landscape panoramas - basic questions

<p>I'm in the middle of a trip and just starting to read up on shooting panoramas, sorry if some of these questions are addressed at the standard links given for this subject. </p>

<p>I know there's a separate forum for feedback on individual photos, but since I have specific questions I've attached two panoramas (each stitched from 13 photos with Autostitch). I've been shooting using a bubble level and ball-head tripod (no panning capacity). </p>

<p>these are stitched from two randomly selected series of the two scenes. It's possible I'll get better stitching with other series, but these illustrate the problems I'm facing. </p>

<p>- is there a technique for avoiding the sort of perspective distortion seen in my stitched photos? (the black bits at the corners) <br /><br /></p>

<p>- what's the best way to use a ball-head tripod?<br>

I've tried two approaches: a) loosen the head, move it, retighten; b) leave the head loose between shots an try to keep perspective constant with the aid of the bubble level and a steady hand; </p>

<p>- I have 3-column and 2-column bubble levels, but generally I only look at the horizontal column. Without a panning-head, should I be spending the time and effort to check every column on the bubble level for each shot? </p>

<p>- would shooting fewer component pictures reduce the stitching error, given that I'm new to panoramas and I don't hvae a panoramic/pan-head for the tripod? Obviously you lose detail by reducing the number of pictures. </p>

<p>- is setting an aperture value (generally f8.0) and bracketing enough, or should I really be setting manual exposure for each series? </p>

<p>- my lens has focus lock, switching this on for the duration of the panorama would improve results I guess? </p>

<p>thanks for the feedback. I't s a shame EOS cameras don't have the in-camera stitch assist function that Canon point-and-shoots have. </p><div></div>

<p>link for second panorama follows. </p>

<p>to clarify my first question - the only way to avoid this distortion at the corners is to keep the angle of the tripod head constant between shots in the series? </p>

<p>I've read that you should allow about 25% overlap between photos in a series? </p>

<p>The tripod i'm using is a Manfrotto 7302YB. </p><div></div>

<p>another thing - i refocused for each shot of these two panorama series. </p>

<p>Given the distance to the subject matter in these two scenes, I guess you dont notice it in the stitched result. But generally you should focus only on the first shot in the series and then then turn autofocus off? </p>

perhaps this belongs in another forum?

<p>The black stuff is your background. The software you're using won't presume to crop it off. You have to do it yourself.</p>

<p>I can't help you with the levelling stuff. I do it all by eye using the focus points in the viewfinder as a rough guide and most of the time without a tripod at all. Photoshop generally figures it out for me, although sometimes there are problems with scenes where the horizon is directly in front of me, like with your second pano there. PS usually distorts at the edges and I have to use the Transform tool to correct.<br>

When I do use a tripod, my tripod has two controls - one for the ball head and one for rotating the head on the base. I usually lock each shot before I release the shutter in order to keep the horizon in place in relation to the focus points in the viewfinder. Mostly, however, I swivel the camera on the ball joint, rather than rotating the entire head. The horizon has to be horizontal, no matter what the adjustments might make possible.</p>

<p>But most of the time I do these without the tripod.</p><div></div>

<p>I refocus for each shot, but often I complete the process of making the shots the same in the RAW converter (Adobe Camera RAW). Then I create the pano from the adjusted files.</p>

<p>You have to be very alert to the way light drops off, so that's the controlling factor for how wide you shoot the shot. You pano app can't really fix that if it gets too obvious.</p>

<p>Here's an example of that problem.</p><div></div>

<p>thanks guys. by 'lock the shot' Emily, you mean lock the tripod head?</p>

<p>you'll notice the black bands at top and bottom are jagged, and tend to slope up towards one side of the photo. </p>

<p>I assume this is due to my not keeping the camera level between shots, and keeping it horizontal relative to myself rather than to the horizon as I pan?</p>

<p>I'm usually standing on uneven ground while taking panoramas, and moving my body around the tripod as I pan. </p>

<p>I find with most of my stitched results that cropping out the black jaggedness loses too much of the shot, so it's something systemic I need to correct. </p>

<p>Yes. Lock the tripod when you use it.</p>

<p>The black bands are something you can't evade without lots more trouble than it's worth. Either you back out and shoot more sky/foreground than you hope to keep in the pano, or you crop them off, or you reconstruct the areas with the rubber stamp (clone) tool.</p>

<p>If you're fussing with a level on your tripod but your horizons aren't level in each shot, why are you fussing with a level on your tripod? Keep your focal length identical for every shot, keep your horizon horizontal for every shot, keep your horizon in the same place in the veiwfinder for every shot, keep your focal point identical for every shot. Zoom out further so you don't resent having to crop off the stuff that doesn't match up at the top and bottom or spend hours reconstructing sky and foreground.</p>

<p>Them's yer choices!</p><div></div>

<p>FWIW, I think you have an acceptable amount of "keeper image" in both your shots. You'd have to crop out quite a bit of what you captured, but you are still left with nice panos.</p>

<p>This is hugely simplistic but agree with just freeze the ballhead; keep it even and the same and shot/focus, etc. with 25% overlap; and you have to crop out the black parts.<br>

I shot this free hand and edited it with simple program, windows photo gallery. It was a huge file and had to scale it way back to get it on here.<br>

But here is small version.<br>

I show this to say that it can be a pretty simple thing.<br>

<a href="http://www.betterphoto.com/Premium/Gallery.aspx?id=67760&cat=97970&photoID=9465590&iPage=5&mp=V1">http://www.betterphoto.com/Premium/Gallery.aspx?id=67760&cat=97970&photoID=9465590&iPage=5&mp=V1</a></p>

<p>As Emily suggested, Photoshop (CS4/CS5) can do a great job now of compensating for photographer sins. I often shoot a set of frames hand held and stitch them using the Reposition position of Photomerge in CS4. I'm almost always pleased with the results.</p>

<p>I'm positing a twelve frame stitch( 4x3) taken with a 5D mkII at Banff. It's nothing out of the ordinary but illustrates what you can do hand held as long as you take a bit of care . Besides overlapping frames 20-30% it's also useful to shoot wide enough vertically to allow generous crop room. The resultant file is large enough to print a critically sharp image nearly nine feet wide.</p><div></div>