Thoughts about Panoramic Photography (part 2) June 27, 2009
Posted by Mok Oh in 2.5D, Photography, panorama.Tags: panorama, publishing, sharing
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A Panorama of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy.
FRUSTRATION is the word that comes to mind today. I spent most of my Saturday trying to figure out if there is an easy way to publish and share my panoramas (as a common user, not a techie). As anyone would do, I first searched for my “YouTube for Panoramas” sites and found a bunch. After getting accounts and trying most of these webistes, I found the whole experience difficult and frustrating. Perhaps my bar was too high in comparing them to YouTube or any other video serving websites. Perhaps things are different for panoramas. Perhaps it’s too much to ask…
On second thought, NO. I shouldn’t have to lower my expectations for panoramas — they’ve been around as long as photography and videos! I think the problem is that the panoramic community is not rising up to the challenge of making panoramic medium as common as videos or photographs.
Here’s what I want at a high level:
- Acquisition – Taking panoramas should be as easy as point-and-shooting with a digital camera. I do believe there are ways to simplify this.
- Post Processing – Stitching, image processing, tone mapping, etc. should be easy as a drag-and-drop, and have access to “pro” features for those who want/need finer control. I do believe this part has made much progress thanks to many innovative minds.
- File Formats – To a common user, this should be as understandable as a “JPEG.” My mom knows what a JPEG is, but she doesn’t know what an equirectangular JPEG is.
- Viewing – What happens when you double click on a JPEG? I want that for my panos.
- Publishing – YouTube, Flickr, Picasa…
- Sharing – YouTube, Flickr, Picasa…
I absolutely don’t think this is problematic. It can be done. In fact, much of the work has already been done. So, why haven’t this happened yet? Is there not enough demand? Not enough cash, incentives or investments in this field? Are there no business models or economics to make this a fruitful endeavor?
My guess is that we, as panorama community, need to make the process — from Acquisition all the way to Sharing — easy as 1-2-3 so that my mom can do it. Let’s not make it into some esoteric art form that only a few can do.
[...] is a panorama I took a few years ago. From my last blog, where I commented on the state of the publishing and sharing of panoramas, I finally gave up on trying to find a website that does everything I want and ended up publishing [...]
Hi Mok,
Whacha fishin’ for??? The ShamWow of Panorama Publishing????
I think we already had that with the Live Photo Gallery of the Microsoft Mojave Experiment where creating a panorama was advertised as being sooo easy, but in reality the final output was usually not the best.
Seriously though, probably the biggest barrier is the high amount of “art” involved in creating a panoramic image and no commonly agreed upon definition of “perfect output” for a panorama. This problem combined with the complexity of dealing with Panorama Viewer software to ensure that a panorama is displayed as intended is just too daunting of a task for most photographers let alone the general public. Perhaps if more EXIF/IPTC data was stored by panorama stitching software in the final output image that could be retrieved by the panorama viewer software, the viewer configuration time and complexity would be decreased and perhaps there would be greater interest in creating panoramic images.
Kodak and HP may be on the right track for lowering the entry barrier for consumers by producing cameras with in-camera stitchers, but IMHO the quality of the final output just isn’t there yet.
Hi Lee,
Tx for your input! In some sense, I am looking for the ShamWow.
Are there specific Kodak and HP initiatives you can share? My assumption is that in bringing panoramas to the consumers, quality would (initially) have to go down, but hopefully the power of the imagery and the medium would remain.
Appreciate your post!
Hey Mok,
Check your email for additional info on HP and Kodak in-camera stitchers… Hope it helps.
Lee
[...] the past few blogs, I’ve focused on the state of panoramas as visual medium. There’s still quite a bit to talk about there but I’d like to shift [...]
[...] the other hand, panoramas are not as easy to acquire. I’ve been taking panoramas for about a decade now, and it still kinda sucks how much work [...]