Panoramic images are among the most expressive way of representation of a natural landscape, because embrace in a single overview an angular extension normally impossible to achieve with a single glance. Already one hundred years ago Vittorio Sella, among others, widely used overlapping images taken along the horizon to cover 360 degrees panoramas.

In those days, the junctions between the shots was hidden by intervening with Indian ink directly on the prints, which were then photographed again to get the full image on a single plate, a complex operation to address the shortcomings of the technology. Today, with the advent of the digital age, there are very sophisticated softwares which can analyze a sequence of individual shots and then seamlessly synthesize a single panoramic image, even correcting the actual distortion introduced by the lens used in the shots. The final precision is so high that it makes it quite impossible to distinguish the boundaries between the single images in the panoramic sequence.

The high quality of modern panoramic shots can be reached through appropriate tools for the realization of individual pictures: a particular gear, called pan and tilt head, allows the photographer to move the camera between shots by eliminating the distortions introduced by inadequate movements that would make hard to obtain a correct image overlaying.

During the expedition we used the excellent VR Drive Roundshot, a motorized digital head able to get by itself the entire panoramic sequence, once set the number of images needed to cover the desired angle, depending on the lens focal lenght. This way you can use an ordinary camera as an device suitable for panoramic imaging, to achieve both static panoramic views and true immersive renderings, allowing the observer to “move” in the recorded environment with an interactivity impossible to achieve with traditional imaging.

Through this technology, during the expedition we was able to publish the panoramic images on the website, virtually in real time.

The cameras used during the expedition were the two newest flagship full frame Nikon SLRs, the D700 and D3x; when lighting conditions matched those seen in the original pictures by Massimo Terzano and Vittorio Sella, the panoramic shots were replicated even with the folding Linhof camera on the 6×9 format, or even on the 4×5 inches plates.

Here is a selection of the most spectacular 360° panoramic images, with the related interactive movies obtained by merging 22 single images.

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Panoramic images

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Panoramic QuickTimeVR

Click and drag mouse on images to move within the immersive panoramics
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