Sometimes when you are out taking pictures, you find yourself someplace so grand, and expansive that it cant fit into a single photograph. This may be a time to create a panoramic image.
Panorama – an unobstructed or complete view of an area in every direction
-Websters Dictionary
A Panorama is an unbroken view that surrounds you, and a panorama image is a series of pictures taken that covers a large field of view. Once you have those pictures, you combine them together to create one larger photo.
Why Create a Panorama Image?
- To capture a large vast expanse that is well beyond what your lens is capable of capturing in a single frame.
- Creating a panorama image also vastly increases the pixel count of your image allowing you to print much larger pictures.
- You can use a Pano to capture a nice wide shot in case you forget to bring a wide angle lens. A panorama does not have to be a big long image, it can be as few as two images combined together.
How to make a panorama:
Overlap 20-40% – In order for the stitching software to easily line one image up with the next, you need to have some overlap between the two images. After you take the first image, move over to take the next but leave about 20-40% of the first image in the 2nd and so forth.
Left –> Right – I usually try to shoot my pano’s from left to right. One reason is because I can see the pano easier in Lightroom when I am looking at all the photos in the slider view.
Portrait Orientation – When shooting a panorama from left to right, take the pictures in Portrait orientation. This way you will take more pictures and use more pixels to cover the same field of view. This in turn means you can print a much larger image. Perhaps a picture that will cover an entire wall.
Camera Settings:
When you are taking a series of images with the intention of combining them together into a panorama, you want to have the exact same camera settings for every image in the series. Otherwise you will see the lines of where the image was stitched together.
- Aperture: F8 – To get a nice sharp image with much of the scene in focus.
- ISO: 100 – To get a nice clean image with low noise.
- Shutter Speed – Pick a speed that will give you a nice steady shot. Watch out for movement in the scene which could blur if you use too low of a shutter speed.
Manual Exposure – If you have a bright area of the scene, and a darker area in another part of the scene. Find the correct exposures for each area and split the difference. Make sure to shoot in RAW mode so you can pull the most detail out of the shadow and highlight areas as possible.
Manual White Balance – The white balance can easily change as you move your camera across a scene. One
Focus – I will focus about 1/3 into the scene, I will then turn autofocus off so that the focus does not change as I take the series of images.
Gear:
Camera + Lens – While you can use any lens to create a panorama, I tend to mostly use a mid-range zoom lens in the 24-105mm or 70-200mm range. These longer focal length lenses allow you take many more images to cover the field of view. This allows you to create a very large final image. If i use too wide of a lens, there could be large areas of dead space in the top and bottom of the final image.
Tripod – A tripod can help you create a nice level picture, but it is not necessary. If you use a tripod, make sure you get all 3 legs set so the camera sits completely level. If your tripod is crooked at all, the horizon level will change as you move the camera from left to right and you will end up with a crooked picture.
Nodal Point
As you take more and more panorama pictures, they will start to notice that sometimes those panoramas do not want to be stitched together during post processing. A main culprit of this is that the camera was not pivoted on the Nodal Point (the No Parallax Point)
The Nodal point is the point in the camera lens where the light entering the lens flips upside down. This is similar to how the human eye works. It is at this point where the camera “should” pivot to come out with the best possible images to stitch.
If you pivot the camera at a different point than the Nodal Point, foreground objects can move in relation to background objects. This can later on cause stitching problems because your computer will know that a tree moved from one image to another, and it might find it difficult to stitch that image because of this movement.
One trick you can do is stick your thumb up and set the middle section of your camera lens on top of your thumb, after you take every image, Pivot the camera at this point. No way this is perfect for finding the nodal point, but it is usually good enough.
If you find yourself out wanting to take a panorama image, but you forgot your tripod. You can always take one handheld. As long as you have enough light and you can use a fast shutter speed, it should not be a problem holding the camera.
I have found that starting while you are twisted at your waist, and untwist yourself as you take the pano is the most comfortable way to take the panorama. Trying to do it the opposite way can be more difficult and cause you to get blurry pictures.
- Start with your feet facing where you want the pano to end.
- Twist at the waist and Point your camera to where you want the pano to begin.
- Take a picture, untwist a little bit, take a picture, untwist, picture, etc
Stitching the Pano
There are many different ways to stitch a pano, but for the article I am going to go over how to create a pano using Adobe Lightroom.
While you are in the Develop module within Lightroom, do any necessary edits on the photo. Next highlight all the photos you want to use in your panorama. To do this, select the first picture in the sequence. Hold the shift button on the keyboard and click the last picture in the sequence.
Only when you have several pictures selected at the same does the “Sync…” button appear. Make sure all the check marks are selected. You want all the images to have the exact same edits. Next click the Synchronize button.
Make sure those edits look good in all the pictures in the sequence.
With all the images still selected, right click on them and go to Photo Merge –> Panorama.
Lightroom will work its magic and you should be given a stitched panorama.
The three buttons on the right: Spherical, Cylindrical, and Perspective will each process the image in a different way. Choose whichever one you like the best.
The Boundary Warp slider on the right warps the image to fill in the frame and get rid of the white edges. Sometimes I use the slider, sometimes I do not. It all depends on the image.
When you are satisfied with the settings, click the Merge button. Once complete you will have a newly stitched panorama in your Lightroom image library.
Do any last edits to the image and crop off any white areas on the edges.
Congrats! you just created a panorama image!
Sometimes Lightroom will struggle to stick a panorama. When I have this problem, I try to use the Merge to Panorama in Photoshop option.
Printing a Pano
Because panoramas have an awkward aspect ratio, your printing options are somewhat limited.
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Print the entire panorama on one picture
Some print companies offer a panorama option for printing images. But the larger you go, the more expensive these prints will get.
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Print the panorama over multiple panels
Many print companies offer the option to print one image over multiple images, and you hang them all up next to each other to create one large image. This option can be much more affordable to print a large image.
Print Companies to look into
All these companies deliver exceptional quality prints, you cant go wrong with any of them. I am not affiliated with any of theses sites in any way.
Print Companies to avoid at all costs!!!
These companies deliver low quality prints and should be avoided. I wont even link to these sites, sorry.
- Shutterfly
- Walgreens
- Walmart
- Snapfish
Tips:
- Have the main point of interest be towards the center of the image. Don’t have it on the far end of the pano.
- Watch out for any moving objects near the edges of your individual images. You do not want those moving objects to be half in one shot, and half in another. It could really be a problem later on when stitching the panorama.
- You don’t need an expensive camera to take a panorama. Your smartphone is fully capable of creating a panorama. It is in fact much easier to create a pano with a phone, I just choose to use my DSLR because the image quality is much nicer.
- Do not use a polarizing filter when shooting a pano. The polarizer can cause some weird discoloration in the sky that can be a problem during the stitching process.
- Try creating a vertical panorama instead of a horizontal pano.
