Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

Chapter 8. Studio 08: Venice: The Orseolo Basin

Gilles Vidal

This photograph is part of a group of about one hundred panoram as of Venice I created in February 2004. It wasn't an assignment, but a personal project. My goal was to bring out the beauty, value, and richness of the special qualities of "La Serenissima," and to share my passion for this city with you!

Hardware used

• Canon EOS 300D digital camera

• Canon EF 17–40mm ultra wide zoom lens

• Manfrotto 055Pro tripod

• Agno's QuicklyQTcubic panoramic head

• Sony Vaio PC with 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1.25 GB RAM

• LG 17-in. LCD panel

Software used

• Stitcher 4

• Photoshop CS

• QuickTime 6.5

I wanted this photograph to show a slice of life, the sort of thing you might see when strolling Venice's side streets. So I tried hard to faithfully capture the scene, limiting the montage's aberrations as much as I could. To create this 360° × 180° spherical panorama, I used RealViz's Stitcher 4, and did the post-production work in Photoshop CS.

The panorama was published on the Internet in a visualization window embedded in an HTML page using a QuickTime 6.5 player. It was also distributed on CD-ROM, again using QuickTime, but in a much more detailed version.

Montage

Retouching

Final image

The believability of a panoramic montage hinges

on its smallest detail.