Panorama made simply
By Antonio
23 Mar 2009
Sometimes you see a great photograph and asks.. how to do it? it is a Panorama... you need that and that and blabla... stop.
Is easier than it seems, I'll try to explain in a few words:
1. EQUIPMENT.
You only needs your imagination.
Recommended a camera with manual settings.
I forgot ;). Recommended a tripod too, but isn't needed. You don't carry all days and all the time the tripod. I have to say that sometimes we get better panorama without tripod, the tip is to take photos in focus and well exposed.
2. SETTING UP GEARS
Once you've seen what to capture and decided to make a panorama, is needed to setup the camera.
Try to use a medium focal, something like 50mm because large angulars use to make distortions.
Then, select manual mode (light meter and focus) we want a stable image from start to end. Be careful with strong contrast into the scene, because you can get a high light well exposed and at the same time the shadows completly black.
3. SHOOTING
Now we're going to capture the scene. If the final result is going to be Horizontal, take Vertical photos because at the end of the proccess we will have to crop and in that way we'll got more info of the scene.
For the photo unions, take photographs overlaped at leas 1/3. The process of union is made easy and better if we have more info in each photograph.
And finally, before the first click take a black image and after the last other black image. In this way we could know exactly what images are the panorama in a large library.
4. THE UNION
Select the photos for the panorama and don't proccess them, we have to make the union before.
The simple tool I know is PhotoShop, only three steps:
- Open the images as layers in the same file.
- Select all layers and Edit->Auto-align, the auto option goes fine. After this step we've got the complete panorama.
- Select all layers and Edit->Auto-blend, after this step we've got a panorama with an uniform light.
There exists a lof of software that you can use or not (maybe you wanted to print the photos and then make a collage with them) ;). Anyway, always use your imagination.
Now we've got the Panorama, If you want you can crop the result.
5. POST-PROCCESS
Now that we've got the panorama, we can work over it if we wanted to do something more special. Work with levels, curves, B/W, lens distortion corrections, sharpenning filters, ...
6. JPG PUBLISH
After all the work you can publish and share with all of us ;)
7. BE HAPPY
Now time to take a rest and being happy for a good work.
8. PRACTICE
Don't sleep, go out again and again and practice the techniche.
And finally you have two more steps for spend in yourself.... go shopping, sport, friends, ... ;)
The Main Photo is the Hall of Atocha Train Station in Madrid. It is the result of joining three photos and was taken following these little tips while waiting the train (5 minutes).
