It is said that the visual field of human beings covers approximately up to 180 degrees in both horizontal and vertical way.
As regards 35mm camera, diagonal angle of view of 50mm lens is 47 degrees and even that of 15mm lens is no more than 111 degrees, and furthermore, as angle of view gets wider, subject gets smaller and overall view in the viewfinder gets distorted.

Only fish-eye lens has about as same angle of view which is 180 degrees as human sight. But, as those who use fish-eye lens know, that lens jams all the view in the viewfinder into the circle frame, which makes a picture unnaturally (at the same time, which is an attractive point of that lens, though).


Like one of the inventors of photography, William H. F. TALBOT who made a photography by joining a series of two pictures taken by means of Kallo type way with one, Photographers had been seeking for the camera with which they could take a super wide-angle picture with natural perspective, that is to say a panoramic photography.
In 1844, a painter, Martense contrived Daguerreotype lens-rotating panoramic camera "Mega-Scope" which is now said to be one of the original panoramic camera.

Like I said in the previous sentence "one of the original...", several kinds of panoramic camera were invented. So, let's take a brief look at these structures for the next.

1. The lens unit moves and the film is fixed when the shutter is released.
- Swing-Lens panoramic camera & Revolving Lens panoramic camera

2. The camera body itself rotates or the film is transported in order when the shutter is released.
- The type of exposing the light from right to left on the flat surface of the film.
- The type that the roll film advances in order and is exposed while the shutter is released.

There is also a minor type like the one whose lens is developed only for panoramic photography.
In addition, the mechanism that a panoramic photography is taken through fixed super-wide lens on a flat surface or bent film is often found on modern cameras, especiallly on compact cameras with panoramic picture mode.


Panoramic Camera
in dry plate/wet-plate age
dry plate age - 1845 Mega-Scope
wet-plate age - 1858 Satton Panoramic Camera
1862 PantaScopic Camera
Panoramic Camera
in the early film age
1889 Wonder Panoramic
SyndroGraph (as surveying instrument)
1890 SycroGraph
Panoramic Camera
in the roll film age
1898 Alvista
1900 Panoram-Kodak
1901 Periphoto
1907 Elneman Luntbrich
1908 Doppel Sport
1912 Bell Straight Working Panoram
1952 Panon
1958 Panolux 35-ZIA
1959 Widelux
1961 ViscaWide 16
1963 Panophic
1978 Art Panorama 240
1983 Fujica Panorama G617 proffesional
1998 Fujifilm TX-1



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