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Take a photographer who loves to fly in choppers, add in a 360-degree camera, and fly over something huge and spectacular. Lean out the door with the camera, then bake in a high-speed processor for a few minutes. The result: breathtaking panoramas on your computer screen that you can control, looking up, down, and all around. Best with broadband and a QuickTime plug-in, but there are also low-res Java- based versions for those stuck with dial-up. From This is True for 18 June 2006 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Translated William Rodarmor List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $13.57 Editorial Review: In this full-color Designer's Notebook, eight expert French photographers reveal their secrets in using Photoshop and a collection of dedicated applications to create extraordinary panoramic photos--including some amazing 360-degree images. For anyone involved with digital imagery or animation, this groundbreaking volume demonstrates a new way of thinking about what's possible and what's required to produce these images. Originally published in France, Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook is available in English for the first time. Part art book, part how-to guide, this stunning work takes you right into the studio and sits you down next to renowned digital artists as they advance step-by-step toward their final images. The showcased pieces are inspiring and avant-garde, and the techniques are instructive for a wide range of amateur and professional photographers, graphic designers, and digital artists. The artists featured in this Designer's Notebook show how they use Photoshop, Stitcher, PanaVue ImageAssembler, and other specialized tools to create high-quality panoramas and wide-angle images from a series of photos. They also show how to create virtual reality scenes with Apple's QuickTime VR in conjunction with leading-edge technologies that support 360-degree one-shot photos, cubic images, and 3D views of objects. The results are interactive, often startling, and bear the hallmark of each artist's original vision and skill. Reflecting the very best of French photography, graphic design and digital artistry, Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook offers advanced Photoshop instruction that goes beyond opening this menu, or clicking that palette. You receive expert aesthetic guidance, from start to finish, with notes and views that reveal every step of the process. This book is a goldmine for any digital artist who wants to learn new Photoshop techniques and exploit them for maximum effect. At home on either your coffee table or desktop, the book itself is dazzling in concept and design. There's nothing else quite like this Designer's Notebook available in the U.S.  By: Lee Frost List Price: $29.99 Amazon Price: $19.79 Editorial Review: Bestselling author Lee Frost presents an all-encompassing, completely practical guide to creating great images in the increasingly popular panoramic format. Panoramic photography is more accessible and more popular now than ever before. The launch of affordable cameras has been partly responsible for this, putting a panoramic system within the reach of most enthusiast photographers. Digital technology has helped too--it is now relatively straightforward to shoot a sequence of images and stitch them together using computer software. Here Lee Frost leads readers through all the information they will need to create successful panoramic images--from choosing equipment and looking at different ways to produce panoramics, to applying filters, printing and displaying pictures, and much more. Particular attention is paid to approaching the composition of panoramics, and overcoming compositional difficulties. Frost also offers readers inspiration for more creative uses of panoramic photography, showing how it can be used not only for landscapes and architecture, but also action, portraits, reportage, and other subjects.  By: Arnaud Frich List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $19.77 Editorial Review: It has never been easier to make panoramas--both in terms of the new lightweight equipment and the spectacular quality of the final image output. New vistas concerning this unique way to see the world and express oneself abound in Panoramic Photography: From Composition and Exposure to Final Exhibition. Written by one of the world's pre-eminent panoramic photographers, the author, Arnaud Frich, provides diagrams to explain the technical details involved in various shots. Long on inspiration, you will find beautiful images by the author, as well as by Benoît Ancelot, François-Xavier Bouchart, Franck Charel, Macduff Everton, David J. Osborn, and many others. Camera equipment examples and a list of suppliers make this book a valuable resource for all panoramic photographers. Inside you will find all the information you need to create your perfect panorama! Only with Panoramic Photography can you: *Explore flatback and rotating panoramic cameras and learn how swing-lens and rotational cameras work *Observe how camera choice affects the image and final composition *Learn the joining (or "stitching") method for assembling photographs with the Realvis Stitcher and Panavue ImageAssembler *Archive and store original negatives and digital files, as well as distribute panoramic images over the Internet  By: Nick Wood List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $19.46 Editorial Review: Using a digital camera and digital imaging technology, photographer Nick Wood has developed a new way to photograph landscapes and cityscapes, placing the viewer in the center of dramatic 360 panoramas. Exploring New York and London with this equipment, he documents his favorite places. The resulting books are perfect souvenirs of great cities and intriguing photographic adventures. Each book visits famous landmarks as well as hip and popular spots off the beaten path in spectacular 360º photographs. Numerous visual details give a sense of closer involvement with a scene. The long, landscape format is suited to the style of the photographic images, and each volume has one amazing gatefold. Included with each book is a Mac- and PC-compatible CD-ROM with QuickTime movies of all the sites. 360º New York visits some of the city's major landmarks as well as favorite spots of New York insiders. Among the many scenes captured are the Empire State Building, Wall Street, Times Square, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Waldorf Astoria, as well as the Empire Diner, the Chelsea Hotel, a firehouse, a neighborhood bar, and even a salon for New York's most pampered dogs. The book is a virtual visit to the city in which the vibrant diversity and sense of bigness is clearly conveyed, particularly in a marvelous panoramic foldout of the skyline at twilight.  By: Robert B. MacKay List Price: $100.00 Amazon Price: $67.40 Editorial Review: An astonishing collection of early panoramic photographs, many up to 5 feet wide. This book is both a history of an unusual camera and a splendid display of its product. "Yard longs," as the Cirkut camera's huge panoramic photographs were called, caused a sensation after the camera's introduction in the early twentieth century. Cirkut cameras were used to record scenic vistas, epic events, and group photographs of conventioneers, workers, soldiers, and students. Here, with many foldouts that show the prints in their full glory, are such historic moments as the building of the Panama Canal, the sunken battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the crash of the dirigible Shenandoah, the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 1908 Wellesley graduating class, and a very early race at the Indianapolis Speedway. More mundane subjects—a bathing beauty contest, locomotive factory workers—are equally fascinating in this format. Collectively these panoramas form a remarkable portrait of America at the turn of the last century. 16" x 11", 80 photographs; 8 4-panel, 2 6-panel gatefolds. |
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