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SO WHY PANORAMAS? Nothing captures the beauty of a landscape like a panorama. Have you ever got home and received your prints wondering why they look so dull. You know it was a gorgeous place, but your shots don't capture the awesome scenery you experienced. Single shots just don't cut it. The answer is panoramas. They capture the entire scene as you experienced it. And when you put the shots together, it's like you are there again. The digital age has made photography so much more convenient and also has enhanced the ability to manipulate photos. Powerful computer programs like Photoshop have made image editing virtually unlimited in what can be achieved. A plethora of panoramic software automatically stitches your individual images into finished panoramas. The best way to get started is to start seeing panoramas. They are all around us. From the office cubicle to the farmers market, there is no limit to what can be photographed. Seeing the world around you as a potential panoramic photograph goes a long way in beginning to enjoy this type of photography.
PHOTOGRAPHING PANORAMAS The best places to take panoramas are anywhere you have interesting subjects from one side of the horizon to the other. Vertical subject can work too. Just about any venue will work. From church and business interiors to vast landscapes and buildings, there's lots of different places to shoot. The easiest shots are on a level plain with the camera. Shots requiring the camera to pan up or down in the horizontal plane will cause problems with the stitching process. This is not necessarily a limitation as some stitching software will build these more spherical panoramas. To start shooting your own panoramas, first place the camera on a solid tripod with a panoramic tripod head. Adjust the position of the camera on the head compensating for the nodal point of the lens you are using. Using the correct nodal point is critical to avoid parallax errors. (see my LInks for a detailed explantion of parallax) A wide angle lens captures the most in a scene, but normal and even telephoto lenes will work. Always level the tripod and camera, separately if necessary. Position the camera on the beginning side of the shot. I start on the left and pan right. Make sure to overlap each shot by at least 25%. I have a grid that appears in the viewfinder of my camera making it easy to overlap each frame a constant amount. It is important to keep the camera level during the entire panning procedure. Failure to have a level setup will result in a sloping horizon. This can be remedied in Photoshop, but you’ll end up cropping part of the image. Another good idea is to use a cable release or a remote shutter release. This keeps the camera from being jiggled during the exposure. Also, be sure not to move the tripod during the shot or during the adjustments from shot to shot. Finally, lock the exposure on your camera so there is no variation from one image to another. An exposure lock button on the camera is very helpful but switching to a manual mode can also work. I meter the brightest part of a scene and then lock the exposure. Variation in the images will cause the stitching software to adjust the images exposure and may not result in pleasing results. Hot spots and dark areas will appear as well as areas that are dull or lack contrast. An advanced technique called giga-pixel pans uses multiple planes of pans stacked on top each other to form one enormous image. Each row is shot and stitched separately. Then the rows from top to bottom are combined. A telephoto lens increases the resolution by increasing the number of photos in the overall finished gigapan. A normal pan make have 6-8 images in it. But a gigapixel panorama may have 100-200. The result of these type images can be extremely large, very high-quality reproductions.
PANORAMA EQUIPMENT
Panoramic film cameras are fantastic but can be extremely expensive. They also take all the fun or agony (depending on your expertise) out of making your images. The biggest advantage to film panorama cameras is how they are able to capture moving objects. Since stitched images are captured one at a time, anything moving in the frame will be cut off or blurry from frame to frame. A film camera captures the entire panorama in one shot and captures the moving object in that one frame. Digital cameras may or may not be superior, but are more convenient. You don't have to wait for film to be processed and then a print made. You can see what you have done imediately in the preview on most camera backs. You also have more creative freedom with a digital image. You can manipulate the image more easily. Film images can also be manipulated, but must be digitized first. Always use the highest resolution on your camera. Shooting in RAW mode is the largest image most cameras can capture. Also a RAW file has a greater pixel depth necessary for HDR photography. Shooting with the camera in a portrait orientation will yield the largest possible image compared to shooting horizontally. It may be necessary to buy a larger memory card for your camera since you shoot many more images than in normal photography. One scene can be from 2 to 15 images. A special VR or panorama head for your tripod will correct for parallax allowing the computer software to stitch your images correctly. Tripods should be light yet sturdy. And it also should be tall enough for easy viewing through the camera. Although sometimes you will want a ground-level point of view for your shots. Some tripods have a feature allowing you to position the camera on the opposite side of the main tube under the legs giving your image an ants perspective. Hand-holding your camera may not provide satisfactory results. Several types of errors can occur. Your images may move up and down to accomodate the topography of landscape. Or you may not overlap your images enough. Parallax "errors" may be created in the stitching process. These errors will appear to be repeating patterns in certain areas of the photo or ghosted and doubled areas. A combination of stitching software and manual Photoshop work may be necessary to correct this. This can be very time consuming. Each image of the panorama may need to be rotated, skewed, and distorted as well as adjust the color, exposure, and saturation. The computer is a vital part of producing panoramas. You will want a large hard drive or external hard drive to store all your images, working files and finished panoramas. Layered Photoshop files can exceed 100Mb easily, so a fast processor with lots of RAM memory is also good. Of course backing up your files by burning CDs or DVDs of your images and finished panoramas always makes sense. There is a lot of software available to stitch your panoramas together. Photoshop Elements, a program that ships with most printers and scanners has a panorama module. Panorama Factory is a mainstay for pano photographers. Max Lyon has a very good program he wrote that works on PCs only. Sorry Mac people... Here's a rundown of the equipment I use... Computer / Software: Apple Mac Book Pro, 275mb external hard-drive, 4 GB of RAM. Epson Perfection 2450 Photo Scanner, Epson Stylus Photo R1800 printer, Apple 24” LED Monitor, Adobe Photoshop and Panorama Factory.
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