Panorama tutorial and tips

As this module is primarily about panoramas I thought it'd be useful to look for some advice on creating them to avoid commonly made mistakes. Below I have selected sections of an article/tutorial I found online that explains the process fairly well:



As someone who has made every mistake possible while trying to understand the art and science of making panoramas, I'm here to tell you that it isn't rocket science.

By the time you finish reading this article, you're going to be grabbing your camera bag and rushing out the door to try it for yourself.

The first step in the whole process of course, is selecting a suitable landscape to photograph. And as we have all heard: you should always choose one of the “golden hours” of the day, meaning an hour before, during or after sunrise or sunset. I personally favor twilight, whether morning or evening. Twenty minutes to half an hour after sunset (or before dawn), the sky and clouds have an incredible glow that can range from deep pastel colors all the way to the most intriguing blues and violets.



Illustration: Nubble Light, York, Maine: a 20 image panorama.

The second step is to set up your dSLR on a good, solid tripod. I can't say enough about the merits of a sturdy tripod, but I'll leave it at this advice: if you spent less than $100, there's a good chance your tripod may be flimsy enough to introduce some vibration or camera shake that could ruin your images.

And while it's also nice to have a ballhead, a good 360 degree rotating head that can support your camera in vertical orientation will usually do the trick. I use a very old Bogen 3011 tripod and a Manfrotto 3025 panoramic attachment for my panoramas, but I have made do without the panoramic head for years successfully, and sometimes still don't use it at all. Other people use more technical equipment, like the Panosaurus or the Nodal Ninja, both of which allow one to be very precise. A panoramic head or ball head simply make the whole process easier.

The third step is to put your camera in vertical (portrait) orientation, making absolutely certain that your tripod and camera are completely level. To help with this, I use an Adorama Double Bubble Level, which looks a lot like a very small carpenter's level, and attaches in the hot shoe of your camera. It helps so you don't get stitching errors or a bowed, wavy-looking banner of a panorama.

Now it's time to take some pictures. First of all, I shoot solely in RAW format. RAW allows you the ability to really get the most out of each file, whereas even high-quality jpegs have discarded much of the workable information that is left in a RAW file.

I prefer to shoot wide, using the Pentax DA 12-24mm ultra wide or the Pentax DA 18-55mm ALII lenses at f/13 or f/16 using ISO 100 or 200, but f/8 or above will suffice. (I know photographers who use such lenses as the Pentax DA 10-17mm fisheye, or the Sigma 10-20mm.)

Just like any other time, start by focusing one-third of the way into the landscape or architectural piece you want to photograph. You'll need to lock your focus at this point, or your focal point will change each time you depress the shutter button, which will leave you with out of focus and underwhelming final results. The best way to accomplish this is to simply switch out of auto focus mode and into manual focus mode once you have focused your lens where you want.


In addition, you'll need to lock your exposure after deciding what you feel will expose best for all the variations in light in the area you'll be photographing.

If you don't lock your exposure you will get what is known as "banding." Banding is when you have all different exposure values (darker and lighter) showing like slices throughout the many pieces in a stitched panorama.


I typically begin by setting my camera to “Aperture Priority” (Av) mode and then moving the f-stop setting to either f/11 or f/13, for maximum depth of field, carefully checking the view finder to note the shutter speed that the camera has automatically chosen to get a properly exposed picture.

I next switch to Manual mode and dial in that f-stop and shutter speed.

Very often you will be taking pictures where the sun is on one side of the picture and it can be quite dark or shaded in other parts. While some panoramic stitching programs are fairly good at equalizing the exposures, there will still be a lot of ugly variation in your finished file unless you lock the exposure.

So, now let's begin... We'll use this panorama as an example:



Illustration: Sunrise on Blue Hill Bay, Blue Hill, Maine: a 10 image panorama.

Each shot you take should be overlapped by 20 to 25% as you will get better stitching results.

While using a tripod is important, a wonderful thing I have discovered is that you can often take a handheld pano--even a very long one. As long as it is bright enough to handhold the camera at a fast enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur, you can stand in one central place, hold the camera at eye level and pivot at the hip from left to right or right to left, and you can get quite level panoramas, like this one, taken after a three hour climb that I knew adding the 12-pound weight of my tripod to wouldn't work for me:



Illustration: Tumbledown Mountain, Weld, Maine - a 20 image, 180 degree handheld panorama.

I have even done handheld 360 degree panoramas, like this one:



Illustration: Tommy's Park, Portland, Maine - a 45-image handheld panorama, stitched in Little Planet Projection using PTGui.

Finally, let's talk about how to put your panorama together. I sometimes use a program called PTGui, but mostly Photoshop CS4 stitches them together with great results. Not everyone has Photoshop OR PTGui of course... And there are quite a few free stitching programs out there to download that people have great success with, such as Hugin and ArcSoft Panorama Maker.

For ease of explanation, I'll demonstrate how I put together a panorama in Photoshop CS4.

Begin in Photoshop by selecting File> Automate> Photomerge:



Next, make sure you make the selections as circled below:

Auto Layout
Blend Images Together
Vignette Removal
Geometric Distortion Correction. Then click the Browse button to select the files you want to stitch together.



When your files are selected in the Source Files box, as seen below, click OK and let the pano-making begin!



It will take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour or so, depending on several factors:

• The number of files. 
• The size of the files. 
• How level each shot is. 
• The computer's CPU speed and amount of memory. 
• If you are using Photoshop in 32-bit or 64-bit. 

You can expect your output file to look something like this:



Notice how the edges are rough and the right side curves upward a little? Apparently, I didn't have my camera as level as I thought I did! This is easily fixed in Photoshop by using the Warp command.

Before doing this, you'll need to flatten the many layers of your pano by clicking on:Layer Menu> Flatten Image. Once it has flattened, press <Control J> to make a new layer via copy. And then go to Edit> Transform> Warp:

A grid will be placed over your entire image (see below). You can pull on any of the dots or corners to re-shape your pano exactly as you'd like it by clicking on them and dragging gently in the directions you want to go. Notice how in the large red oval the off-kilter horizon has been mostly corrected. You can continue “warping” your pano until you're satisfied with the results.



And then, simply click on the Crop tool in the tools palette and a window will pop up, asking if you'd like to apply the transformation. Click apply, and after a few seconds, your pano will be ready to crop.



Now use the crop tool to crop the boundaries of the panorama, because your photo actually extends behind the area you can currently see. That extra area will be shown when you print it unless you crop it first. Click twice within the picture, allowing the crop to happen, like so:

You can finish your panorama with whatever techniques you would normally apply to your landscape photographs to make the best output image possible.

You can even go back and re-warp the panorama if you notice a place that isn't just right.

It isn't destructive to your file at all.

And if you happen to make a mistake, simply press Control Z to get rid of the last action you performed, or go to the Edit Menu> Undo.

Once you have flattened your file and saved it at 300 dpi as a jpeg or tiff, you will be ready to print, mat and frame it.

You now can do what you once thought impossible to do without a Panoramic View Camera.

You, my friend, are now a Panoramic Artist.

Go forth and panorama your world!




Illustration: Portland Head Light, 8 image vertical panorama.



Illustration: Blue Hill Bay, 20 image panorama


Illustration: The Victoria Mansion Dining Room, a 45 image, multi-level panorama

Reference:

http://www.photographyblog.com/articles/how_to_take_great_panorama_photos