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Panoramic Photography
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Hi there, has anyone done any panoramic photography. How difficult is it ? Will an ordinary tripod with a head that can turn 360 degrees do ? What sort of software are people using to stitch them together ?
has anyone used either of these applications : http://www.autopano.net/en/ or http://www.panoramafactory.net and if so how easy is it to use them ? Can you use Photoshop for panoramas and finally is it easy to get large panoramas printed ?
Sorry about the amount of questions posted in one thread but I am interested in getting real peoples experiences and opinions.
Cheers. :D
Mark.
using a normal tripod head can work, but it depends on circumstances
if the shot does not have either big forground elements or lots of verticals you should be ok
if your trying to shoot the interior of a room or something you will have problems generally
I use a manfrotto 303-sph and a leveling base
the nice thing about this system is its very flexable ie i can use either my fisheye or a longer lense with the same system
i tend not to use photoshop to stich and prefer PTGUI instead i find it more accurate and flexable
in terms of printing them i have printed panos up to 5 metres wide
HI Mark
I’ve done a bit. It’s not that difficult once you do some planning. The image below is made up of 3 images,
captured handheld without a tripod.
Give it a try and get some practise before getting too concerned with the equipment. Then
read up on it and research it a bit more.
You can get panoramic specific heads and all that which will help but as I say do some
practising first and get a feel for it.
In terms of software I’ve used both photoshop and free software that came with my
camera. Both of them handled the images fairly well as long as there was enough detail to help the
software line them up. Again, try them out and see how you go.
In terms of printing I’m sure some of the Advertisers on this forum will be only too glad
to help.2 Tips: –
1. Put your camera in Manual mode and control your exposures so that you get the
same exposure (e.g. f/11, 1/200 sec, iso 100) in each of the images that go in to your
stitch. Otherwise as you move around the scene capturing your images you could end up with
some of the images having different exposures which will show up in the stitched image.
2. When capturing your images overlap your images by about 30%. This will give the software
plenty of detail to allow it to line up the images correctly.Best of luck
Martin.
Thanks Steve, you never know, if I get any good at it I could be back to you to get something printed. Though if I come home with something 5 meters wide the missus may have something to say :?
It’s not an exhaustive how-to, but this article of mine gives a good primer on the technique:
http://www.petercox.ie/newsletters/mar09-newsletter.pdf
Cheers,
PeterI can recommend Serif’s PanoramaPlus 3 for stitching panos. Photoshop can be iffy about stitching.
I’ve done some panoramic stuff using a normal tripod with a ball-head. One tip is to set your exposure to the middle of the shot and use manual settings as someone mentioned previously. Another tip is to shoot vertically, that means you get a lot of sky and a lot of foreground, you can then crop away what you want. Naturally shooting vertically means you’ll need a lot more pictures.
Here are two of my panoramas:
Skittle
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