It’s a bummer panoramas can’t be properly appreciated on most of our screen, especially if you are reading this on a phone. But I still love taking them and working with them in the computer. Something about getting more out of the camera than its original format allows.
I remember having a mask for my old Minolta film camera that would simulate a panorama. I had to have it in for a full roll of film because it went in front of the film and blocked the top and bottom areas. It wasn’t quite the same as some of the fancy panorama cameras in the 70s, 80s and 90s that used movie film and had a wide opening to actually expose what would be two or three frames worth into one panorama. They had to be specially processed but they yielded unique results.
Now I can make images like this one of Lake Manly, the lowest lake in the US that forms sometimes at Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park. While my big camera was clicking away on a time lapse, I used my iPhone in vertical orientation (you might think of it is TikTok format) and took 31 raw images and later stitched them together in Lightroom.
The result is a calm view of a lake before the winds picked up and before it totally evaporates until the rains come again.
