John & Maria's Photography Pages

Panoramas

I like shooting panoramas.  By panoramas I mean images stitched together from multiple shots to produce either a very wide format - as with the shot of Bognor Regis beach above - or wider than normal such as the view of The Garden House in autumn below.

Because I offer my images for sale I don't generally go much wider than 2 or 3 times the normal 4:3 aspect ratio of my Olympus cameras. But sometimes you need to get an even wider view to fit everything in.  This view of the Dart estuary between Dartmouth (r) and Kingswear (l) needed the extra width to show the full stretch of the harbour.

 

Sometimes I use the panoramic stitching simply to generate a higher resolution file than would be possible with the native resolution of the camera.  The image below, of a Devon hedgebank in spring,  has a lot of detail and needed a higher resolution shot than my 16Mpx EM5 Mkii could provide.  I wasn't in a position to shoot a high res shot but I could take an overlapping sequence and merge them later in post.

Which brings me neatly to technique.  

There are many and varied pieces of equipment to generate the sequence of shots needed to generate panoramic images, ranging from simple panoramic tripod heads to full blown motorised gear used to produce gigapixel images.  The aim is to precisely align the individual shots so that they are level and produce a good overlap to allow the software to produce the best image possible.

I don't use any of them.

I often work handheld, relying on the in viewfinder level to keep the images horizontal and then steadily pan across to take a sequence of images that overlap by about a third.  I do not use the autofocus and auto modes (Shutter, Aperture or Program modes).  Excellent though they are for normal use they can far too easily misalign the focal plane and the exposure between the shot sequence.  Manual focus to set a hyperfocal distance for maximum depth of field and manual exposure to meter the brightest part of the planned shot sequence provides a consistent focal plane and exposure between the shots.  

I usually shoot in portrait orientation to generate the maximum height in the final panorama and take as many shots as is needed to cover the full width of the planned final image.  One advantage of using panoramic merging instead of a wide angle lens is the abilty to shoot without the distortion of a wide angle lens.  My 12-40mm f2.8 Pro or the 40-150mm Pro are the lenses of choice, providing the image quality needed without vignetting or the edge curvature from wide angle lenses.

Once in Lightroom I use the Merge facilities in the Library Module to stitch the photos together before processing to my taste.  Whether the results - the image below of Millbay and Plymouth Hoe is another  good example - will ever sell is another matter.  But at least I enjoyed myself.