Going Wide

FujiFilm PinePix S1800 ISO 64 F/3.1 1/90 (no lens info - three exposures.) 

 Back in the 1970's if you wanted to shoot a panoramic image there were a couple of specialty cameras, Widelux was one, that used 35mm film, and produced an image about twice a wide as a typical 35mm shot.  A friend of mine is using a 120 film camera from the 1980's that produces a 2 1/4 by about 6 inch negative.  

Kodak tried a wide or panoramic mode on the short lived last gasp of film, advanced photo system (APS.) It was limited in quality by being a narrow band out of the negative.  

Some digital cameras offer a panoramic mode.  I have an older Fujifilm FinePix S1800 that has this option.  It stitches together three exposures into a single file.  This will yield about 180 degree view.  The image above was made with this.  By today's standards it is an old camera, only 12 megapixels.  It still takes a good image. 

Google photos, and I am sure some of the other cloud photo services will sometimes detect multiple exposures in sequence, and stitch them together into a panorama.  I understand Adobe LightRoom will do this. 

One of the great challenges has always been getting rotation around a central point.  The central point is not the center of the photographer, or the center of the camera, it is the center of the focalplane.  Even with that there is inherently some optical distortion.  

In school I worked on creating panoramas from a sequence of 35mm film negatives.  I always ended up with a rounding effect, with the horizon a the ends of the image rising or falling.