JPEG | Single layer image (.jpg). |
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This page was last edited on 2025-02-21 by mfc.