AlaskaPhotoGraphics Blog: Panoramas

Creating panorama images using a digital camera is one example of the diversity available in todays age of digital photography. In the film days I used a medium format 6cm x 17cm film camera (to the tune of about 10K w/lenses) and although it made great images, it was slow and cumbersome. Today however, instead of carrying two different camera types one can use a digital camera to shoot multiple frames and stitch them together with an automated feature in Adobe Photoshop.

While the shooting process is fairly simple, there are a few things to consider from a technical perspective. First of all, a tripod head that rotates is very helpful. I use a ballhead primarily favored for wildlife photography and Really Right Stuff makes one that includes a rotating plate as part of the quick release. It is the PCL version if you look for it on their website. Basically, this gives a pan axis to the top of the ballhead independent of the ballhead base. The handy level bubble on the plate makes it easy to establish a base angle without needing to fuss with the legs to level your camera. While advocating the use of good tripod and head, I have shot a number of panoramas hand held--this is generally done with long lenses. Any slight mismatch of frames can be cropped out later. In addition, shooting vertical is an option, which generates a larger file size and requires more frames to create the 1x3 format. Some other steps to consider...

Make sure your tripod is stable
Find your focal and focus points and don't change them
Set your camera to manual exposure mode, so all subsequent files have the same exposure value.
Overlap the images by about 50%, it gives the software enough data to use when analyzing the match between consecutive frames.
Turn off IS on your lense if your shutter is below 1/30 sec.

I use Lightroom 2 to make the necessary adjustments to the raw files, and there is a handy way to open them in Photoshop. Just go to Photo/Edit in/Merge to panorama in Photoshop. There you will find a few options to select and you can experiment with the perspective issues. I often use auto, but it depends on the focal length.

It can be a challenge to think and visualize in a 1 x 3 panorama ratio when your camera viewfinder is in a 2 x3 ratio, but a little practice and experimenting takes care of that.