Panoramic Photography

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wemustdesign

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I have been reading a lot about the different ways that you can create panoramic photographs.

I am not sure whether to use a 'one shot' panoramic lens or use the tripod method and stitch the photographs together.

Does anyone have any experience in using these techniques?

Any advice on which one is the best?

Thanks,

Chris Davidson
 
Welcome to the forum.

By 'one shot lens'...do you just mean an ultra wide lens or something more specific? There are cameras like the Widelux, which pan the lens to get extremely wide shots but maybe that's not what you are looking for.

I've tried photo stitching...it's not all that hard to get OK results...but getting perfect results can take time. To be fair, I just did it manually with photoshop, there are many different programs (including photoshop) that have 'stitching' features that can automate some of the work.
 
I haven't tried it yet but the new CS3 supposedly will do it automatically as well.
 
Well I have seen on of these lenses which captures the 360 view with one shot. I have tried stiching in Photoshop and is easy to do but it is hard to stitch photos when there is people in the photo.

Here is the attachment I am talking about:

http://www.0-360.com/
 
What I find to be very effective when shown is the simplest option which is to use Manual setting of aperture and shutter speed (to preserve uniformity of exposure) and not use a tripod but judge a slight overlap through memorising a feature in each frame and recomposing with it on the opposite side.

This works really well as the shots will not line up perfectly in a horizontal line thus lending a distinct air of being there to the viewer.

Also, I try to make sure that there is at least one person in the series and ask them to move during the sequence so they appear twice (any more and it just looks like a silly trick) - never fails to elicit questions such as how the heck did you do that?

I know, it's darn obvious how I did it 'cos it's not a stitched panorama but because a photograph is a record of a moment in time something in the viewer's mind says that all the images must surely have been taken at the same time so that must be two people mustn't it?

This is also a very cheap way of doing it and is immensely satisfying when it comes off.
 
Oh, and don't use a wide angle lens if you want a realistic looking result.
 
Wide angle lens equals distortion. Use a stitch program, they are simple to use and if you do the lighting right it will be almost impossible to spot. I make calendars with waterfalls( 13wx19h) and river panoramics 13hx19w. As high as 7 photos stitched together for some of them, but mostly just 3 or 4 photos stitched for best results.
 
I've taken my share of panoramas, and the best program I found was by far AutoPano from www.autopano.net, but it's not free

Learn how to use that and you can make some very nice panoramas, but as Big Mike said, it's really easy to get ok panos.

It does take a bit of work, such as figuring out the best method of color correction, and which type of blending you want (Smartblend, which is a free standalone command line utility, but is incorporated into APP) is the best I've seen

There are free programs around that'll do a good job, but in my experience were more complicated than APP, but then that was back in the day ;)
 
I use several methods to create panoramic photos. I have a Widelux swing lens pano cam, crop from medium format and 4x5 film, and stitch digital files together. The single exposure methods are probably easier than stitching and definately better for moving subjects, but they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I stitch by manipulating the images manually in CS2, because so far I'm too cheap to buy the fancy pano stitch software my buddies use, but I have to say that some of the stitching software is pretty amazing.

I'm very curious about this guy's techniques

http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/turkeycinemascope1.php?sid=1
 
For not too wide panoramas you can use a wide angle lens. If you hold the camera horizontally, then distortion is less of an issue as one might think (at least down to 16mm focal length on 35mm film). However, since then you only use a thin stripe of the image, you lose resolution.

As for stitching, whenever there are no objects in the foreground, things are pretty much forward, and handheld or a tripod will do. If however you have foreground and background objects, then you wil get a parallax problem if you do not rotate the camera around the nodal point. This can best be done with a panorama head for a tripod (fairly expensive if bought ... but there are DIY solutions to it).
 
I doubt you're considering expensive film alternatives, but because I don't know if you're talking about a high-end pro job or a hobby, don't neglect considering the Hasselblad Xpan, a lovely panorama rangefinder that will shoot across two 35mm film frames. Quite a cool camera:

xpan30kit_pv.jpg


Read about it at the Lumious Landscape, linked below:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/haselbla.shtml

If they make a digital one, I will be first in line.
 
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