HDR Panorama

[Ssscomp]

I want to shoot a panoramic HDR of a river. Holding my Olympus EM-vertically I anticipate probably five overlapping shots to be stitched together for the panorama. For each of the five shots I will take three photos from a tripod The first with normal exposure, The second shot two stops underexposed and The third two stops overexposed. My question is this:

Should I make three separate panoramas one using the underexposed photos, a second using the normally expose photos and the third with the overexposed photos and then use these three photos to create the HDR or should I make five HDR photos first and then stitch them together to make the panorama. Which comes first? The panorama or the HDR? I will be using light room and Photoshop CC. Thanks for any thoughts.

 

[HughGuessWho]

No, process your hdr stacks first, then stitch your pano together

 

[Rick50]

Try it both ways. I use Photomatix and leave the settings the same for each of the 3 images. I don't really like the way Lightroom does it so it's unknown to me if it will vary it's settings between images.

 

[KmH]

+1 make the HDR first then stitch.
Unfortunately, neither Lightroom nor Photoshop are the best tools for making HDRs or for stitching panoramas together.

 

[weepete]

I find lightroom does a decent enough job. Pesonally I lens correct then stitch first then HDR and process.

 

[Braineack]

Why arbitrarily 5 images? Why not exactly the number of images it takes per shot to gather a full range of DR?

 

[The Barbarian]

This one was stitched first and then made into an HDR

I pick which one first, by which seems more effective at the time. It can go either way for me. I use Microsoft ICE for panos, so that may be a factor.