A Couple of weeks ago we took a walk down to The Royal William Yard to do some panoramic photography.
A few things to remember when shooting panoramas are;
Always use a tripod- Most have an inbuilt spirit level these are important to help keep you image level when it comes to digitally stitching them together
Use either manual or aperture priority mode
Manual focus
Use a standard lens to avoid distortion, zoom in to 75mm for standard lens equivalent
Don't use filters, especially polarizers
Scan your scene- Try and shoot in a place with even light
ALWAYS work from left to right
Shoot in portrait format
Overlap each image by 30-50% before you pan the camera
The Image below was my first attempt at a 180° panorama photograph.
Image © Sophie Whale
Overall I am very happy with how this image has turned out. It was my first time shooting on location with a tripod and I think I coped well. Before I set up the equipment to take the photograph I had a look around to see what I wanted to capture. I looked at the lighting to make sure it was fairly even for where I was shooting. I decided to keep the silver railing in the image as it helped me to ensure the image was level.
This image consists of around 24 individual shots that have been stitched together in Photoshop. In Photoshop I used a function called Photomerge, I then selected all the files and made sure they were in numerical order. The software then processes all the images and stiches them together. Sometimes after this white edging may appear, this is where the images can't quite be matched. To eliminate this just flatten the image and crop it.