Panoramas: Getting The Big Picture

Stunning panoramas are within your grasp with this step-by-step process

Text And Photography By David Skenick And Brian Valente

Labels: Camera Technique, Panoramas

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Camera Settings
When it’s time to shoot, the camera should be on all manual settings. That’s because we’re combining multiple pictures together and want the exposures to match exactly. Manual settings include setting your white balance, aperture, shutter speed and focus. Stay away from any automatic settings as they may change across all your exposures and ruin your panorama.

Correctly exposing a panorama can be tricky, as you may be dealing with a wide range of exposures. You should meter to set one exposure for all the pictures you’ll stitch together. Meter for an “average” shot in your panorama. To do this, set your camera on aperture priority and rotate your camera through your panorama to find a section of your image that’s midway between the lightest and darkest parts of your total image. Check the exposure your camera indicates, switch to manual and set your shutter and aperture to those settings.

To create a top-quality panorama, one needs to plan ahead and work carefully. Using prime lenses, a precision tripod head and shooting with the camera in a vertical “portrait” orientation, Brian Valente and David Skernick have the process down to a science. These images exhibit resolution, proper exposure and compelling composition.

Set the manual white balance for the most uniformity as well. Since you’ll almost always be outside, this usually will be either “Sunny” or “Cloudy.” Remember, you can always tweak the color later in Photoshop. For now, you just want to be as consistent as possible. Be sure that you aren’t on auto white balance, as it will change from shot to shot and ruin your panorama.

Shooting Your Images
Make sure your tripod is completely level. Most tripod heads come with a bubble or you can buy a separate leveling device. Set up your camera in portrait (vertical) orientation. It seems a little counterintuitive, but portrait gives you the best ratio of height vs. width. Remember that you’re shooting a whole series of images that will be stitched together, so it will be plenty wide.

When panning and shooting individual images, try to overlap each image about 25 to 30 percent. It seems like a lot, but it makes stitching almost completely automatic and transparent. We avoid the “click stops” of some panoramic heads. They aren’t calibrated for any particular lens focal length and may not give you the ideal amount of overlap.

Try to avoid shots with wind or movement that would cause blur when combining the multiple shots, such as leaves or flowers in the foreground swaying in the breeze. If you’re shooting waves, you can try shooting at a slower shutter speed and blurring them.

Finally, use a remote release and, if available, your mirror lock-up or delayed shutter release for maximum sharpness.

Quick Fix

Shooting Panoramas
• Make sure your tripod is level
• Use manual settings for white balance, shutter speed, aperture and focus
• Overlap images by 25 to 30 percent
• Use remote release and mirror lock-up, if available

Stitching It All Together
Surprisingly, stitching your images together is the easiest step of all. There are many dedicated programs and plug-ins that do the job—we prefer using the built-in capabilities of Adobe Photoshop CS3.

For Photoshop workflow, first load your images into Adobe Bridge. Next, select all of your panorama images, and from within Bridge select the action Photoshop > Photomerge. Use all the defaults, including Auto-Align for the best results. After a while (and it could be a long while if you have a slow computer or a lot of images), your panorama will come to life in Photoshop. Make sure to crop the outside edges, as even the best panorama will have a few edges that are missing. After inspecting the image to make sure it has stitched together without any seams, we suggest you flatten it to reduce the file size.

That’s it—you now have the big picture!

David Skernick is a professional photographer, owner of PHOTO 24, Inc. stock photo agency and host of Get Lost!, an educational television program on YouTube. Visit www.getlosttv.com. Brian Valente is a professional photographer and the producer of Get Lost! Claims that he’s responsible for getting David to spend all his money on new camera gadgets are highly exaggerated. Visit www.bvalente.smugmug.com.

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9 Comments

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hoanglong makes this comment

Friday, 10 July 2009

the picture is nice
John McKeown makes this comment

Tuesday, 04 November 2008

Harvey, This is a great article. I travelled around Ireland taking 360 degree images to try to capture the "scenes". I wish I had also taken some shots to re create panoramas.
Bob D. makes this comment

Thursday, 11 September 2008

This YouTube site doesn't do justice to the photos but I found that slideshow software that does panning really works well with panoramas. In this case, I am using ProShow GOLD>
John Trammell makes this comment

Friday, 05 September 2008

Skenick and Valente certainly make nice panoramas, and I suspect that if I followed their recommendations my panoramas would improve. However, I've stitched many panoramas since George Lepp first wrote on the subject in Outdoor Photographer, without using any special equipment other than a tripod and level. Zoom lenses are O.K. if you make sure the focal length doesn't change. Hand-held panoramas can be stitched successfully, though more cropping will likely be necessary. As far as I'm concerned the two most important factors are manual exposure and sufficient overlap. Of all the stitching programs and modules (I've used most of them) PanoramaPlus from Serif is the most forgiving of errors in leveling, overlap, etc. Using the program, I've been able to stitch scanned images that were made long before the digital era.
Stephen Jonas makes this comment

Wednesday, 03 September 2008

Great article it answered a couple questions i've had for a while, thank you. But what got me was i've also shot that same schoolhouse. I shot it in July driving back from Yellowstone this year, it certainly is a small world.
Cynthia Farr-Weinfeld makes this comment

Wednesday, 03 September 2008

The vertical orientation of the camera allows more room for parallax errors to be corrected, as you have more overlap on the top and the bottom. I only have PS CS2, and while my father has CS3 and has had a lot of success with it as a stitching tool, we both have found that a plug-in called PTGui is best 99.9% of the time. Thanks for sharing your techniques in this article! I'd love to be able to see your panoramas even larger--for some reason, even with Photo Zoom, they are too small to really enjoy. Thanks, Cynthia Farr-Weinfeld, Portland, ME
Scott Stulberg makes this comment

Tuesday, 02 September 2008

Hi Harvey, You need to get an L Bracket.......online from Really Right Stuff. The L Bracket....gives you a release plate on the side of your camera.....along with the bottom of your camera. This lets you shoot vertically in seconds......and is the way many pros work. You need to be using an Arca Swiss type ballhead......because that is how the L Brackets work. And Really Right Stuff has great ballheads that have the Arca Swiss Quick release plates that work with their L Brackets. Go to their website and you will see what it is all about. I shoot many panoramas....and this is the way to go. reallyrightstuff.com good luck..... scott stulberg
Doug H. makes this comment

Tuesday, 02 September 2008

Harvey, I would suggest you look into an "L" shaped camera plate. You'll be able to rotate from Landscape to Portrait and maintain camera balance.
Harvey M. makes this comment

Tuesday, 02 September 2008

Your article is interesting and helpful. I am confused by your recommendation on the orientation of the camera. "Set up your camera in portrait (vertical) orientation." All of the tripod heads that I own or have seen rotate around a single point (center of the tripod) and I thought the idea is to center the camera lens at this point to minimize the shift as the camera rotates around this central pivot point. If I change the camera orientation to a portrait/vertical position, the camera will "hang over" one side of the tripod head and will no longer be centered over the pivot point. The only thing I can think of is that you have an additional attachment that holds the camera in the portrait/vertical position over the center pivot point.

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Panoramas: Getting The Big Picture

Stunning panoramas are within your grasp with this step-by-step process

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