The panoramic format is almost always more impressive than a conventional photographic format. This is because it more closely approximates the impression that we get from our horizontally-arranged eyes. However producing a high-quality image in such a format is quite a challenge to optical engineers. So dedicated panoramic cameras like the Hasselblad X-Pan are very expensive.

Digital photography has produced an effective alternative, however. Special software will warp and blend several pictures which were taken as part of a panorama into a single image. With care, the joins can not be seen.

To take a series of pictures which can be stitched into a panorama, the camera should be mounted on a tripod and be absolutely level. If the camera is not level then the horizon will look curved. Good tripods have spirit levels built into them, but failing that you can buy small spirit levels that clip into the flash bracket of your camera.

In order to blend one image into another smoothly, they should all have been taken at exactly the same exposure. This can present a problem when the light in the scene varies a lot. In the example above (Florence) I metered off the dome of the cathedral and set the camera's exposure manually. That produced some overexposure at the right of the picture but in the context of the overall image it still works quite well.

You will almost inevitably get variation in the colour of the sky, because the sky does indeed vary in colour across a wide angle. However that is not necessarily a bad thing. Polarising filters complicate things, however, and you should consider not using them.

You can find several examples of commercial software to allow you to create panoramas. My favourite is The Panorama Factory which can be downloaded from this link.