A panorama – or panoramic photo – is usually made by stitching several pictures, taken with the same camera, into one. Although you can also achieve a panoramic effect with only one photo by simply cropping it aggressively – especially if you are using a wide angle lens – I will stick to the “multiple photos” approach as it offers more possibilities. A panorama can in general be horizontal, vertical or even be a mosaic of pictures taken in both orientations. For this article I will assume you want to do a horizontal panorama, which means the final photo will have a width much greater than its height and photos will be taken from right to left (or left to right if you prefer but my camera only takes ine way). The technique can, as you will see, easily be adapted to do vertical panoramas.
Making a panoramic photo really only takes a couple of important steps.
The first step is taking the pictures;
The second is stitching them using your computer.
The more effort and attention you put in the first step, the easier the second step will be and the more realistic your final photo will look.
Taking the pictures at the exact place and time. Whether you are shooting inside or outside, and especially if you are planning to shoot a particular event such as a sunset, it is a good idea to arrive early at the location of you shot as a proper setup can take some time.
1.Camera Setup.
What follows is the most important tip of the whole article: Put your camera in all manual mode, including manual focus.
This will ensure all the sub pictures making up the final panorama will have the same exposure level (hence the same brightness/contrast) and the same depth of field. This will make the stitching a lot easier since you will not have to adjust the individual pictures for exposure and focus.
2. Do not use a polarizing filter unless you really have to. When you are going to rotate the camera in order to take the pictures, the incidence of the light on the filter will change and this will result in different colors hues on each picture. This can make the stitching very painful.
3. Try to use a focal lens of 50mm or greater.
This means “zooming in” a little bit. Of course it also means you will have to take more pictures to cover the panorama, but it will result in more details in the end.
It is better to do this because, if you use a wide angle lens (or short focal length), there are changes that objects in the foreground will suffer from distortion, and you will be in trouble to stitch the pictures.
4. Use a tripod.
Set up your tripod so that your camera is perfectly horizontal. You can do this by hand, or use a spirit level if you have one. Top geek stuff: you can buy a mini spirit level that will adapt to the external flash slot (hot shoe) of your camera if it has one.
It is quite important that your camera is horizontal. If it is not you will get some unrecoverable distortions on the horizon line (if shooting outside), and you will loose some height on the final picture.
If you want to fine tune the setup, you can take an extra step to make sure your camera will rotate along the nodal point of this lens, or at least around the symmetry axis of the lens.
5. Be aware of the nodal point of your lens. (optional)
What is the nodal point of a lens you say? It’s the point, on the symmetry axis of the lens, that all the incoming light rays cross being sent to the focal plane. Rotating around this point will give you zero distortion. Rotating around a different point will create distortion – due to the parallax phenomenon. If the tripod mount crew on the camera is not even aligned with the lens axis you’ll need to buy a specialized tripod extension that will allow you to slide the camera horizontally so that the rotating axis of the tripod is in line with the nodal point.
Such devices are often called Panoramic Tripod Heads. The nodal point of your lens change when you zoom in and out. Finding it is a matter of trials and adjustments: try to locate two vertical objects, such as poles or light posts, one being close from the camera and the other being far away from it. Take two different shots by rotating the camera and compare the position of each object relative to the other. If the objects have moved away or toward each other from one shot to the other, you are not yet rotating around the nodal point. Finding the precise nodal point even with most regular lenses is often a matter of millimeter, but with a few tries you should get close enough.
Note that this step is optional. You will get perfectly decent results even if you skip it and rotate around a different point, especially if you are shooting outdoor landscape panorama. More distortion will show if you are shooting indoors, where the perspective lines may appear quite different from one shot to the other.
If you don’t have a tripod:
Hold the camera at the eye level and tuck your elbows close to your body to avoid moving the camera too much when you rotate. Try to keep the camera at the same level when rotating (the horizon line is a good marquee when you shoot outside). Rotate using your shoulders and waist, and try to rotate around the camera rather than rotating the camera itself. You’ll be closer from the nodal point this way.
