Photophys.com: The Science of Photography

When traveling in the west, I have on several occasions visited Thomas D. Mangelsen’s photo galleries and have marveled at his panoramas of landscapes and wildlife.  These photographs were taken with a Fuji GX617 film (120 or 220) camera.  So the question for me was how to replicate such images at high resolution with my DSLR.  The short answer is to put the DSLR in the portrait orientation and take a number of shots that can be stitched together.  However, for this to be successful and reproducible more planning is required.  I have worked out a procedure complete with step angles and number of shots for efficient capture of 6x17 panoramas with any 2:3 aspect DSLR on a panoramic tripod head.  My discussion and directions can be downloaded here:

High-resolution 6x17 panorama without wasted pixels (pdf:151 kB)