HandiPan
Hold your phone like a camera, in landscape, and turn slowly. HandiPan shows where the next frame of your panorama goes and beeps when you’re lined up and steady.
Start: allow motion and sound
It needs your phone’s motion sensors. On a computer you’ll see the guide screen, but it won’t move.
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HandiPan
handipan.odd.place
A guide for shooting panoramas by hand: it tells you where each frame goes and when you’re steady enough to take it. Settings are under Controls, just below.
Controls What’s going on How to use it Sharing Credits Controls
What’s going on
A panorama is a row (or grid) of overlapping photos stitched together. Shot by hand, the usual problems are frames that drift up and down, gaps where you turned too far, and blur from shooting while still moving. HandiPan uses your phone’s motion sensors to help with all three.
Tell it your camera’s sensor size and your lens’s focal length and it works out how far to turn between shots so each frame overlaps the last by about 30%. The map is the whole sphere around you: 360° across, from straight down at the bottom to straight up at the top, with the horizon on the middle line. As you turn, a line traces where the phone has pointed, and the bars guide you to the nearest frame that still needs shooting. When you’re lined up (and, if you like, holding still), it beeps: take the shot, then turn to the next one.
The screen
The number at the top left is the lens focal length in mm; below it the compass heading.
The grid of dots marks every frame to shoot; red rings are frames you’ve taken.
The bar along the top grows left or right from the middle of the screen, and the bar down the left side grows up or down from the middle, showing how far the nearest frame still to shoot is; they turn green when you’re on it. The short bar in the middle of the screen tilts to show how level you’re holding the phone. All three stay in view wherever you point.
Smooth everywhere, either way up
The direction is worked out from the phone’s full 3D orientation, so tracking is just as smooth below the horizon as above it, and it works the same holding the phone in portrait or landscape. In portrait the map is shown larger and slides to keep where you’re pointing in the middle; it wraps around like the real view, so turning past the back of the circle carries straight on. Straight up and straight down, compass headings stop meaning much, as with any compass.
How to use it
Press Start and allow motion and sound.
Open the menu and, under Controls , pick your camera sensor (DX / APS-C or full frame) and your lens’s focal length (the small + , − and list on the guide screen set the lens too). Lenses shorter than 17 mm are treated as fisheyes.
Hold the phone against your camera, or use it as the camera, and point at the first frame.
Turn slowly. When the beep sounds, shoot, then keep turning.
Camera sensor DX / APS-C (23.7 × 15.5 mm) or full frame (36 × 24 mm). The same lens sees about 1.5 times more on full frame, so the frames are spaced further apart.
Spacing: Grid or Optimum (G) Evenly spaced frames, or spacing chosen for the fewest shots that still overlap.
Frames: Horizontal or Vertical (V) Whether your camera is in landscape or portrait. Portrait frames give a taller panorama.
Lining up: Tight or Loose (T) How precisely you must line up before it beeps.
Beep when: Held still or Lined up (S) Held still waits until you stop moving, for sharper frames; Lined up beeps as soon as you’re on target.
Delay (D) An optional one-second wait before the beep.
Colors Pick a background, path-line and grid color, or a preset: Dark, Night red (keeps your night vision for star panoramas), Black and Light.
Full screen The button under the share button, or in Controls, fills the screen (where the browser allows; iPhones don’t).
Clear the path Wipes the traced line and starts the frame map fresh.
Sharing
Press the share button (top right). It makes a link-preview picture of the guide screen. The share page’s button opens HandiPan with your lens and settings, handy for sending a friend the setup for their camera.
Credits
HandiPan is Jason Buchheim’s long-running project for guided handheld panoramas (handipan.com), from his work on gigapixel and stereoscopic panoramas.
Discover more Oddities at odd.place Generative art, games, science toys and curious tools, all running in your browser.Made by Jason Buchheim for odd.place .