Talk:Melvin Vaniman

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[edit] 360×180?

Before I started messing around with this article, we read:

He constructed his own "swing-lens" cameras to accomplish the capture of full 360x180 degree panoramic images. Most cameras have a lens that is stationary - it's attached to the camera body. Swing-lens cameras have lenses that move, while the camera and film are stationary.

Thanks [?] to my edit, we now read:

He constructed his own "swing-lens" cameras to accomplish the capture of full 360×180 degree panoramic images.

Er, no. I changed the wording, but the content is still very wrong.

First, horizontally. As shown in the excellent page to which this pointed, a swing-lens camera can't give you 360 degrees. (In order to do so, the lens would have to swing 360 degrees. Think about it.) You could stitch the images -- yes, people did that before Photoshop! -- but then you'd be nuts to use a swing-lens camera.

Second, vertically. 180 degrees top to bottom implies a genuine fisheye lens. These (or lenses approximating them) are older than you might think, but they weren't used for panoramas.

Can somebody please check? -- Hoary (talk) 10:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)