Friday, April 20, 2012

How To Do Panoramic Photography

By Amy Renfrey


Discovering the way to learning how to do panoramic photography is one of the most exciting and fun things in photography. You can create hundreds of photos that look stunning on your wall or home office. It's not only a great way to practice the way you look at photography in general, but a great way to master your landscape photography skills as well.

Let's start with why panoramas were "invented". Software businesses knew that the view was larger than what our cameras could capture. So they created a process called "stitching". Stitching is a word used to describe taking a series of photos side by side and merging them together to create one distinct, long and wide photo.

For panorama photography you don't need anything too pricey when it comes to cameras. You just need a tripod, good lighting and some software. My favourite software to stitch my panoramas is called "Panorama Maker Pro". Nowadays they have version 6 accessible. You can even trial it for a brief period of time to decide whether or not it is right for you.

I have made a lot of panoramas with the software. Once complete you can clearly see how it beautifully elongates a scene. This works splendidly for landscape photography. When you want to capture your scene and do not have a wide or ultra wide angle lens, making a panorama is great fun.

How To Shoot Panoramic Photos- Here is how you set up the camera There's one thing to make panoramas, and another thing to actually take them. There is a particular way to shoot panoramic pictures and it's less difficult than you are probably thinking. Okay, so let's start out.

Let's begin with photographing a landscape photograph. Select the scene you want to photograph. Make sure your landscape has nice lighting and there are no harsh shadows across your scene, it will make it easier to stitch if you have a bright and open landscape.

Set your digital camera up on a tripod. Keep the camera securely fastened and able to move about from left to right or right to left only. It's crucial that you let the tripod to move horizontally. If your tripod slips down vertically while you are shooting you make risk having your photo blurry and the software will be unable to stitch correctly.

Don't photograph into the sun. Have the sun at the back of you. It is ideal to photograph at the end of the day, or the start of the day. The light is nicer, sweeter and gentler at the start and end of the day. The tones are deeper too.

Producing Panoramic Photos Choose manual setting and position the camera towards the part of the scene you want to expose properly. Now keep the camera on those modes the whole time. Let's say you have the camera at 1/250th of a second and F20, 100 ISO. You've decided that you want a certain part of the picture to be well exposed and these settings will do it. That's good, keep them that way and don't change the settings at all. Once you have chosen your settings, now take a sequence of photos, one after the other. Move the camera from left to right, for example. Make sure you leave a section of the scene as overlap. Your stitching software program needs to overlap something.

What Sorts Of Things Can You Make a Panorama From? Moving subjects may not work- based on the light. Start with unmoving subjects. Landscapes with a nothing but blue sky and a mountain range are good subjects to begin with. Nothing is moving so the software should not have any worry stitching your scene as one.Let me clarify.

If you are shooting with a shutter speed of /125th of a second and the subjects is moving, like water for example, then you may not have a quick enough shutter speed for the motion of the camera and the water. In one photo the water will be at the peak of the rock and the next photo the water will be half way down the rock. When the software tries to stitch two irregularities together it will not be able to form a full picture. You must always keep the scene without movement so the software can stitch the photo in exactly the same spot. It will then make photo 1 the same as photo 2. There will be no difficulties and the two photos will come together nicely.

However, on saying that, if you have heaps of light and a quick shutter speed you must to move the camera faster than the water is moving. In other words, you need to move super fast to make sure you position your camera in a way that the stitching will match up. If the water is moving at 1/250th of a second, then you need to move at 1/500th of a second. You need to move the camera from left to right, more rapidly than the water. However for now, begin with a single scene without movement of any kind. Keep your mind on a motionless subject. It?s easier in the beginning that way.

What Other Scenes Create Magnificent Panoramas- There are plenty of ways to make your photos extensive and big.

Mountain ranges are not the only places that look good as panoramas. Once you have mastered the shutter speed and speed of movement for photographing a series of pictures, why not attempt a waterfall. Once you have mastered this technique of panorama shooting, you can work to create panoramas in any direction. Not only do horizontal panoramas work but so do squares (tiles- two at the top and two at the bottom of your image, and so do vertical scenes.

I took a series of photos at Katoomba National Park in New South Wales, just a couple of hours drive out of Sydney, Australia. I did what was referred to as a "tile." The photo comprised of 6 photos; 3 bottom ones and 3 top ones. I was vigilant not to overlap any areas of the water because I was unable to shift the camera quickly and have a fast shutter speed. This was due to the sunlight dipping behind the mountain. I used a very high ISO to compensate for the light reduction. I knew it would be okay to do this as my digital camera wouldn't overexpose anything in shadowy light like this. I was blessed, the photo turned out well.

Making Your Panorama as a Final Image- Placing your panorama together

Once you have photographed a sequence of shots from left to right, say 5, simply upload the pictures to your computer. Open up the Panorama software program. Then, once you are in, pick the photos you want to work on. You will be able to follow the instructions pretty well once you are in the program itself. If your panorama works properly, you should see a big photo. It is brilliant to see, for the very first time, that your photos have now become one and you are looking at a large image- exactly the way you saw it with your own eyes. It?s a stunning thing to experience. :)

Producing panoramas is a superb way to not only become skilled at the art of photography but allows you look at scenes differently. You will have a new love and excitement for landscapes especially.Don't only stick with landscapes. Once you get more accustomed with the progression, try creating photos of trees, water, oceans (remember your light and shutter), roads, and even walking tracks. Everything I have mentioned seems like a landscape scene, but if you do additional photographing you will find you can make a panorama out of just about anything. It's so much fun to do!




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