Is there an idiots guide to panoramas?

Donnie

Donnie

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Im exploring how to do these and do them well, for example today I tried one with about 5 seperate vertical images and stitched them in photoshop, fairly pleased overall especially as it was handheld! I did waste a lot of image though due to the stitching and it made me think about how to do it on a tripod.

So, on my googling and youtubing trip so far Ive come across rotating clamps such as https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/360-angle-Fluid-Panoramic-Panorama-Panning-Base-Clamp-for-Tripod-Ball-Head-Arca/182834978904?_trkparms=aid=222007&algo=SIM.MBE&ao=2&asc=49129&meid=08a3f39718374a8590f20092b11d2b24&pid=100005&rk=3&rkt=6&sd=281587081261&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

I am assuming that a "fluid" one is better?

But as I was getting my head round this I find this video
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djSyR4BRPOw
which shows another contraption which i realise is a nodal slide, ive seen people on here mention the nodal ninja?

So, is there a guide that includes these tools and how to use them effectively at all anywhere 'cos im getting a bit flummoxed by it all?

Oh and my first attempt was this.

Autumnal Panorama by Donnie Canning, on Flickr
 
I would guess that the rotating head you linked to isn't a 'fluid' head and the word is used as a bit of hype to sell it.

Research on google etc will throw up lots of pages and videos, so much so that it can get confusing. The simplest way is to use a rotating head and a rail, the purpose of the rail is to place the centre of rotation at the entry pupil of the lens (often, slightly incorrectly, referred to as the nodal point). Doing this will negate any parallex error, there are a few good videos on youtube on how to do determine this point correctly.

It goes without saying that the camera should be mounted perfectly level...
 
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I use one of those pano clamps on my uniqball head. Its good to make sure the overlapping is similar on each image. Like @PhilH04 the camera has to be perfectly level, horizontally and with no forward/backwards tilt to ensure there is little curvature to the resulting stich. I've not yet got into nodal rails and parallel error. For the amount of panoramas I do this seems enough, nodal rail is just another piece of kit to carry.
 
In my experience, you only need a nodal slide for wide angle panoramas. 35mm and upwards full frame, level tripod, vertical images overlapped by 1/3rd no issues at all...
 
Donnie said:
It's the level tripod bit vs having a ballhead that I need to work on I suspect initially.
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if you have a ball head one of those pano clamps would be perfect as you can lock up the ball head and just turn the camera with the pano clamp. A 3 way spirit level can be useful although in camera leveling tools can be useful (my nikon seems to have horizontal and tilt forward/back levelling tool).
 
rob-nikon said:
if you have a ball head one of those pano clamps would be perfect as you can lock up the ball head and just turn the camera with the pano clamp. A 3 way spirit level can be useful although in camera leveling tools can be useful (my nikon seems to have horizontal and tilt forward/back levelling tool).
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That is it in a nutshell, trying to level a tripod head using incremental leg adjustments whilst out and about soon becomes infuriating.

As a typical ball head pivots around its base, the centre column (if your tripod has one) has to be perpendicular to the ground or parallel to the subject depending on how you view it, otherwise the pano will be off when you rotate, hence the continuous leg adjustments to get that aligned.

The rotating pano clamp situated above the ballhead can use the ease of positioning the ballhead to level the pano clamp independently of the leg and centre column angles.
 
Most of it has been said already. I use a similar pano head to the one linked in the OP. It is a fluid mechanism. Works really well once you've spent a little time leveling the head. It's easy with a geared head but fine with a ball head too, just make sure you're looking at the spirit levels head on. I haven't yet bothered with nodal rail, I don't tend to have any subject close enough to the camera to worry about it. Tend to shoot panos around 50mm focal length and use an L bracket to shoot in portrait. Speaking of which an L-bracket is very handy for this stuff too.
 
Keep the camera level. Have enough overlap between frames. Switch off auto WB and choose a manual exposure that is in the middle of the range in the panorama.

I’ve got a panoramic head and I spent a while calibrating it to get settings for various lenses, but I’ve not used it for several years.

(My most challenging one was taken from a moving boat!)
 
Pound Coin said:
Keep the camera level. Have enough overlap between frames. Switch off auto WB and choose a manual exposure that is in the middle of the range in the panorama.

I’ve got a panoramic head and I spent a while calibrating it to get settings for various lenses, but I’ve not used it for several years.

(My most challenging one was taken from a moving boat!)
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Good point about exposure and locking it into manual. I normally take a couple of test exposures from the brightest area and darkest area of the sweep. My camera is generally better with shadow recovery than highlight recovery so I tend to make sure I'm not clipping any highlights anywhere and work with that exposure. Nothing to stop you bracketing at each camera position too. You can then explosure blend two or more panoramas in software. Sounds fiddly but a doddle in reality.

Also worth mentioning that it is normally a good idea to manually focus too and lock that off.

Be careful using a polariser on wider panoramas, can cause weird things to happen in the sky.

If you're worried about identifying which images belong to which group afterwards, you could take a dark frame or a picture of your hand or something before first image and after last image to act as a separator between groups of photos.

I tend not to bother fixing WB only because I shoot in raw and whenever I do fix WB, I always forget to switch it back to auto afterwards. I just makes sure that before I blend images, I sync the WB settings and also do any lightroom lens correction etc to remove vignetting.
 
AndyB1976 said:
That is it in a nutshell, trying to level a tripod head using incremental leg adjustments whilst out and about soon becomes infuriating.

As a typical ball head pivots around its base, the centre column (if your tripod has one) has to be perpendicular to the ground or parallel to the subject depending on how you view it, otherwise the pano will be off when you rotate, hence the continuous leg adjustments to get that aligned.

The rotating pano clamp situated above the ballhead can use the ease of positioning the ballhead to level the pano clamp independently of the leg and centre column angles.
Click to expand...


I have a Nodal Ninja pano head and a NN levelling head.
However I never use the levelling head. I mount the NN directly on the legs, with nothing in between for maximum stability.
I level my Manfrotto 055 prob with the leg adjustments only.
I find I can fine adjust the legs to level in 10 to 15 seconds. it is far quicker than using the levelling head. you should only ever need to adjust two legs.

In most instances I take my outdoor pans semi hand held using a monopod, with the camera in the portrait position,
any close objects are covered with a shot of their own to avoid parallax issues and stitching problems.
 
gad-westy said:
Good point about exposure and locking it into manual. I normally take a couple of test exposures from the brightest area and darkest area of the sweep. My camera is generally better with shadow recovery than highlight recovery so I tend to make sure I'm not clipping any highlights anywhere and work with that exposure. Nothing to stop you bracketing at each camera position too. You can then explosure blend two or more panoramas in software. Sounds fiddly but a doddle in reality.

Also worth mentioning that it is normally a good idea to manually focus too and lock that off.

Be careful using a polariser on wider panoramas, can cause weird things to happen in the sky.

If you're worried about identifying which images belong to which group afterwards, you could take a dark frame or a picture of your hand or something before first image and after last image to act as a separator between groups of photos.

I tend not to bother fixing WB only because I shoot in raw and whenever I do fix WB, I always forget to switch it back to auto afterwards. I just makes sure that before I blend images, I sync the WB settings and also do any lightroom lens correction etc to remove vignetting.
Click to expand...

I use manual everything, it is a bad idea to use polarisers at all.
I only blend exposures when shooting interiors as they mostly include light sources
there is no need to adjust for lens corrections or vignetting (though Adobe raw do this automatically for many lenses)
But so does PTGui and PTAssembler Stitching programs.
PTGui and PTAssembler can blend exposures and focus on the fly.
 
Thanks all, managed to snag a Really Right Stuff L bracket for the EM1 from German ebay for 40 quid and it's delivered today. Plus got a simple cheapo wired remote shutter release, of course the wired shutter vs l bracket clash a bit though :-( Plus I have a peak design capture pro which the l bracket doesnt fit :-/
 
I also have a Nodal Ninja, although it hasn't seen much use in the last year, and entirely endorse @Terrywoodenpic's comments about levelling etc.

As others have said, if you're outdoors shooting things that are far away and using a longish lens, you can manage just fine handheld (if your camera has a built-in level, that's a good way to keep your shots lined up and not drop down as you go) with a good stitching program.

Manual focus, manual exposure, and meter off the brightest point so you don't blow your highlights. You can always bracket if you think you may need to recover the shadows a lot.
 
jerry12953 said:
Or you could use a wideangle lens and crop........
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But you would end up with a much lower resolution image.
Nor are may distortion free lenses made that can achieve any thing like the same angle of view of stitched panoramas.
Nor can a lens on its own give you such a large range of possible projections.
 
Byker28i said:
Shoot me now, yes I know, but a good mobile phone does brilliant panoramics. I struggle at times to get the same with my camera so this is all very interesting.
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As does most mirrorless cameras if your shooting jpg
 
jerry12953 said:
it's what we used to do in the old days, though.

You probably remember that....?;)
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I never did that, but I did make a few large cut and paste jobs from multiple images.
However they were not a patch on what we can achieve today.
 
Yes, agreed! I have a 270degree pano of Cairo from 1987 made of 14 prints. It’s crooked, and wrongly exposed in places. I'd like to find the negatives in the huge box of negatives and apply some modern tech to it.
 
Get the tripod legs dead level, manual everything, portrait orientation and a good 30% overlap :). As my tripod doesn't have a spirit level for the legs (only the head), I usually remove my ball head and use a hotshoe spirit level to make sure the legs are absolutely level. I'll then put the head back on and adjust for composition. PTGui is excellent for stitching the pano together. One big advantage, especially if you're doing any sort of exposure blending, is that you can save templates. This makes sure that each pano stitches in exactly the same way, which then makes the blending process an absolute doddle.

Cheers,

Simon.
 
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I like Autopano Pro, but Lightroom CC does a good job at least half the time. It seems to find vertoramas a bit confusing though.
 
Be careful what you think you need this shot was taken and through the window of a flying helicopter at the equivelant to 24mm on on 35 mm format and is I think a three vertical shot stitch

The Rockies 1- by Alf Branch, on Flickr

Another handheld stitch

Wasdale weather panoramic by Alf Branch, on Flickr
 
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jakeblu said:
As does most mirrorless cameras if your shooting jpg
Click to expand...


I've never tried this properly yet on my Sony a6000 but my test shots seem to be pretty great! And very easy. I don't know what it does to the resolution etc, but I'd hazard a guess it will give enough of a good result for the majority of us hobbyists!
 
Thumbs up for iPhones, X-Pro1 and Sony A7R (below).

34596266363_06024d1020_k.jpg


The Leica Q has a built in spirit level but is totally naff at panoramas, so I just do a 210x597 crop. The image quality is superb so it survives heavy crops.

37074253313_8eb1007c12_k.jpg
 
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I'm no expert on digital processing, but I'm posting this in case it might help.
I've been using software called Hugin for a couple of months now. I'm absolutely staggered at its ability to stitch together images in a seamless way. I've only used its "automatic" functionality, but I believe you can tweak it if you know what you're doing. I'm using it on a Linux OS, but I think its available for MS Windows.
The link below is to an image on Flickr (well, I hope it is - I'm still new to this site & linking stuff!!). It's a panorama of 5 shots that I took a month ago. My purpose was to shoot the setting moon over some snowy hills, with a medium tele zoom, but I'd forgotten the quick-release top for my tripod! As soon as I'd got over my huge grump, I decided that the only rescue was hand-held shots, so I popped the kit 18-55mm stabilised zoom onto my Nikon D5300. The moon had almost gone when I took these, and the sun had pretty near washed it out anyway, but I decided to make a composite panorama.
As far as I can see, the result is imperceptible from a single image, and I cannot see how using a levelled tripod, or even a tripod at all, could have improved it (well, unless you wanted a really huge print). Although the original 5 images were not perfectly aligned, the Hugin software sorted this amazingly well. Yes, I "threw away" parts of the images - but I ended up with a panoramic image of huge definition.
Not tried it yet, but I understand that the software is not limited to panoramas, but will stitch together images in both horizontal and vertical axes to create a single composite. In which case, "wasting" parts of each image is not important - in fact it ensures a near-perfect match, except around the edges. But with digital kit you can take as many as you like unless the landscape is changing very rapidly (clouds?)
If it works as well as I've found so far, then my guess is that, at least for static landscapes, it pretty much renders medium-format totally dead-in-the-water. Possibly wide-angle lenses as well!

Going back to your thread title, then there are a few online how-to's for using Hugin. But, as mentioned, I find its basic, pretty much automatic, functions quite astounding.

Now, got my fingers crossed that the link works!!

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4669/28376600059_3c9a1bf1ff_k.jpg
 
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I'm another one who doesn't bother with a tripod.

F/8, focus, exposure lock and just shoot away with overlap using 35+mm (FFE) in vertical, using the horizon position as a guide for keeping level. Works for me, all of these we shot on the fly and probably about 5 shots in each (maybe fewer in the first):

Grand Canyon by Ned Awty, on Flickr

HK from the Peak by Ned Awty, on Flickr

Bluebells Pano-stitch by Ned Awty, on Flickr
 
As the original poster I thought I would jump back in on my final decision on how to proceed and what equipment I have bought and the answer is none.

I took this with my Olympus EM1 and 12-40 f2.8 on holiday at the end of January (5 stitched images)

027 - The Cuillins, Skye by Donnie Canning, on Flickr

And it is now a 5 foot wide canvas over my sofa in the living room and it's wonderful!

canvas2 by Donnie Canning, on Flickr
 
Donnie said:
... And it is now a 5 foot wide canvas over my sofa in the living room and it's wonderful!

canvas2 by Donnie Canning, on Flickr
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Result!

Those complicated panoramic heads really earn their keep when you have subjects relatively close to the camera, because then it can be critical to avoid parallax errors. But for landscape panoramics, as you've demonstrated, shooting hand held can be fine.
 
That's a great composite, Donnie, I'd love to have it on my wall!
Ah, a bit nostalgic as well - it just takes me straight back there. Returning from the Co-op in Portree to our rented house in Glen Eynort, perhaps I drove down that stretch of road 100 times? And almost every time either subtly or completely different.
Your panorama brilliantly evokes not just the topography, but the mood, atmosphere, emotion of the place.
We still have a building plot in Eynort - we'll be back!!
Oh, and if anyone complains, I'm with you in saying your shot is of the Cuillins. To the left of Marsco are the Red Cuillin. To the right, the Black Cuillin. So, I guess that two different sets of Cuillin should surely be Cuillins!
 
I would recommend using Panorama Studio 2. Thats the best software package to stitch panoramas
 
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