Photo Tip - Panoramic

Panorama from the Greek means 'all sight'. And that's exactly what a panoramic image does, it gives the viewer an unbroken sight of an area surroundings by a succession of continuous images.


Nowadays, photographers can create their own size of panoramic images in Photoshop, but for film and printing purpose the most common size is the 6cm x 17cm. In general the ratio, should be 1:3, meaning the width is normally 3 times bigger than the height. 

This tip is not on how to stitch the images when post processing them, but it is an easy check list of a couple of steps that I do when actually taking the images on the field.

Image 1 - Death Valley morning light panoramic

When I find a subject that offers the potential to a panoramic image, I proceed with the following steps:


1 - I normally position my camera on my tripod in the portrait position. This step will give me more information on the top and the bottom of the picture to discard once the images are stitched together on the post-processing phase. 


2 - I try to use a zoom in my lenses closer or higher than 50mm to avoid lenses distortion, which can make it more difficult to stitch an image together. 


3 - I compose the image with enough extra space on the top and the bottom to facilitate the cropping in photoshop once all images are stitched together.


4 - I do a dry run of the frames to photograph and check for any object mainly in the foreground that will appear distort, and to plan for anything that might need to appear in just one frame. Avoid compositions with people or moving objects such as rivers and waterfalls, unless the subject can be placed in its totality in just one frame.


5 - During the dry run, I also try out the exposure in each frame before setting my final one with my camera on manual mode. Always use manual mode when doing a panorama to avoid changes in the exposure from one frame to another. (If your image is a landscape remember to use an f/stop of 11 or higher to optimize the depth of field).


6 - I focus, using either manual mode or autofocus, around 1/3 inside the image. If I am using autofocus, I change it to manual to ensure all frames will have the same focus.  


7 - This next step is very important! It sounds silly, but this is the only way I have found to be able to mark the sequence of images for a panorama among all the other images on the disk. After composing the first frame, I place my hand in front of the lenses holding 1 finger up. Once I finish the image sequence, I place my hand in front of the lenses again, only this time holding 2 fingers up. When, rating and sorting the images later in the computer, it is extremely easy to spot the beginning and ending of the panoramic sequence.

Image 2 - Panoramic Sequence of Images of Matterhorn

8 - I shoot the sequence of frames overlapping 1/3 of the previous image on the following image. I move the camera around as fast as possible to avoid change in light intensity.  


Then, it is time to let photoshop do all the hard work for you. Once the layers are merged, and the image is cropped to cut the excesses, I process it the same way I do all other images.

Image 3 - Post-processed Panorama of Matterhorn