Panorama Guidelines

[Peterj]

A number of folks in our camera club have asked for advice on capturing panoramas. I volunteered to to put something together.

I'd appreciate any input on my start ...

Panorama Photography
Tips & Hints
Setup & Capture
• Know your camera – if it has a pano setting use it
    ◦ Panorama mode usually locks exposure
• Smart phones can create awesome panos
• Best results are obtained using a tripod
    ◦ If shooting hand held use camera’s level & tilt indicators in viewfinder
    ◦ Keep your body and legs stationary, rotate your head and camera with your neck
• Panoramas can be vertical – water falls
• Plan your captures – we read left to right – so capture left to right
    ◦ Overlap beginning and end by 1 or more captures
    ◦ Overlap successive captures at least 20% - more is better
    ◦ Take a few single images to evaluate exposure
    ◦ Remove filters
    ◦ Consider capturing the sequence in camera portrait mode
        ▪ provides greater detail
• Use manual mode, manual focus, fixed ISO, fixed White Balance
    ◦ Shoot in RAW
    ◦ Set exposure for the brightest area to avoid clipping
• Take a shot of your hand or lens cap at the beginning and end of capture sequence
•

Stitching
• Apply lens and chromatic aberration corrections before stitching
    ◦ Don’t make any other adjustments
• Any layer based image editor can be used for manual stitching
• Software for automatic stitching
    ◦ Lightroom
    ◦ Photoshop
    ◦ Photoshop Elements
    ◦ On1 Photo RAW
    ◦ Microsoft ICE – free for Windows
        ▪ image composite editor
• Crop and make any tonal and other desired adjustments
•

TIA,

Pete

[Bailey]

Hi Peter,

This is the process I normally follow (when I have plenty of time to set up) from shooting to post production.

Many of the steps are covered in your post. I also add some steps and elaborate on others.

1. Mount camera in portrait orientation onto my tripod and ensure the camera is level. Portrait orientation will create a higher pixel count final image which is especially useful for printing, which I do a lot of.

2. Set focus (I use Back Button Focus)

3. Do a couple of test pans to ensure I have the coverage I want in the panorama.

4. With the camera in manual mode, set the exposure settings with a couple of test shots. A must-do when shooting photos for a panorama is to use the same exposure settings for each photo.

5. Put the camera in Live-view mode. On a Canon camera, this also locks up the mirror which removes a possible source of camera movement when the shutter is released, even on a tripod.

6. Take the photos with approximately 50% overlap between successive photos. To release the shutter I use my remote cable shutter release.  Manually pressing the shutter button can still introduce some camera shake, even on a tripod.   You can use your own preferred remote shutter release option or the shutter timer on your camera.

7. Copy the raw files onto my computer and open in Adobe Camera Raw.

8. Apply any tonal/colour/white balance and/or other adjustments as required. Another must-do here is to apply any adjustments to ALL the images. In ACR I just preselect all the images before applying adjustments.

9. Open the raw files in PSE.

10. I then ensure all the images are level (horizontally and vertically) relative to each other. If the photos were taken hand-held, it is more likely they will need leveling/straightening before stitching.

11. Stitch the photos together in PSE using both the Cylindrical and Spherical options and evaluate which looks best.

12. After choosing the preferred stitched output, if necessary I apply any localised edits to suit and the very last step is to sharpen the panorama.

13. Print the panorama if desired or required.

[Sepiana]

Aug 17, 2019 1:08:56 GMT Peterj said:

Setup & Capture

    ◦ Overlap successive captures at least 20% - more is better
   
Stitching
• Software for automatic stitching
      ◦ Photoshop
      ◦ Photoshop Elements 

Pete, I am not sure you need this detailed information. But, if you have users of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements in your Camera Club, here are Adobe guidelines for taking photos for panorama stitching (from the Help file).

Photoshop: 

Images should overlap by approximately 40%. If the overlap is less, Photomerge may not be able to automatically assemble the panorama. However, keep in mind that the images shouldn’t overlap too much. If images overlap by 70% or more, Photomerge may not be able to blend the images. Try to keep the individual photos at least somewhat distinct from each other.

Source:  Create and edit panoramic images


Photoshop Elements:

Images should overlap approximately 15% to 40%. If the overlap is less, Photomerge Panorama may not be able to automatically assemble the panorama. If images overlap by 50% or more, it can be difficult to work with them, and blending may not be as effective.

Source:  Create a panorama

[pontiac1940]

Good stuff all! Thanks. 
Agree about shooting portrait. I do not always use portrait depending on need.   
Don't think this was mentioned: shoot at a longer focal length vs wide angle. Wide angle means you can take (say) half as many shots, but images will stitch better with a longer focal length as there will be less distortion.
Love panos. 
Clive
  

[Bailey]

I am sure you are most probably aware that there is truckloads of information on how to shoot panoramas on the www.

You might find some additional good tips there as well.

[Bailey]

Aug 17, 2019 2:44:24 GMT pontiac1940 said:

Good stuff all! Thanks. 
Agree about shooting portrait. I do not always use portrait depending on need.   
Don't think this was mentioned: shoot at a longer focal length vs wide angle. Wide angle means you can take (say) half as many shots, but images will stitch better with a longer focal length as there will be less distortion.
Love panos. 
Clive
  

Thank you for elaborating Clive. I indirectly mentioned it in step 3 earlier - doing some test pans to ensure I have the coverage I want in the panorama. Normally involves trying a few different focal lengths to get the composition and coverage I am after.

Unless I am standing very close to the subject of the panorama, I don't have any distortion issues but the amount of distortion will also depend on the lens.

[Bailey]

Hi Sepiana,

In my experience, PSE has no trouble at all stitching images with overlap anywhere between ~20% - 60%.  I don't recall ever using a larger overlap.

As posted earlier, I normally overlap ~50% in portrait orientation mainly because for me it's normally easy to find a feature in the frame ~half way across and then simply line up the left vertical edge of the frame with that feature for the next shot.

[Sepiana]

Aug 17, 2019 1:08:56 GMT Peterj said:

Stitching

• Software for automatic stitching
    ◦ Lightroom 

Pete, I forgot to address Lightroom.

If you have users of Lightroom Classic in your Camera Club, the latest update makes it possible to do batch-processing of panorama merges.

For more information on this feature, please, refer to this thread:  Lightroom Classic -- August Update

[Bailey]

Thanks for the tip Sepiana.

You can probably also do it in PSE with scripting.

I will investigate.