In making panoramas outside with a view camera, it is advisable to stop the lens down considerably, even though it may not seem necessary in cover ing your plate. Unless this is done, you are liable to have unequal lighting of your plate ; that is, your edges will be a trifle darker than the center, which you would probably never notice in a single print, but in a panorama will be notice able at once. For this reason it is best to use a lens with very good covering power in connection with an out-door panorama made with a view camera.
There is probably no limit to what you can do with a number of plates put together on an interior job. In fact, I knew of an Eastern murder case where the photographer photographed the whole room, ceiling, walls and floor, and put them together for the jury just as the room was.
You can go right along in a straight line and make five or six plates and put prints together. This is a job I am of ten asked to execute. I have in mind one now I did of a lumber shed. While there was no perspective to the finished picture, it was just .what the customer wanted, as it showed the shed much longer and larger than it really was.
Illustration Number 18 is the interior of a men's furnishing shop, which was naturally rather cramped looking. By making two negatives, one on one side of the aisle, including all of the aisle, and the other from the opposite side, including all of the aisle, when the two prints were joined together, the desired result of making the store look much larger and roomier was obtained—in other words, a camera lie. Some art work was necessary as, in making the joint straight down through the center, the tile in the floor did not match, and art work was used to bring the tone of the floor up even.
I have also made panoramas outside for landscape architects where, in two panoramas of five plates each, I took in the whole 360 degrees.
A word about placing the camera. You have often been told that the lens had to revolve right over the center of your tripod, which is right, but I often make them with the camera 15 or 20 feet away from the place where the first negative was made ; one perhaps made on one side of the room and the other 100 feet away; in fact, there are endless possibilities. A little common sense and some ingenuity are all that is required. The lines on the ground-glass.
mentioned in a previous chapter, are a big help, always keeping in mind to have the matching places the same size and with room for an inch lap of view. Another thing is to try to include the whole side of a room, if possible, on one plate and the end of a room on another plate to avoid bends in ceiling beams.
You will note the only bend in the bank panorama is the side rail in the balcony. On the two-plate panorama, there is no perceptible bend.
In making panoramas of offices, including people, it is always advisable to work two cameras at the same time. In this way you can light the entire office at one time and the job is more quickly done and with less confusion. The two cameras can be set on a board on top of the tripod, and the exposure should be equal, with at least an inch lap of view. Of course, you should use lenses of equal focal length.
This work will be found exceedingly interesting- and is one of the quickest means of building a reputation. If you are at all clever, you can demand and get almost any price.
With reference to developing, the negatives should all be developed in one tray at one time, or in a tank, to give absolutely equal printing quality, and, of course, the prints have to be made of equal depth to make a proper and unob trusive match. When properly sandpapered and mounted, the joining places have to be pointed out to the customer, as they are hardly perceptible. Another advantage derived by sandpapering is the fact that when they are set up to make cuts in photo-engraving shops, there is no shadow on the lap side.
Some people butt the prints, but that has always seemed to me a rather clumsy method, as the prints invariably pull apart and show the join.
While this method of making panoramas can be employed in almost any case, a Cirkut camera is a very good investment for many commercial men, or portrait photographers, for that matter, especially in a locality where there are industrial plants, mining properties, real estate promotions, etc., and for large group work, in view of the large print orders generally received, and which would be impractical under the first method. However, each method has its own field, in my opinion. Illustration Number 19 is a very good example of outside Cirkut work.