Re: Panorama debate

[Alan Zinn <azinn@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:03 PM 12/25/1999 -0400, you wrote:
>Agreed this has gone on for too long and gone too far.  Can we move on?
>
>New topic suggestions:
>
>SWING LENS CAMERAS AND DISTORTION ISSUES:
>
>Should one shot so as to avoid/hide/mask or minamize distortions?
>
>Is distortion even a problem or should swing lens cameras show their
>"signatures."
>
>When is swing lens distortion a benefit?
>
>Tricks for avoiding swing lens distortions?
>
>Other topics?
>
>Joel
>

Joel,

 I don't use the term distortion because it claims a privileged status for
narrower formats - not PC. More seriously, it implies that one must look at
panoramas with the same criteria as narrow images. A panorama isn't by
definition exceptional to conventional ways of depicting a 3-D (or 4-D)
world. What we consider to be a conventional rendering of 2-D space - linear
perspectives corresponding to our cone of vision - is relatively new. In all
cultures and in Western culture since the Renaissance there were and are
many conventions for depicting time and space on flat surfaces. And, of
course, there are the familiar modern inventions such as cubism. We are free
to handle the picture plane in any way we can conceive to create a
photograph. Why have a narrow out-look and a panoramic camera?  Is that a
bumper sticker or what?!!!
  
There are strategies to limit the pictorial characteristic of slit cameras.
I don't see the point of doing it as a rule. The main reason I make
panoramas is to get people out of their usual mode of seeing and thinking.
Stock photographers and illustrators have requirements that preclude
deviation from conventional images of course.  


AZ

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