Shooting panoramas

[Corry]

I would really like to shoot some panoramas...I've never done it before. Any tips or tricks??? I'll ask questons on stitching them together when the time comes...I just want to know tips and tricks on shooting them for now. Thanks!!!!

 

[Karalee]

Stay in one spot, dont zoom in or out in between frames.

Yep, thats about all Ive got.

 

[photobug]

1- Use a tripod. Level it.
2- See #1
3- Shoot manual mode, or use the exposure lock
4- See #1
5- Use manual focus
6- See #1
7- Shoot portrait mode for horizontal shots, horizontal mode for vertical shots.
8- Overlap your shots by approximately 1/2 the frame to give yourself room for alignment errors.
9- See #1
10- There's some esoteric stuff concerning determining the nodal point of the lens and other weird stuff you'll want to know later, but this should get you started.
11- See #1 (sensing a theme here?)

 

[Corry]

Great! Thanks!!!! That'll definately help!

 

[mentos_007]

hmm so I think I can help you:
1. be quite far from things you're going to take photo of (there wouldn't appear "barrel effect")
2. download The Panorama Factory (or buy)
3. Use tripod
4. All manual settings - manual focus and exposure speed, apperture... all manual
5. Don't change the settings above... set them on average point and don't change!!! One panorama - one settings!

 

[Johnboy2978]

Once you have the pics, you can also stitch them together pretty easily with Photoshop. My biggest problem with playing with panoramas is when I go to stictch them together, I will have all different levels of contrast even though I make sure that the exposure value is the same with each shot. Inevitably though, I will have 5 or so pics and 5 different levels that I have to adjust for a while until it matches in the panorama shot.
One thing that I've found useful is to set it up as mentos and others have suggested, and take a few shots of each shot with different aperature values to have more to choose from. I have been doing this in manual mode with my sony mvc cd500, perhaps, I should be setting it to aperature priority instead to get a more consistent value.

Good luck, they really look nice when you're done.