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Panoramic LensThe polyoptic wheel's second setting allows the user to take wide angle (or panoramic) photos [1]. The panoramic lens is an afocal module with two lens elements that are separated by a distance equal to the sum of their focal lengths. It takes in light from a wide field of view and compresses it to a narrower field of view [2]. Figure 5 is an interactive demo that compares this two-piece system to the imaging lens on its own. The imaging lens's field of view (if the panoramic lens was not there) is shown in blue, while the two-piece system's field of view is shown in red. The field of view of the two-piece system is wider than the field of view of the imaging lens on its own. Moving the slider at the bottom of Figure 5 changes the shape of the panoramic lens and the effective field of view of the two-piece system. Although the panoramic lens is shown as a single piece in Figure 5, it is actually two smaller pieces in reality.
Since the panoramic lens system squeezes a large field of view onto a sensor that is designed for a smaller 43° field of view, the image formed on the sensor is distorted. This bulgy-looking distortion is called a barrel distortion. The software that is included with Bigshot can automatically correct this distortion, transforming the bulgy-looking image into a wide rectangular one.
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