Hello,
I wanted to get a nice panorama of the pier in my home town. I think this is ok but has room for improvement. To me it looks like something funky is going on at the end of the pier. Some of the pylons also look a little weird but that could just be the angle, not really sure honestly. I shot this a 70mm and it's somewhere between 10 and 15 photos stitched together. I don't do a ton of panorama's. Anyone got any advice? And how does this photo stack up? Portfolio worthy?
Perhaps auto white balance is doing something else in that area. I fix the WB in a pano.
Thinking out loud here... stitching together the photos you can see the disconnect between the waves and the beach about 25% in from left of frame. I wonder if it would have been easier to blend if you had taken the images with longer exposure? You lose the definition of the waves, but you'd get a more uniform "seafoam" pattern if you know what I mean?
I think the right side of the picture probably just needed some adjustment to white balance, temp, or tint.
Looks like it was a nice sunset though, I definitely see where you were going with this.
Yeah I see the wave thing you're talking about now. Didn't see it before. Might run it through lightroom again or try photoshop. I also thought the sand on the right side looked a little weird.
you might try starting over processing all of them the same. Looks to me as thought the tint slider is one way on the left side of the picture and the other way on the right side. once you have them processed then put them together. Not really sure what you would do about the wave action where it is chopped
I do a fair bit of panos, I'm no expert, but this is the advice I can give you, apart from what has already been said:
1. Use the camera in manual mode. Everything manual, even white balance. White balance can be adjusted in postprocessing, however, you will save time if you just set it manual in camera. For a sunset, something around 5300K and 6300K should do nicely. Same goes for focusing. You can either press the shutter halfway to autofocus where you want and then (without taking the shot) switch to manual, so that the focus locks on that location. Or you can use hyperfocal distance. Your choice. Needless to say, ISO, shutter speed and aperture must be in manual as well.
2. Level your tripod. Crucial if you want to get the shot right, and the horizon straight without having to fiddle with the pano stitching software too much. If your tripod has a bubble head, you can level it by adjusting the legs, but it's a little time consuming. The other way, the best way in my opinion, is to get yourself a leveling base. They sell for around $40 on Amazon, which is really cheap for a photography accessory. It makes leveling so much quicker and easier. Ideally, your ball head needs a panoramic base. A panoramic base basically allows you to pan your ball head, without tilting it.
3. Overlap at least 30% between each frame, this will make the stitching easier for the software, and more uniform in general.
4. Use a dedicated pano stitching software such as PTGui, Hugin or Microsoft's Image Composite Editor. Hugin and ICE are free. Hugin has almost the same features as PTGui, it's a little more advanced. If you have a Windows computer, ICE should be enough to get you started. These programs allow more flexibility when stitching the pictures. You can select different projection modes, fix crooked horizons, different export options, and many more features. Just don't use Photoshop or Lightroom to stitch panos, believe me, once you try a pano stitching software, you won't go back.
5. Don't take too long between the first shot and the last shot, mostly in situations like a sunset where the light is changing quickly. You don't want your exposure to be completely different in the first picture and in the last one. Unless you are trying to do a day to night transition of course, which is pretty advanced.
Hit me up if you got any more questions, I'll be glad to help.
Thanks. I was shooting in manual except for the white balance and the focusing. Didn't think about those. My camera has a level built in and that's what I was using to level the frames. But honestly I can't remember if I took the time to level each shot (I probably didn't). As for the tripod, by panoramic base do you mean the knob that lets you pan from left to right w/o tilting the lens up and down? If so that's what I was doing except I was tilting up and down to get more sky and foreground into the shot. Each section on this is 3 vertical shots (sky middle and foreground). Then I would pan over and do the same thing. I'm definitely going to have to check out some of the pano software you mentioned. My pano experience consist of selecting the photos in lightroom, right click photo merge. And for whatever reason LR seems to do better than PS for me. Thanks for all of the tips. Looking forward to trying again!
The thing about leveling your tripod, or using a leveling base is that you don't have to level your camera between shots, how cool is that? The problem with leveling the camera, using the ballhead and the internal level, is that you are leveling for that current position, the moment you pan your panoramic base, you lose the level, because it's not properly aligned with the horizon. This video illustrates perfectly the advantages of using a leveling base and how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTuMndbELqU
And yep, by panoramic base I mean the that knob. It's specially useful for panoramas, hence it's name.
What you are describing then is a multi-row panorama. As for almost everything in life, there are different ways of achieving the final result, however, for multi-row panos, I consider working in rows the best approach (hence the name), instead of working in columns. What I mean by this is:
First, shoot your first row (usually the lowest). Only pan your panoramic base (after you've leveled with the leveling base of course) after each shot.
Once you've finished with your first row, return to the initial position (most panoramic bases have markers, just remember where you started, and how many degrees you panned), then tilt the ball head up if you started from the bottom (remember to overlap enough on the bottom), and start the second row. And do this for each row you feel you need to complete the scene. This will give you the best results for multi-row panoramas.
The way you mentioned is less accurate, because each row will have a different height if you didn't tilt the same amount of degrees.
Gotcha. All of that totally makes sense. I don't know why I never thought to shoot the rows first. That totally makes sense and seems easier. I've definitely had problems with the rows having different heights like you mention. Since they are pretty cheap I'm going to have to get me one of these leveling bases and try it out. Thanks again for the comments! Wish I lived at the beach so I could immediately try this again. I'll just have to wait till the next trip.