This paper addresses the problem of synthesizing novel views of a scene using images taken by an uncalibrated translating camera. We propose a method for synthesis of views corresponding to translational motion of the camera. Our scheme can handle occlusions and changes in visibility in the synthesized views. We give a characterisation of the viewpoints corresponding to which views can be synthesized. Experimental results have established the validity and effectiveness of the method. Our synthesis scheme can also be used to detect translational pan motion of the camera in a given video sequence. We have also presented experimental results to illustrate this feature of our scheme. © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.