Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. The term has also been applied to a photograph that is cropped to a relatively wide aspect ratio, like the familiar letterbox format in wide-screen video.
A panorama of Sydney featuring (from left) the Sydney Opera House, the central business district skyline, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge
An 1851 panoramic showing San Francisco from Rincon Hill by photographer Martin Behrmanx. It is believed that the panorama initially had eleven plates, but the original daguerreotypes no longer exist.
View from the top of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, Albumen prints, February, 1864, by George N. Barnard
Center City Philadelphia panorama, from 1913.
In photography and cinematography, a wide-angle lens is a lens covering a large angle of view. Conversely, its focal length is substantially smaller than that of a normal lens for a given film plane. This type of lens allows more of the scene to be included in the photograph, which is useful in architectural, interior, and landscape photography where the photographer may not be able to move farther from the scene to photograph it.
A Canon wide-angle 17-40 mm f/4 L retrofocus zoom lens
How focal length affects photograph composition. Three images depict the same two objects, kept in the same positions. By changing the focal length and adjusting the camera's distance from the pink bottle, this bottle remains the same size in the image, while the blue bottle's size appears to dramatically change. Also note that at small focal lengths, more of the scene is included.
