Friday, July 13, 2007

Field Guide 101: Shooting Panoramas


Copyright © 2007 Chris Bensen. All rights reserved.


The above photo is a stitch of 8 frames that I took on a trip to Yellowstone National Park in February 2006. Yes, that is the dead of winter. I snowshoed and snow mobile all around the wonderful outdoor amusement park for the better part of two weeks and enjoyed every minute of the -40 below storms to 20 above crystal clear sky. This photo was taken at sunset while a really big storm came in and we had over an hour to get back to the west entrance. Try snowmobiling through a herd of Bison that have made camp on the middle of the road in -30 below temperatures trying to not bump into the big furry beasts. It was a blast!

When shooting panoramic shots use a tripod. This will allow you to keep the horizontal of your photo as you rotate your camera from side to side. Make sure the camera and tripod are level. Overlap each frame by half to allow for easy stitching. I always set my camera vertically so the panoramic shot has a lot of detail vertically.

Each shot should have the exact same exposure. Set your camera on manual exposure and manual focus. Don't change any settings. Set the white balance so it isn't on auto white balance. Avoid using a filter that doesn't apply to the entire frame such as a polarizer or graduated neutral-density filter. The trick is to get the tonal levels of each exposure exactly the same.

The best subjects for stitched panoramic photos is a subject that does not move. If anything is moving in the frame such as wind moving grass, trees or clouds, people walking, changing sky such as sunset or sunrise you might just want to take one nice photo and forget the panorama.

There are a lot of tools for making sure your camera is level and that the camera rotates from the center of the sensor to ensure limited distortion. Lots of software is available for stitching as well. These are all good tools for helping you make some terrific shots that were very difficult before digital.

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