When the landscape, tall tree, or building doesn’t fit in
your viewfinder, you can choose to do a panorama. Shooting panoramas is easy to do if you
follow some basic rules.Before you begin setup your camera with the following suggestions
Remove your circular polarizer. It polarizes differently for each shot
which causes bitchiness especially in the sky.
Use manual mode only. You must have total control over exposure,
aperture, and ISO. Turn off auto ISO.
Shoot only in RAW. If shooting in jpg turn off auto white
balance.
Turn off VR if the lens supports it.
Use a shutter speed of 1/60 sec minimum or
better. This avoids camera shake. I usually use a higher shutter speed to
prevent blurry plants or trees unless you want that effect. Otherwise you will have to use a tripod.
Set white balance. To avoid blown out exposure always use your
hysteresis display. Set your white
balance by aiming at the brightest part of the scene such as the sky by
watching the exposure meter and adjusting your shutter speed, aperture, or ISO.
You can further adjust using the exposure compensation switch. This also applies to dark or shadow areas.
If you are shooting horizontal panoramas hold your camera
vertically. You don’t want long thin
images! Likewise when shooting vertical
panoramas such as tall buildings hold your camera horizontally.
When ready to shoot the panorama take a picture of your feet
or hand and at the last frame shoot your feet or hand to mark the start and end
of your panorama.
Keep your camera
level. To help with this in either live
view or in the viewfinder use a grid such as the rule-of-thirds grid and or
level indicator to help you to keep the horizon level.
Hold your camera with your elbows close to your chest and
feet apart. Start shooting from either the far left or the far right. In either case shoot further to the left or right
than what you need for that “just in case factor.” Remember to check your level indicator while
shooting.
When shooting panoramas, you must overlap each shot by at
least by half 50% to every two thirds
or 66% overlap The rule-of-thirds grid will also help you guide as you move
your camera to the next shot. You take
as many shots as you need to cover what you want to see and let the software
handle the stitching. There will be many
more frames with high overlapping but the accuracy of the software to stitch
the frames together will also be higher.
Cell phones
Lightroom mobile for IOS and Android phones are
available that allow you to shoot in raw and manual mode! Also, “Moment Camera App” for Android has RAW
capture and manual mode. Check out those
apps if you are a cell phone shooter!
Processing your images
Both Lightroom
and Photoshop have merge to panorama capabilities. ON! Raw 2018 also has panorama stitching. A free version of PhotoPad photo editing
software is available for non-commercial use only. If you will be using
PhotoPad at home you can find out more about PhotoPad and download the free version here.
