Panoramic Imaging: Sensor-Line Cameras and Laser Range-Finders

Series Preface

My first introduction to panoramic imaging was my junior high school (in the 1950's) and senior high school class pictures. The class members, segregated by height, were lined up on four rows of bleacher seats that extend over 40 feet. We were asked to hold still for about 30 seconds as the “strange” camera did its “scan” of the bleacher bound class. Some students, of course, ran from one end of the formation to the other to get into the picture twice. The students in the center of the picture were in sharp focus and those at the ends looked a little out of focus and slightly distorted. None of this bothered me at the time for I knew just the rudimentary aspects of optics, cameras and film. I had no idea if the camera had a curve film plane to go with a rotating lens and slit or was just a large format camera with a wide-angle lens. As I became more interested in photography and purchased a good 35mm SLR, I would attempt to take panoramic images by using a good tripod, some form of level indicator and a variety of lenses. I, like so many other amateur photographers, would then try to piece the images together to form a useable print, never really satisfied with the results due to changes in exposure, color balance and translational (vertical) variations. All of this was before the “age of digital images” where one could scan negatives or prints into digital files and use some sort of software to align them properly, make the exposure and color balance uniform and ...