Shooting tips: Creating Stunning Panoramics
Panoramic images are awesome. They provide you with the ability to work beyond the means of your camera’s lens and recreate an amazing view that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.
5-shot stitch of Manly Beach at Sunrise
It’s a fairly easy process, contrary to what you might think:
What you’ll need:
A camera
A tripod (preferably one with a level and that locks your vertical and horizontal movement separately.)
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Bridge
Step 1: Level the tripod. Lock it from any vertical movement if possible.
Ensure that you’re on level ground and check by completing the pan to make sure your horizon line stays level throughout the entire pan.
Tip: turn on the grid function on your camera’s LCD screen.
Note: this is the most critical step of creating natural and high quality panoramics. If the camera moves vertically between images, it will not come together correctly later.
Step 2: Get your settings right. Once you’re happy with what you’ve got, don’t change them until you’ve completed your panoramic.
Make sure you’ve got the focus set and your exposure correct (tip: shoot bright and to the right [on your histogram] as it’s much easier to darken highlights than it is to brighten shadows in Photoshop).
Another tip: If you’re using a wideangle lens, zoom it in slightly. This is because in general when shooting fully wide, the corners of your images will distorted, which can cause problems when merging later.
Step 3: Turn on your 2-second timer.
This will ensure there is no movement of the camera when you press the shutter button – ensuring an in-focus image.
Step 4: Fire away! Pick a side and work from left to right (or visa versa.)
Tip: Only move your image about 1/3 of the way at the time – meaning there will be considerable overlap between your pictures. This will result in less distortion and a higher resolution on your final image.
Step 5: Now that you’ve got the images, it’s time to merge them together. You need Adobe Bridge (included with Photoshop CS3/CS4/CS5.) Select the images that build your panoramic shot. Now on the menu, click on TOOLS > PHOTOSHOP > PHOTOMERGE…
The photos will open with a screen showing the selected images, and ask you the type of merge you want to do. Leave it on the default ‘perspective’ option. Click ‘process’ and now sit back and let Photoshop blend them together. This may take several minutes.
Step 6: Flatten the image by right clicking on any of the layers (each photo will have it’s own layer as a default.) Next, straighten and crop your image. Make any adjustments to the images as you would a regular image.
THAT”S IT! 
Saving and uploading to share:
Because you’re combining multiple images, the end result will be a very large file size. If you want to share the image online for others to see, it’s best to save a lower size image. (Go to Image> Image Size… and choose something much smaller [like 10 to 20" wide]. Save this as a Low Quality version with a separate filename (I just add LQ to the end of the filename) so you don’t overwrite the full-resolution image!!
Here are a few easy examples I took over the last few days:
6-shot Panoramic from the Blue Mountains. Click for a full-size image.
3-shot panormic at sunset of Shelly Beach, Manly.
With panoramics, you’re only limited by your creativity. As long as you do it right, you can combine literally as many as you want. Here’s a few examples of MASSIVE 9-shot panoramics:
Click to view larger. 9-Shot view of Sydney Harbour at Night.
Massive Panoramic showing the Sydney Heads entrance. Click for larger.
The problem with creating such giant panoramics is that they are hard to view! For example, the above image is over 10 feet long in full size, which makes viewing the details very difficult by normal means.
6-shot Pano - Sydney View from North Head at Sunset. (Click for larger view.)
None of these shots are ‘epic’ by any means, but now that I know the process, I’ll be ready to capture them when the opportunity arises. And now you can do the same!
