What's the difference? Wide 35 and Panoramic.

[Bill58]

Pardon my dumb question, but what is the difference between the field of view for a 15 or 21mm lens on a 35mm camera and a panoramic like an X-pan?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[Lemures-Ex]

I could be wrong, but I believe the x-pan is double the width of standard 35mm, so double the field of view...

Jared

 

[Parkes Owen]

Hi Bill, the xpan with the standard 45mm lens in pano mode is the same as a 25mm wide angle (35mm format) field of view with the DOF of a 45mm lens which takes some getting used to. Personally I find my 24mm lens on my nikon fm2n much easier to compose a landscape scene, but sometimes important objects are pushed further away and lose their imact with wide angle lenses.
This is what makes pano cameras different, nice wide view without pushing everything into the distance, and when you get a good shot, it looks better on your wall😀

 

[Ben Blacket]

Some people have a different preference as to the format or shape of the final print. Therefore, their visualisation & framing of a shot is different. Some people "think in" panoramic format, some rectangular (35mm), some square. I prefer using a camera that produces the same format as the print, without any cropping. Personally, I shoot either square or panoramic & nothing in between.
Flanders.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

I do 3:2 (standard 35mm) and 3:1 (panoramic) also.

When I'm into panoramic mode I think movies and ask myslf how a big movie director would make this photo. Then I do it my way.

 

[Rob-F]

The frame is 65mm wide, 1.8 the width of the 24x36mm format. So an XPAN lens is equivalent to a 35mm camera lens of about 55% of its focal length, where horizontal coverage is concerned. Thus the standard 45mm lens is equivalent to a 25mm on a 35mm camera. The 30mm XPAN lens covers as much horizontally as a 17mm focal length on a 35mm camera. So Bill, the focal lengths you mentioned, 15mm and 21mm, are just about the equivalent of the 30 and 45mm XPAN lenses--horizontally. Thus your estimates of 15mm and 21mm are pretty close.

Another difference, of course, is a bigger negative, allowing a higher quality picture. My wife noticed the difference immediately when I projected an XPAN slide in my Hasselblad projector, compared to the cropped 35mm slides blown up to the same width.

Finally, shots taken with a wide-angle lens such as a 21mm or 24mm often include too much foreground or sky; hence the need to crop to a pano format.

Parkes Owen's comments about how the pano format prevents pushing the main subject into the distance is another way of making the same point. With the excess foreground and sky cropped out, and the picture enlarged proportionately, distant objects can then be more prominent.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[lZr]

There is deifference between 35 mm and panoramic vision. It is deep in the perspective. For instance, Horizon cameras has cylindrical perspective. As so, the image can have concave or convex horizon if the camera is not level set.
Other camera has rectilinear perspective, like XPAN