How to shoot Panorama - with what you have!

There are times when just a single picture, cannot capture a scene, the breathtaking snippet of the wonderful creation of God. Other times, you just want to take a panorama (long, wide angle) shot, just for the hack of it, like me in the picture above.

You don't really need any fancy equipment. The above shot was taken with my D90 DSLR, with a Tokina 11-16mm lens - handheld. It could have easily been any decent point and shoot or even iphone. For the above, I shot at 16mm, shot with approx 1/3 overlap. Then I use Microsoft Image Composite Editor (best Free photo stitch software I tried), select which pictures (there were 8), and it automatically joins it all together.

Here's another example with just 4 pictures stitched together.

The above is a little more complicated. The first time I did, it didn't turn out so good. So I went back, mounted the camera on a tripod, swiveled it and methodically shot it. 19 pictures altogether. But because the panorama is so wide, any unevenness ends up distorted (the ground wasn't 100% flat, and the horizon wasn't 100% level. I tried the same shot, at 24mm instead of 16mm for the rest, and the distortion was significantly less. But too narrow.

Here's a 16 image pano. Not as much horizontal distortion. But due to physics, the parts closer to you (in the middle), end up more distorted/very close together, sides stretched out. And I should have shot a bit more to the right, and have the whole tree in.

I managed to take about 20 different panoramas, and processed all of them, and here's what I learnt:

1.Timing: sunrise or sunset. Those are the best times to shoot, the light is just gorgeous, not too harsh.You get a nice warm glow.

2.Camera settings: Manual mode completely. No auto mode, so that the exposure is exactly the same, or you'll end up with pictures that are patchy and inconsistent. Else, you end up with different exposures, and patchy pictures after you stitch. Oh, shoot Raw. There's just so much more data available to use later in post production.

3.Expose for the bright areas. The exposure is tricky, in such a wide panorama, do you expose for the sun/brighter areas or darker areas? I chose the brightest area, so that you don't have blown highlights (check also histogram)- you can always bring out details out from dark areas, but once it is lost/blown out, there is no data there to bring out. So I used F16 (bigger number is good, means small aperture and everything is clear), 1/30s shutter speed (what the camera says is right exposure) ISO 100 (lower better, for low noise), manual white balance (I used sunny), and manual focus (use auto to get the right focus, then move it to manual).

4.Tripod is necessary for very wide panos. Optional for those with fewer pictures. For really wide panoramas, you need the tripod (so that you don't have gaps). Or you can try experimenting hand-held. But on a tripod, I make sure that I can capture what I want, from the start to the end.

5.Overlap by at least 1/3. I take the first shot, if it looks ok (exposure, composition), I shot a shot every 15 degrees. You need at least 1/3 overlap between pictures- more better. As per my comments in the 4th picture, I think if you have more pictures, with more overlap especially in the middle/closest to you - you will have less distortion, and a more natural pano.

6.Shoot portrait. Unfortunately, all my shots were shot landscape. And you get gaps, esp at the corners - like my 3rd picture above, the trees got cut off, as it just wasn't tall enough. What I should have done is, shoot portrait, give lots of room around what you want to shoot, then you can crop in later. If you have gaps, then you're stuffed, and the effort is wasted. You'll end up with more pictures, but again, better more/excess than less/shortage.

7.Use a normal lens, not Ultra Wide Angle lens. The UWA (tokina 11-16 f2.8) is a great lens, very sharp. But for panoramas, the distortion is in proportion with the number of pictures to be stitched together. See above pictures, the 4 image has the least image distortion. 8 image has more, and the 19 has just too much. So if you have just a kit lens, that should be fine. You need a small aperture anyway (big F number).

8.Post Production: Check exposure. I use Lightroom, and I look at the brightest picture, and fine tune it. Then I copy the settings to all other pictures to be used in the same pano. For a few, when the light shift too much, I had to manually tweak the light levels (only), so that it looks even across.

9.Post Production: MICE to stitch. Easy, fuss free, and fast. I import into Lightroom again, for a final touch up, but it really isn't necessary.

Voila! A Pano to capture the scene you want.
Keep Shooting!