panorama tips

[Mitchell]

I've seen a few panos on here and so thought I would give it a go.
Not as easy as it looks - and not a good past time for the obsessive.

I found it most difficult to be able to align both the top and bottom of each slice, and correcting regions of high detail eg boat masts and houses...

Any tips?

[Yi-P]

What software are you using?
Are you hand holding or tripod mounted?

Things like boats and cars are harder to match up as they move through each different frame.

There are many free panorama stitching tools out there that does wonderful jobs.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

http://www.ptgui.com/

http://www.panoramafactory.com/

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=panor ... =firefox-a

[Mitchell]

Thanks Yi-P, I didn't even know there were software programmes.
These shots were just hand held and then I manually aligned them as different layers in Photoshop.

I'll give the software a go...

[aim54x]

I shoot lots of overlap and fingers crossed!!! shooting at longer focal lengths tends to help as I recently found out

[scott s]

photoshop (CS3 + ) has a feature called photomerge, which automates the panorama PP work. give it a try !

also, basics for pano shots include;
tripod +/- pano head
portrait rather then landscape (more pixels)
avoid auto settings for WB (constant rather than varying)
and use manual mode rather than program, AP or SP ( see above)

[Yi-P]

Thanks Yi-P, I didn't even know there were software programmes.
These shots were just hand held and then I manually aligned them as different layers in Photoshop.

I'll give the software a go...

Oh dear, you must be too good to align that well in photoshop!

As said, photoshop has a tool called photomerge... It does all you need, but I find the stand-alone software does it better, and faster.

I shoot lots of overlap and fingers crossed!!! shooting at longer focal lengths tends to help as I recently found out

Longer focal gives you flatter geometry and also larger photos for you to stitch. You end up with more precise pano stitching.
Do not try using ultra wide angle lenses and stitch things together, geometric distortion will destroy the panorama.

My tip is to use a prime lens, manual exposure mode, and no filters. This combination will speed up the process in front of a computer by, a lot... and I mean a lot...

[big pix]

a pano head would be an asset when shooting pano's...... but a good tripod that is level and a lens 35 to 85 mm for a starting point, should give good results using photomerge in PSCS2,3,or 4 with your camera on manual setting.....

some samples here http://bigpix.smugmug.com/gallery/59986 ... 8934_d333g