Re: panorama shots
- Thread starter shane1980
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- James
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General easiest way to get your 'standard' pano:
Lock the exposure so it's the same for each frame, either by using manual or holding AE lock. That way the light looks as it does to your eye and will be far easier to stitch together convincingly. If you use one of the auto modes, make sure you keep the exposure locked.
Pick a focus point that's going to work across all the frames, and stick with it (don't refocus between frames). Take care to look out for sections where something maybe much closer to you than the rest of the pano. For example, shooting a distant landscape, then you get to the last frame and there's an out of focus tree in the foreground.
Lock the exposure so it's the same for each frame, either by using manual or holding AE lock. That way the light looks as it does to your eye and will be far easier to stitch together convincingly. If you use one of the auto modes, make sure you keep the exposure locked.
Pick a focus point that's going to work across all the frames, and stick with it (don't refocus between frames). Take care to look out for sections where something maybe much closer to you than the rest of the pano. For example, shooting a distant landscape, then you get to the last frame and there's an out of focus tree in the foreground.
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- Stewart
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...and ... if you're not shooting RAW, remember to fix the white balance so that it's the same for each frame. In other words, use a preset WB or a custom WB rather than Auto WB.
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- Stewart
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I don't think it make the pano any better in a technical sense, but if you're shooting landscapes it does give you two advantages:
- you don't need such a wide lens
- you get a bigger image to work with
The panorama below was constructed from 4 photos taken in portrait orientation, with a focal length of 18mm. Each image was 8 MP, so there were 32 MP in total. But some of that was in the overlaps. The actual image size after I'd stitched it was about 24 MP. At 300 PPI I could print it at roughly 24" x 12".
If I had taken the shots with the camera in landscape orientation, I would have had to zoom out to 12mm. I can do that if I'm using my Canon 10-22 zoom, but not everyone has a lens that wide. So there's the first advantage of the portrait orientation: you can get the effect of an ultra-wide lens without having an ultra-wide lens.
Also, if I had taken the shots with the camera in landscape orientation, I would have needed only 2 photos to create the same scene. These would have had 16 MP in total. After deducting the overlaps, the actual stitched image size would be about 10.5 MP. At 300 PPI it would "only" print to about 16" x 8". And there's the second advantage of the portrait orientation: you get a bigger finished image which you can print bigger.
