Panoramic technique?

oblivion

oblivion

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Richard
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I'm thinking of taking several shots to stitch together to make a panoramic view. Having never done this before I'm hoping some here has and can guide me a little. Upon achieving focus for my first picture am I to then keep that focus locked and move along slightly to take the next? I didn't want several shots taken each with a slightly different focus point but at the same time I want the entire picture when finished to be in focus. I hope that makes sense
 
Lock onto manual your focus, exposure and white balance, otherwise changes will look odd across the frame.

Make sure you level your tripod head up so that it pans horizontally rather than in a loop, otherwise when you stitch up the frames you'll end up discarding lots of pixels to make a rectangle.

Whilst it is personal preference I like to shoot in portrait format and make up a large landscape panorama of the stitched frames, it gives you huge files with tonnes of detail.

Best of luck!
 
Pans horizontally rather than a loop? Can you expand on that as I don't understand. I assumed that whilst moving my tripod say from left to right then the image would come out almost a bubble shape. Think I need a good online clip
 
Richard, make sure your tripod is set up completely level rather than levelling the camera using the head's adjustments. Once you've got the tripod levelled, you can pan round. Ideally, keep the camera in portrait orientation and get about 1/3 frame overlap on each transition. (Might add a minute or 2 to the process but it's well worth the little extra effort) Take a series of meter readings along the path and select a good average set of settings (I usually aim for around f/8 for a good compromise between maximum DoF and diffraction) then use M mode and set those settings so exposure on the whole series is consistent. I generally set focus in MF mode rather than let the camera choose whatever focus point it deems correct. The point of focus I usually select is just short of infinity which combined with f/8 allows enough DoF to keep everything acceptably sharp.

These days though, I tend to cheat just a little A LOT and use the pan function in my Fuji compacts and bridge - select angle of pan and direction then turn through the selected angle after pressing the button! maybe not up to the ultimate IQ of pans done the old fashioned way but so much easier and they print great up to 24" wide!
 
Thanks for the tips. I just need something good now to photograph. I'm off to the seaside next week so will attempt then
 
Use AV or TV modes to figure out what fstop, shutter speed and iso is optimal, remember these settings then move to manual mode. Dial in these settings so each shot in the pano will be exposed exactly the same.

Other than that, shoot in portrait and give yourself about 20%-25% overlap in the shots
 
A good thing with camera raw too is you can choose to synchronise all the photos together at the same time too after, so if the white balance is a bit off, it can all be adjusted the same. Software these days make panoramic photos quite straightforward to process.
 
Much easier to keep everything on manual. Especially WB... it can/may/will make slight adjustment, when rotating camera.
 
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