Forensic Photography: A Practitioner's Guide

10 Panoramic (Immersive or 360°) and Elevated imaging

10.1 Overview

As we have seen in previous chapters, we have photographed the scene in the same way for the past 100 years or so. That is to say: using a fixed camera point, aimed towards the area of interest. Although this produces a high quality result, it has a number of limitations. Not least of all is the fact that it is the photographer who is making the choice of what is in the image and what isn't. Clearly more than one image will be taken at the scene, but once captured we cannot go back and move to the left or right, or up and down. We can and do use video, but again the choice of viewing angle is limited to the photographer's experience.

In today's digital world we really want to be using technology to our advantage, indeed to some extent investigators and courts now expect this interactive approach. No longer are they happy with flat two-dimensional prints, they now want to make a virtual scene visit.

Within the limited confines of this book I cannot cover the principles of panoramic photography in any great depth, but a quick look on the Internet will provide ample supporting material for those of you who are interested. Originally, panoramic images, were created using single images panning across the scene. The individual images were then cut and pasted into a sequence; however, each would have a slightly different exposure or edge distortion issues making the joins look obvious. The alternative was to use a ...